“That rooster,” Sera declared, fifteen years later, “is a menace. Why can’t he crow at a reasonable time? Why does he insist on cock-a-doodling at three, four, five, six, and seven in the morning?”

“Now, Sera,” Jasmine said with a mixture of sympathy and reproach, cuddling the aforementioned rooster in her arms and covering his ears like Sera’s criticisms might otherwise hurt his feelings, “you know Roo-Roo can’t tell the time.

He gets discombobulated, on account of being”—and here Jasmine lowered her voice to a whisper—“ undead . Which was your doing, my love.”

“Resurrecting him was an accident! I agreed to a lot of things when I cast that spell, but a lifetime with a zombie chicken was definitely not one of them!”

Jasmine’s dark brown eyes, so like Sera’s, were dewy as she gazed upon the skeletal abomination in her arms. “But he’s so fond of you,” she cooed. “Look at the way he’s trying to nibble your sleeve. If that’s not love, I don’t know what is.”

Sera retrieved the sleeve of her oversized sweater from the bony beak clamped around it and stomped across the kitchen to fortify herself with the booziest coffee that had ever boozed.

Was it only half past ten in the morning and, strictly speaking, too early to be consuming anything with more of a kick than a triple espresso?

Yes, but the prospect of a glug of Baileys in her coffee was the only thing keeping her from returning to her bed immediately and just letting everyone fend for themselves.

Everyone , these days, meant Jasmine (briefly deceased great-aunt), Clemmie (overly opinionated witch doomed to live out her days as a fox), Sera’s young cousin Theo (also a witch, but thankfully not one doomed to a lifetime as a woodland creature), Matilda (geriatric oddball and aspiring hobbit), and newest arrival Nicholas (a knight).

It sounded madder than a box of frogs, and yet it was, somehow, the reality of Sera’s life.

She had achieved a remarkable feat. Not many people went from where she’d been (the most powerful witch born in a generation, the Guild’s golden child, and glittering with promise) to where she was now (thirty years old, almost magicless, and running an inn filled with more than its fair share of people who were not, it had to be said, overburdened with normalness), but she’d done it.

Sera had never planned to run the inn. It creaked, it leaked, and worst of all, it had people in it. Still, with Jasmine getting older and Sera all too aware that it was her spell that had made the inn a beacon in the dark for the lost and adrift, she had found herself doing more and more.

Setting Roo-Roo back on the floor, Jasmine stacked the breakfast bowls into a tidy pile and said, “At the risk of adding another straw to your back, dearest—”

“Are you calling me a camel?” Sera asked.

“—I feel you ought to know that Matilda saw daisies burst forth from one of the teacups this morning.”

The universe was enjoying itself just a little too much at Sera’s expense. “What did she say?”

“She pretended she didn’t see it, but I know she did.”

“When I get my magic back,” Sera said emphatically, “the first thing I’m going to do is put an end to the magical mischief running amok in this house.”

When was doing a lot of heavy lifting there, considering she was well and truly stuck, but if would feel too much like admitting defeat.

In truth, Sera had a pretty good idea of how to get her magic back, and that idea was a book called The Ninth Compendium of Uncommon Spells . The problem was getting her hands on it.

As she helped Jasmine load the dishwasher, she put her mind to this conundrum, an oft-repeated exercise in futility that involved brilliant notions like “Just beg the Guild for a favour, pride be damned” and “What if I planned an ingenious heist instead…”

It was maddening. After years of exhausting the few magical texts still in her possession, chasing ideas dredged from Clemmie’s memory, and some dubious and desperate Googling, the injustice of finally having a real answer and for that answer to be just out of reach was almost too much to bear.

The Guild had twelve compendiums of unusual spells in the estate’s enormous library, all collected and compiled by different witches over the centuries. They sat in the restricted section, gathering dust. Sera could picture them in her mind’s eye. She’d walked past them a hundred times as a child.

The Ninth Compendium was there. If she weren’t in exile, she could walk in and simply borrow it.

The fact that she even knew this much was down to her little cousin Theo, who was living with her at the moment.

As he was technically under the aegis of the Wise Women of Reykjavík, the Icelandic equivalent of the British Guild of Sorcery, he’d never been to the Northumberland estate.

Nevertheless, he did live in Britain, at least for the time being, so the Guild let him use their online library and borrow magical texts to study at home.

( Not texts from the restricted section, alas, which could only be studied in person with special permission.)

Within weeks of receiving access to the library, Theo had pointed out that Sera could use his account too. How would the Guild ever know the difference?

It had been the first chance Sera had had to study new texts and spellbooks since her exile.

With Clemmie peering over her shoulder, she’d scoured the extensive index of spells, and there, under the Rs, the word restoration had caught her eye.

A single click later, she knew where to find the spell.

The Ninth Compendium of Uncommon Spells.

She just couldn’t get to it.

“You could ask someone to get it for you,” Clemmie had suggested. Having extracted a promise from Sera that she would break Clemmie’s curse if she ever got her magic back, Clemmie was every bit as invested as Sera was.

Sera had laughed bitterly. “Ask who, exactly?”

Albert Grey’s cold voice had echoed in her head. Not a single witch in the country will extend a friendly hand to you now.

“You’ve gone away again, my love,” Jasmine said gently, trying to shut the dishwasher door.

Blinking out of her reverie, Sera stepped out of the way.

She lifted the bubbling kettle off its cradle and looked for her favourite mug, which was, of course, missing.

It was the most ordinary of drinking receptacles, ochre with tiny blue flowers on it, and yet it was never around when Sera wanted it because, for absolutely no reason Sera could fathom, every other person in the house insisted on using it.

She made do with a subpar mug. There was a clatter of armour behind her, and she turned to see Nicholas trip into the kitchen. He stopped in the process of pulling on his gauntleted glove, black hair flopping into his earnest green eyes, and snapped to attention.

“Lady Sera!” One loose gauntlet flapped from his hand as he smacked that hand over his heart. Slashes of mortified pink appeared on his white cheeks. “I didn’t know you were here! Forgive me for presenting myself to you in such a state of unreadiness!”

Sera sighed. “You look ready to me, Nicholas.” Then, encountering his hopeful puppy eyes, she corrected herself: “ Sir Nicholas. In fact, you look splendid.”

Nicholas, who was twenty-three years old and declared at least twice a week that he was willing to fall upon his very real and very literal sword for Sera, lit up at this compliment. “You honour me!”

Sera glanced at the clock. “Shouldn’t you have been at the Medieval Fair an hour ago?”

“I could not depart without polishing my armour first,” Nicholas replied gravely.

He gave Jasmine a courtly bow, patted Roo-Roo on the head, and snatched up the sheathed sword propped against the door on his way out. A moment later, the sound of his Jeep sputtered up the lane.

Nicholas had arrived four months ago, on a stormy evening with rain lashing against the windows and every fireplace ablaze. Sera had answered the polite ring of the doorbell and found him on the doorstep, soaking wet and shivering.

He had also been dressed in medieval armour from neck to toe. And there had been a sword at his side.

“Sir Nicholas of Mayfair, at your service,” this apparition had said, attempting a very wet bow, his teeth chattering and his sword clanking against the various layers of steel on him.

“There seems to be a mistake with the flat I rented in the next town over. I was driving past and I saw your lights…”

“Come in,” Sera had said. “Tea?”

Sera hadn’t expected Nicholas to stay longer than the night. She’d assumed all he needed was a toasty fireplace on a stormy night and would be gone when the skies cleared.

But when Nicholas had not gone, when he had abandoned the perfectly nice flat he’d rented and settled down at a rickety old inn instead, becoming more lodger than guest, she had realised that the thing he’d needed hadn’t been a toasty fireplace at all.

He’d needed someone to see him, armour and sword and all. To hear his ridiculous introduction and accept his courtly bow. And still say Come in .

“He’s been with us some time,” Jasmine mused now, leaning heavily on her cane. “Do you think he still believes the story we tell the guests about Roo-Roo?”

“That the skeletal rooster is one of Theo’s toys and runs on batteries?” Sera winced, wishing for the thousandth time that she had the ability to cast a decent glamour over Roo-Roo. “I have no idea, and I don’t plan to ask.”

Jasmine acknowledged that this was a can of worms best left unopened.

Roo-Roo scuttled out of the kitchen to go bother the actual, living chickens by the coop, and for a few moments, there was peace in the house.

Jasmine wiped down the old breakfast table while Sera sought out a speedy slice of toast.

“Have you seen Theo today?” Sera asked Jasmine, smothering her toast in lavender jam. “He wasn’t in his room when I came downstairs.”

“I think he was up before any of us,” Jasmine replied.