Page 3 of Enchanted Village

“Two pairs of gloves, then,” Margaret said, and hurried to grab a backup pair before following the man out of her pub.

Chapter Two

The thing about staying at a magical inn was that no morning was ever the same. Silas Birchwood had his routine, naturally. He was and always had been an early bird, someone whose internal clock insisted on him waking up no later than 7 a.m. He liked to start the day with coffee tempered with cream and the smallest bit of honey, and he enjoyed a run to wake him up, followed by a brisk shower and reading something—a newspaper, a book, whatever he could reasonably get his hands on. For as long as he could remember, that had been how he started his day, and while he continued to strive for consistency, the fact of the matter was that a magical inn simply did not allow for routine.

Take this morning. Yes, he had woken up at just before seven, and the goal had been to make himself some coffee. But when he had gone to use the machine in his room, he had found that it had disappeared—or so it seemed until, upon closer inspection, Silas found that the machine had actually shrunk. In fact, it was so small that Silas could’ve put the entire thing in his palm.

This was not entirely unsurprising. For the past week, Silas had been finding his items shrunk by mistake: his suitcase, his slacks, his pens. At first, he’d wondered if it was a curse on his room, but then he discovered that the child in the room below his had been casting shrinking spells and had been accidentally shrinking Silas’s belongings. The parents, upon realization, had assured Silas it wouldn’t happen again, but here was the proof that it had. And now Silas had to deal with a distinct lack of caffeination on a day when he really, desperately needed it: the day after Halloween.

The inn had been alive with sounds all through the night, with children banging on doors asking for candy until at least eleven. Silas had been prepared, of course, having stopped at the neighborhood candy shop to load up appropriately; as the newest professor at Emberwind Academy, the school that sat just up the road, he couldn’t exactly be known as stingy on his very first Halloween. Still, he was exhausted, particularly as the parade of trick-or-treaters had been followed by a fireworks display right outside his window.

And now, the coffeemaker was gone.

Not that it had been a particularly good coffeemaker. Silas’s room was one of the few offerings at the inn that was expressly for non-magical guests, and as such, it included items that only non-magical guests requested or needed—but clearly ones selected by someone magical who wasn’t entirely familiar with the purpose of the device in question: namely, a dependable ability to brew coffee.

One thing Silas did appreciate about his room was the size: Although it appeared to be a small room from the outside, the inside was quite spacious, with room for a king-size bed, desk area, kitchenette, and a generous bathroom. Honestly, the bathroom was one of his favorite parts, with a shower that even his tall, lanky frame could fit in. He supposed it was charmed to stretch to meet the needs of the inhabitant—the troll who had been staying a few rooms down would’ve needed considerably more room than even Silas—but he appreciated it all the same. Especially now, as he stepped in, the shower started up automatically, dousing him with warm water.

Was there anything better than a hot shower on a fall day when the air had just started to shift from cool to crisp? The inn was always somewhat drafty, with cold slipping in through the cracks in the stone exterior. Of course, there was the roaring fireplace at night, and Silas could have requested one of the warming charms that had been listed on his reservation, but he didn’t mind the chill. Besides, he rarely spent time in his room as it was. How could he, when he was living and working in a real enchanted village?

After Silas finished his shower and fought to get his dark-brown curls to settle—they refused—he dressed in his weekend clothes: brown slacks, cream shirt, and the olive sweater gifted to him by his uncle. He then headed out of his room and into the hallway, only to nearly run into one of his neighbors, Keiko, struggling with her doorknob.

“The damn thing won’t shut,” Keiko told him, jiggling the knob in evidence. “Not all the way, at least. I’ve put in a request at the front for a magical repair, but they say they’ve already fixed it.”

She glared at Silas as if he was the one who had claimed it was fixed, her bright brown eyes flashing.

“And of course,” she continued, “my own spell work just bounces right back thanks to the wards on this place. Heaven forbid a guest try to improve the experience.”

Silas offered a smile, already digging into his pocket for the small screwdriver he kept handy at all times. “That’s all right. I’m sure we can sort this out.”

Keiko puffed out a breath as she gathered her long black hair in her hands before securing it in a bun at the nape of her neck. “I’m telling you, this place is held together by a hope and a prayer. And whoever they’re praying to, they’re simply not listening.”

Silas chuckled, kneeling down to busy himself with the door. In a moment, he’d found the cause of the loose knob and was tightening it with the screwdriver, all while Keiko stamped her feet beside him.

“I’ve been all over, you know,” she said. “I’ve stayed in some very fine establishments. But this one, well, I’m not so sure. I mean, it’s a bargain for a reason, you know what I’m saying? And the room service—”

“Fixed,” Silas said, standing up and making Keiko stop mid-sentence. She glanced down in disbelief, then reached over and tested the no-longer-loose doorknob. When she shut the door, it latched with a quick snap that made her gasp.

“What in the—how did you—Silas!” she said, opening and shutting the door again for good measure.

“If you need anything else,” Silas said with a nod. “You know where to find me.”

Keiko continued to shower him with praise before disappearing into the room to alert her husband to Silas’s fix, which Silas took as his cue to leave. Praise, after all, had always made him mildly uncomfortable. He didn’t fix things to be told he’d done a good thing. He fixed things because they needed to be fixed.

When he arrived downstairs, Silas found that the inn’s lobby was already bustling with morning traffic. Like the rest of the Weary Wyvern, there was an air to the lobby of years and years of work stacked on top of each other: Some rugs and chairs looked newer, replacements for finally retired former occupants, while the majority looked somewhere between worn and lived-in. There was a small restaurant in the corner that served basic meals at all hours, plus an area that was mostly just an assortment of cozy chairs and small tables, currently occupied by a handful of witches and wizards in traveling cloaks that shimmered in the sparse morning light leaking in through the inn’s windows. Then there was the small station near the front where a handwritten sign above a counter read Service, which Silas made his way to.

As usual, there was no one sitting on the red chair behind the service desk. At least, there wasn’t anyone until Silas pressed a finger to the bell on the desk, which rang out with a birdlike chime and summoned a slender man with a shock of blond hair and a blue cloak.

“What? What is it now?”

Mr. York could’ve been forty or sixty-five, and neither would’ve surprised Silas. He had the eternally harried look of someone who had said yes to too many things and found himself shocked to have to deal with them all, which gave him a persnickety quality that made most guests avoid dealing with him unless absolutely necessary. Silas, however, was undeterred.

“Ah, Mr. York,” he said with a smile. “Busy morning already, I presume?”

Mr. York snorted. “If it’s not one thing, it’s another, but you already knew that, Professor. I heard you’ve already been up and about this morning fixing doorknobs in my hallway.”

Silas laughed. “You don’t miss a thing, do you?”

Mr. York narrowed his eyes. “I keep telling you, I’ll take care of all that. With magic. As this is a magical inn.”