Page 30 of Enchanted Village

“You can drink it, you know,” Margaret said, and he glanced over to see she’d finished her rummaging and was now watching him, hands busy wrapping a brown apron around her waist. “It’s not too hot.”

Silas arched his brow, not intending to question her, but feeling the heat in his hand and doing so all the same. He’d watched her pour the water—obviously boiling—into the mug moments ago. Did she expect him to believe it wouldn’t burn him?

She let out a laugh. “Trust me, Professor.”

Gingerly, he took a sip, preparing for a burnt tongue. It was unlike any tea he’d ever had before. The temperature was perfect—warming his whole chest but not burning as it went down. It was sweet but not too sweet, and while one sip would taste like perfectly balanced chamomile, the next would taste somehow like cherries and vanilla ice cream with warm caramel slathered on top. There was also something entirely, well, transporting about the tea. One moment, he was watching Margaret regard him with a satisfied smirk playing at her lips, and the next he was flooded with a memory of celebrating Christmas as a ten-year-old, surprised and elated when Uncle Elliott had come to call.

“Well,” Margaret said after Silas had finished. “How do you like it?”

“The best tea I’ve ever tried,” Silas admitted. “I take it there’s magic?”

Margaret smiled, though she was clearly trying to smother a full beam. He’d hit on a source of pride, and even though he was gathering she was exceptionally humble, this was something she’d allow a compliment on.

“The ingredients are,” she said. “Or, at least, some of them. And the combinations are what produce the effects. My grandmother spent years perfecting her recipes, and then my mother added her own to the mix.”

“And then you did, too, I take it?” Silas said, taking another sip, and feeling as warm and relaxed as if he’d slipped into the world’s most comfortable jacuzzi.

A soft shrug. Perhaps she could only take the compliment as far as giving credit to her mother and grandmother. Silas glanced at the portrait on the wall opposite them. There was no denying the young girl was Margaret: The hair and the eyes were the same, even all these years later.

“I grew up here,” Margaret said, drawing his attention back to her. “I watched them work. I memorized the recipes and experimented with a few of my own, yes. But honestly, the work I do . . . it feels like I’m just channeling them. Even though they’re gone, I know what to do because they showed me how.”

Silas saw the way the emotions flickered across her face, shades of pride, nostalgia, grief, and, above all, a rich and unrelenting love. This pub was not just a business for her, he realized. It was her tie to her family, to all her favorite memories of them. The guilt over damaging even a small part of that burned through him, hotter and sharper than the tea.

“Silas,” she said, and his stomach did a strange, unexplainable flip. “I am . . . not always the best at accepting help. I’m trying to get better at it, really. Liza might say I’m not, but—oh, never mind. I just mean . . .”

She inhaled, seeming to reset as she steadied herself to continue.

“I would love for you to help me,” she said. “But I do need to make something clear. I am not in a position to . . . offer anything in exchange for this help.”

Silas smiled, holding up his mug. “I fear you already have.”

She laughed, and his stomach did that strange flip again.

“I just mean that if you’re looking for something more from me, I don’t have much to give right now,” she said, grabbing her own mug and sipping it. “With Fox Bar opening, I need this place to be in the best shape possible. Do you . . . understand what I’m saying?”

An awkward blush had bloomed across her cheeks, making her eyes look brighter than ever. And Silas understood, of course, what she was saying. His hitting on her hadn’t gone unnoticed, and no doubt she was thinking he was here with a toolbox as a way to hit on her some more. She was rebuffing him as politely as she could.

And he had to admit to himself that there was a bit of a crush there. How could there not be? She was intelligent, she was sharp, she was beautiful. But that wasn’t why he had come.

“I understand completely,” he said. “But I promise you that I am only looking to make this right. And maybe I’d also be interested in your friendship, if that’s on the table. But that’s all.”

He crossed his heart with his hand and held it up, and she laughed. A mischievous glint flashed in her eyes.

“Your uncle will be thrilled,” she said. “I’ll send him a positive report.”

Silas sighed, rolling his eyes. “I may have to kill him for that, you know. I’m still deciding.”

“My vote is for you to spare him—this time,” she said with an easy grin. “But, tell me, was growing up with Elliott Pine as an uncle as dreamy as I’m imagining it?”

“I didn’t get to spend much time with him,” Silas said, feeling relief that the awkward part of the conversation seemed to have ended. “My parents are fairly quiet people. Nice people, but quiet.”

Margaret snorted. “And Elliott is anything but quiet.”

Silas nodded, smiling at memories of his uncle arriving every Christmas with something strange and wonderful and bizarre for Silas: a cloak that changed color in the light, stuffed animals that took flight in the middle of the night, candies that turned Silas’s entire body green when he ate them. Uncle Elliott would use his wand to stir ten bowls of cookie dough at a time, would enchant a garland to wrap itself around the tree and the staircase, would charm the dishes to wash themselves, would set off firecrackers in the living room. Silas’s father would chuckle nervously to himself the entire time, and Silas’s mother would fret about the house burning down, but they allowed the visits. Silas loved every minute of them. And, of course, Silas’s mother loved her brother—eccentric as he was. She just loved him in small doses, and so, small doses were what Silas got.

“He was always my favorite,” Silas told Margaret. “I love my parents, but we’re just different people. I could talk customers’ ears off while Dad worked away in his shop all day long, and Mom said I came into this world with a chatter gene that clearly skipped over her. But Uncle Elliott was the same way, and he just got me.”

Margaret smiled and nodded. “I can see that. All the kids seem to adore him.”