Page 35 of Enchanted Village

In his dad’s carpentry shop, Silas had always loved when the big assignments came in. These weren’t desks that simply needed the legs fixed or dressers that had drawers that kept getting stuck. No, Silas loved when someone would bring in an antique hutch that hadn’t been used in fifty years that they wanted restored within an inch of its life. Or better yet, when someone brought in all of the furniture from an estate sale and wanted everything repaired. Or even when an elderly grandmother would hobble into the shop and ask Silas’s father if they could make a house call and “fix up the house.”

Those were Silas’s favorite afternoons. He’d go from getting a wobbly railing to stay put to sanding and painting a wall to repairing a radio to installing a new mailbox. He’d end the day sweating and thoroughly exhausted, but he’d have a sense of accomplishment that couldn’t be beat.

And now, he had an entire pub to tend to. Margaret’s pub.

When Margaret had left Silas in the Toasty Owl the day before, he hadn’t even realized how long she’d been gone until the sun’s light had started to fall through the windows, dousing the pub in shadows. He’d looked up from his fifth fixed cabinet and realized that evening had snuck up on him. But with the fading light, he saw other things in the room: the way the side Margaret had clearly tended to was shiny and clean, but the rest of the pub still bore obvious signs of the destruction Silas and Bernie had wreaked.

If Silas had had a different upbringing, perhaps he might’ve called it a day and left, not meaning to overstep. But Silas’s father had never waited to be told exactly what to do; instead, he’d walk into a room, listen to the person’s complaint or request, and then address the work he saw. They might’ve asked him to repair a leaky faucet, but if there was drywall to be patched as well, he simply did that, too.

So, Silas had looked around the Toasty Owl and had seen what needed to be done. He’d thought of Margaret spending her hours on something he’d caused, and he hadn’t been able to let it stand.

And that smile on her face . . . that look of relief. God, it made everything worth it.

Now, he just had to figure out the final pieces of the puzzle: the windowpane and the sign. He’d stopped by Weatherby’s shop on the way to work, but the man didn’t have a windowpane that would work as a replacement. He supposed there was some way of ordering one, but that wouldn’t get Margaret what she needed now.

“Professor?”

Silas blinked, looking down at the student in front of him. He’d set his students up with a lab to test for chemicals found in a sample of lake water. This should’ve meant that there was absolutely zero risk of fire, but the child in front of him had a face full of soot and hair that was standing on end.

“Jensen,” Silas said, hurrying to get out his pad of paper to write a note for the school nurse. “How in the world—”

“Georgia was trying to curl her hair with a spell,” Jensen explained. “She missed.”

“And the curling spell . . . set you on fire?” Silas asked, still writing quickly.

“Obviously not me,” Jensen said. “Just my backpack, but I had some exploding quills stashed in there and, well.”

He pointed at his face, burnt but seemingly nonplussed.

“But it’s all right,” he said. “Gave me a chance to practice my dousing charm.”

“Right,” Silas said, handing over the note. “Well, happy you . . . handled that so admirably.”

Jensen nodded, taking the note and turning out of the classroom. And while the singed child was okay, it reminded Silas that he did have a job to do. He needed to get his attention back firmly on the children in his care.

He circulated, striding toward a table that clearly had turned to gossiping while he had zoned out thinking about the Toasty Owl. As he approached, he caught the scraps of the conversation, something about charming the books in the library to do cartwheels.

“Not sure how much the librarians will care for that,” Silas said, making them all jump at his presence. He smiled down at them, and their expressions relaxed.

“We’re in a prank war with the librarians,” one of the girls said. “It’s fair game.”

Silas arched an eyebrow. “Really?”

“Yes,” said the boy next to her. “They lent us books that scream at random intervals at night. It was payback for sneaking singing comics in between the pages of some of the second-years’ required reading.”

“Yeah, and before that, we took one of the books and used a stretching charm to make it huge. It blocked the whole doorway.”

Silas wasn’t sure how to respond to that. Before he could come up with something, though, the first girl tilted her head.

“Is it true you’re, like, a nepo baby?” she asked Silas.

Silas blinked. “A what?”

“A nepo baby,” she said. “Like, you only got the job because you’re Headmaster Pine’s nephew or whatever.”

“Oh,” Silas said, considering this. “I suppose there’s a touch of nepotism there. But I am qualified. I have a degree in—”

“See, he’s a cool nepo baby,” the boy countered. “A nepo baby that acknowledges their nepo-ness.”