48 pages • 1-hour read
A Witch's Guide to Magical Innkeeping
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Chapters 25-30Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of emotional abuse and ableism.
Chapter 25 Summary
Someone rushes up to Albert, whispering in his ear, and he leaves. However, his home is only five minutes away from Bertram-Mogg’s. Luke and Sera find the library but get distracted by their mutual attraction. After a passionate kiss, they locate the essence of sunlight, and Luke places three droplets into a vial. Just then, Albert storms in and says that he saw Clemmie disappearing into the woods at his house, figured out what Luke and Sera were up to, and rushed back. Albert has bound Matilda with invisible ropes, but when he tries to remove the vial from Sera’s hands, Luke creates a shield between them. Albert hurts Luke, and Sera asks Luke to let the shield drop. She then hands over the vial. Francesca arrives and allows Sera to leave, overruling Albert’s arguments because she is the Chancellor.
Chapter 26 Summary
When they get back to the inn, Sera and Luke tell everyone what happened. Clemmie cries that it wasn’t her fault that she was seen. Luke reminds Sera that the spell is “adaptable,” so there will be other ways to fulfill the requirement of a “strand of sunset” (248). Posy starts brainstorming ideas while Matilda reassures Sera that they are all there for her, regardless of what happens with her magic.
Matilda confesses to Jasmine that she is in love with her, but Jasmine doesn’t understand how this is possible. Matilda doesn’t want to waste any more time not being together, and Jasmine admits that she loves Matilda too. Posy draws a picture of a sunset with a tail and gets irritated when no one seems to understand. She shows Theo, and he realizes that Clemmie’s fox fur is the exact color of sunset. He plucks a long hair from her tail.
Chapter 27 Summary
The teapot accepts Clemmie’s hair. Now, there is just one ingredient to find—the phoenix feather. Sera falls asleep on the couch, and Luke wakes her up to see the snow. Jasmine and Matilda are now dancing in the garden. Luke reveals that Verity found someone in Edinburgh to work with Posy, so Luke and Posy are going to leave soon. He promises that they’ll visit. Sera tells him that if Edinburgh is best for Luke and Posy both, then they should go.
Chapter 28 Summary
Luke and Posy go to Edinburgh for Christmas, and he rents a little house for them there. However, he feels hollow, as though he is made of tin. He remembers how free he and Posy felt at the inn. One day, Howard asks Luke to tea and states that he’s never seen Luke as happy as when he was with Sera. He wonders why Luke would “giv[e] up the one place [he and Posy have] both been happy” (269). Luke says that he wanted to avoid overstaying his welcome, but Howard counters that this is what Luke always does; his habit of pulling away is the result of his parents’ and the Guild’s mistreatment. They made him feel that he is burdensome, and as a result, he goes through life expecting not to fit in anywhere. Luke saw people treating Posy the same way and refused to let her feel the way he does. Now, he realizes that Howard and Sera are both right, and he decides that it’s time to take a chance on people again.
Chapter 29 Summary
Nicholas is dressed in regular clothes, his hair is combed back neatly, and his eyes are dull. He tells Sera that he is due to meet with his father. She asks why he is not wearing his armor, and he says that it’s because his family thinks it is a “ridiculous” costume. Sera asks if the armor makes him happy; it does, so she encourages him not to care what others think. She takes off her necklace and gives it to him to take along as a way to remind himself of his strength. Nicholas says that he never realized the necklace was a swan; he thought it was a “firebird” because it always catches the light when Sera wears it. After he drives away, Sera realizes that the necklace is the final ingredient she needs for the spell; it is the “phoenix feather.” She begins to cry, and as Luke pulls in, she tells him what Nicholas said and what she realized. Luke tells her that he doesn’t want to leave her. They kiss passionately and go to her bedroom, where they have sex, and they both see themselves accurately for the very first time. The next morning, Nicholas returns Sera’s necklace. He now feels much better for having said what he needed to say to his father. Sera drops the pendant into the teapot.
Chapter 30 Summary
A breeze ruffles Luke’s hair, and the inn goes quiet. When Sera closes her eyes, she sees the galaxies of her magic once again.
Chapters 25-30 Analysis
In this section, Sera and Luke both become aware of The Inaccuracy of Self-Perception as they realize that their misguided fears and anxieties about themselves have caused unnecessary pain. Similarly, it is significant that in order to find the final ingredient of her spell, Sera must reevaluate her perception of her own necklace and recognize it as a metaphorical “phoenix feather” and herself as a phoenix who bounces back from destruction. Although she has always thought of herself as a “swan,” she repeatedly creates a new, beautiful life from the ashes of her past. Thus, the support of her found family and The Healing Power of Love help her to uncover a hidden truth about her own nature. Although she once felt wounded, she now realizes that the past versions of herself had to be destroyed in order for her to create the life she has now.
Likewise, when Howard delivers a similar lesson to Luke, Luke finally sees the lie in his long-held but misguided belief that he, “the real Luke, was not acceptable” and that he and his sister were always either “too much, or not enough, and […] had to go” (271). Freed of the limiting belief that he will always be a burden to others, he realizes that he has developed a pattern of pushing people away before they can reject him. To protect Posy from experiencing a similar anguish, he has lived with one foot out the door, always ready to run at the first sign that he is becoming an inconvenience. This inaccurate self-perception has repeatedly sabotaged his best chances for a happier life—at least until Howard makes him aware of the issue and encourages him to choose a different path.
These interactions show that found family—chosen family—can often provide a level of support that a person’s birth family cannot. Luke realizes that throughout his life, he has watched his and Posy’s “parents and her schools and the Guild governesses treat her like she was an annoyance, a burden, unwelcome, and it had been so familiar, so uniquely painful, that he’d refused to see it unravel the same way” (271). These people ought to have loved and accepted Posy and Luke unconditionally, but instead, they allowed their prejudices to govern their behavior, and they rejected two people who needed their understanding and compassion. However, their found family at the inn finally provides them with the unconditional love that they have always craved. Thus, when Luke and Sera reach a new understanding of themselves, they break free of their old fear-based patterns and finally acknowledge the love they feel for each other.
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