Over the next week, Calisa and Jack travel through portals to multiple realms, inviting guests and taking reservations for the grand reopening. Between trips, Auntie Zee directs preparations from the lobby desk and begins teaching Calisa the fundamentals of innkeeping. When Thomas offers to visit the Night Market for supplies, Jack firmly refuses to let his father use a portal, reminding him that he was gone for three years. Calisa supports Jack’s decision, and they take the supply list themselves.

At the market, Rin greets them warmly and offers to provide breads and pastries as a gift, explaining that Zee helped his business flourish, introduced him to his wife, and indirectly enabled him to save his daughter’s life. He volunteers to share the list with other grateful vendors. Concerned that Zee will refuse charity, Calisa suggests sneaking the deliveries in as a surprise, and Rin calls her an excellent future heir to Zee.

While walking back to the portal, Calisa reflects on inheriting Zee’s magic and confesses to Jack that she doesn’t want to return to Brooklyn at the end of summer. Jack admits that he doesn’t want her to leave and asks her on a proper date to the Night Market after the reopening. She accepts.

At dawn on reopening day, Calisa opens the portal to find Rin and a half-dozen vendors waiting with donated supplies. Auntie Zee reacts with anger until Rin explains that it’s a gift from friends who want to thank her and will accept no refusals. After the vendors depart, Zee confronts Calisa but ultimately directs her and Jack to prepare a welcome spread and store the food.

Guests begin arriving in the afternoon: a silent couple whose shadows speak for them, a newlywed fishmonger couple with shark teeth, a bone person in a bear pelt, a family made of bark and leaves, Melidor, and Kendra. Two hours later, the two fae queens from the Night Market arrive. The bronze queen immediately criticizes the inn, and as a lesson in innkeeping, Zee politely tells her that she’s unwelcome, explaining that the inn is a sanctuary and that those it does not suit are free to leave. The blue queen expresses her desire to stay and leads her reluctant co-ruler inside for cake.

Zee articulates her philosophy to Calisa: Build what you believe in and offer it widely; whether others accept it is their choice, not a judgment on the builder. The lesson resonates with Calisa regarding her past relationship with Ethan. While watching Jack interact with the guests, she realizes that he accepts her as she is and represents the future she wants.

A week after the reopening, Calisa trains Steve to caramelize crème brûlée tops with his newly developed fire breath while Mom-Elise reads the recipe over the phone. Auntie Zee interrupts to tell Calisa that her mothers have been asking about her and then leads Calisa and Jack to her room to create a new portal through the closet doorway. Zee notes that establishing portals to new destinations will take years for Calisa to learn. She then opens the portal despite Thomas’s objections about her weakened state. The effort exhausts her, and she immediately transforms into a cat.

Calisa steps through the portal and emerges in her Brooklyn apartment, surprising her mothers. After an hour of recounting her summer, she invites them to visit the inn, and they step through the portal together. Mom-Kate immediately confronts Zee about having wanted to send Calisa home, and tension continues as the discussion turns to Steve’s future—he can’t live in a Brooklyn apartment, and Zee insists that Calisa must be responsible for his training. Kate insists that Calisa must finish high school. The argument between Zee and Kate escalates until Calisa interrupts, asking them not to use her as a pawn.

Jack asks the crucial question: What does Calisa actually want? Zee proposes a solution—Calisa will finish high school in Brooklyn and travel through the portal each afternoon for training, with portals established to her future college dorm as well. Her mothers and Zee agree that it’s her choice. Looking at everyone, Calisa agrees readily.

September arrives, and Calisa begins her senior year, writing college application essays about working at the inn and focusing on hotel-management programs while omitting all magical details. Word of the reopening spreads, and the inn books most of the summer and fall.

Outside her apartment building, Ethan confronts Calisa, hoping that they can remain friends. She tells him that they’re the past and that she has a different future. When he’s distracted, she uses the transformation magic that Auntie Zee has been teaching her and slips away, leaving only a gray cat in her place when he looks back.

Calisa enters her apartment, steps through the portal to the inn, and finds Jack in the kitchen. After learning that Melidor has booked a weekend stay, she decides to bake an apple cake for the visit—but since the inn’s apples aren’t yet ripe, she and Jack head to the Night Market with Steve perched on her shoulder. Together, they step through into the market, where Jack spins Calisa in a playful dance down toward the tents. As Steve flies overhead, Calisa and Jack kiss, and she reflects that the kiss confirms her feelings and her desire for a future with him.