“I never said I hated it,” I protested. “I mean, how could I, how could anyone? It’s ridiculously beautiful, the weather’s amazing, the sky is the literal definition of #needsnofilter. Shit, the whole town even smells like a Yankee Candle Halloween special. The other day I flat-out admitted to my nana that I do love and miss it here, pretty much all the time.”

Linden raised her eyebrows. “Is this the game where you make my points for me? If so, I’m into it.”

“But it was never really the town itself that I hated,” I clarified. “It was living inside the suffocating little box that Thistle Grove Harlows get stuck with. You know that, Lins.”

“So do you still think it’s worth it, now that you have a bigger, Chicago-shaped box?” she persisted. Leave it to Lin to (lovingly) chisel away at inconvenient truths. “Has it been worth giving up magic and this town and all your people in it, for getting to be the person that being there lets you be?”

I suppressed the reflexive urge to leap in defense of my chosen life, and took a minute to genuinely consider the question instead.

“Well, there’s a lot about the city that I love,” I said slowly. “The Riverwalk, the museums, the endless restaurants. The random pop-ups and breweries, the fancy bars and the best kind of shithole dives. Jackson Park and the 606 and the lakefront walkways. So many choices, for everything. You could live there forever, and still never feel like you’ve seen and done it all.”

“I wasn’t asking you to channel the Chicago bureau of tourism, Em. Though you should consider hooking them up with your résumé.”

“But those things matter,” I argued. “They’re what make up a life. I like being surrounded by all that potential. And more meaningfully, I really like my job—plus, I’m extremely good at it, which I know you’ll recognize as something that’s always been important to me.”

All this was true. Silly as the Enchantify boxes were when compared to the visceral intensity of real Thistle Grove magic, I cared about scoring the coolest stuff for them every month, cultivating relationships with the vendors I’d found worthwhile. There was even satisfaction to be found in watching the beautiful unboxing videos made by the representatives we partnered with. As distracted as I’d been by the Gauntlet and Talia, and even with all the work stuff I’d managed to get done on the sly, I’d still missed having my job be the biggest part of my day.

“But do you have to be on location to do it? Is everyone required to commute in person to Enchantify HQ?”

She reached up to stroke the corkscrew Albuca that was swaying its swizzled shoots above her head, poking at her hair like a playful toddler. Like most of her apartment, the picture window behind her was lined with lush potted plants, every spare inch hosting the kind of exotic, persnickety flora that would’ve made me break out into a cold sweat at the prospect of keeping them alive. The entire place was rigged for their optimal happiness, from pink-shifted LEDs feeding them just the right spectra of light, to the dewy warmth Lin maintained throughout the seasons, all in addition to lavishing them with magic and love.