Magic and Mischief at the Wayside Hotel

With Number Five sick, the air inside the building grew stale by afternoon. Pax opened a back door and propped it with a sleeping gargoyle.

“Ernie won’t like it does he wake to find you’ve used him for a doorstop,” opined Bert, the other gargoyle, who lay sunning himself in a small dry patch.

The absence of the small birch forest that used to lie here stung Pax like the spiked kiss of a whip.

Instead, Number Five’s courtyard was now paved with pockmarked cement, entirely bare except for one lone bench, the wood tinged with green and listing to the left.