Under_The_Whispering_Door_by_TJ_Klune

They rounded a corner, and he could see warm lights through the trees like
a beacon calling, calling, calling him. He barely felt his feet on the ground.
He thought he might be floating but couldn’t bring himself to look down to
see.
The closer they got, the more the hook tugged at his chest. It wasn’t quite
irritating, but he couldn’t ignore it. The cable continued on down the road.
He was about to ask Mei about it when something moved on the road
ahead of them. He flinched, mind constructing a terrible creature crawling
from the shadowy woods with sharp fangs and glowing eyes. Instead, a
woman appeared, hurrying down the road. The closer she got, the more
details filled in. She looked middle-aged, her mouth set in a thin line as she
pulled her coat tighter around her. She had bags under her eyes, dark circles
that looked as if they’d been tattooed on her face. Wallace didn’t know why
he was expecting some kind of acknowledgment, but she passed by them
without so much as a glance in their direction, blond hair trailing behind her
as she moved quickly down the road.
Mei had a pinched look on her face, but she shook her head and it was
gone. “Come on. Don’t want to keep him waiting any more than we already
have.”
He didn’t know what he was expecting after reading the sign. He’d never
really been inside something that could be called a tea shop before. He’d
gotten his morning coffee from the cart in front of the office building. He
wasn’t a hipster. He didn’t have a man bun or an ironic sense of fashion, his
current outfit be damned. The glasses he usually wore while reading were,
while expensive, utilitarian. He didn’t belong in something that could be
described as a tea shop. What a preposterous idea.
Which was why he was surprised when they came to the shop itself to see
that it looked like a house. Granted, it was unlike any house he’d ever seen
before, but a house all the same. A wooden porch wrapped around the front,
large windows on either side of a bright green door, light flickering from
within like candles had been lit. A brick chimney sat on the roof with a little
curl of smoke coming out the top.