Page 27 of Witch You Weren't Here

Somehow, she’d been seated on the plane behind Dean and his sales team buddies. She’d slunk into her seat, crouching low and being as quiet as possible so he didn’t hear her voice. But she’d also scored the chattiest couple of row-mates on the entire plane.

They both wanted to talk to her. One about her hair, the other about the weather and the flight and his hotel. It wasn’t until twenty minutes after take-off that she’d realised they were actually married – but they’d allowed her to be seated in the middle of them, even though she offered to move to the aisle or the window. She might have been able to cope with that but then, once the seatbelt light turned off, Dean stood up and spotted her.

‘Kay! You made it,’ he said with a smirk, leaning on the headrest of the chairs in front.

‘Uh-huh.’ She forced a smile back, wishing her seat-mates would interrupt now. Instead, the woman on her right was looking between them with a big smile.

‘Where’s your friend?’ Dean asked.

Kay blinked and it took her a moment to realise he was asking about Harry. ‘Oh. I don’t know.’ She shrugged, and when his grin grew, she could have kicked herself. Maybe she should have made more of her connection to Harry again, but without the prospect of being stuck in the airport with Dean, she was marginally less worried about him pestering her. Then the wife of the estranged couple piped up.

‘Why don’t I swap seats with you, young man? So you two can talk more easily?’

Kay wanted to zap her with static the way Ilina had done at the auditorium yesterday but clamped straight down on that thought. Unpredictable surges of electrical power were a massive no-no when you were thousands of feet up in the air.

‘Oh, that would be great, thank you. I’m just going to use the facilities and then we can catch up properly.’ He sent Kay a wink and she stifled a groan.

What had she done to this woman? Couldn’t she read the desperation to escape an unwanted male on a fellow woman’s face? Or maybe it was just a ploy to get even further away from her own husband, who was now examining the centrefold in his fishing magazine like it was a page-three model.

Dean disappeared down the aisle after pausing to tell his buddy what was happening, even though all he got was a grunt from the man, who seemed to be quietly dying in a haze of alcohol fumes with his earphones wedged in. The woman moved seats as soon as he was gone, making no comment to her salmon-ogling husband, but giving Kay another wink as she left her aisle seat open for Dean.

Was there enough time for Kay to pretend to fall asleep? She leaned out to spy on whether there was a queue for the bathrooms and saw Dean did have a couple of people to wait behind.

She also spotted a familiar indigo blue sleeve a couple of rows ahead of her, near where Dean was standing, and she was about to duck her head back in, when Harry got up to stand behind Dean.

What the ever-loving grimoire was going on now? Were they chatting?

It was hard to tell as Dean wasn’t as tall as Harry, so she couldn’t see as much of him. But then Harry bent his head to pull something out of one of his coat pockets and both men glanced her way. She was too seized up by suspicion to even bother pretending she wasn’t watching them. Was Harry telling embarrassing stories about the braces she wore as a teenager? The time she’d tried to shave her legs and ended up looking like a scene from Carrie? The Shrek face-pack incident?

Except that would put Dean off. If Harry really wanted revenge after them parting ways so frostily, he’d be telling him that Kay had confessed she fancied Dean or something. Encouraging him with his pursuit.

It was a sketchbook and a pen. No. What was he up to? Harry leaned on his knee, sketching something quickly, and then tore it out of his book and handed it to Dean, who stared at it for a moment, before looking like he was going to be sick and tucking it in his back pocket.

The bare-faced cheek of that man, to tell her that he couldn’t use his ability to influence through art to get out of the sofa bed debt, when she’d just witnessed him doing something right there. To a stranger. In the middle of a busy plane. As though it was perfectly ordinary to draw people pictures while you were waiting in the queue to use the bathroom.

She sat back, drumming her fingers on the armrest, waiting for Dean to return so she could find out what Harry had done to him. But instead of talking to Kay, or even acknowledging her at all, he went back to his row and addressed the woman who’d already swapped seats.

‘I’m sorry, but could I have my seat back? I’m actually really tired. Heavy night. Going to have a nap.’

‘Oh, well, you can nap there and chat with your young lady friend when you wake up,’ the matchmaker-from-hell said.

‘No,’ Dean replied firmly. ‘No.’ He glanced over at Kay, and she was sure she actually saw him give a shiver of revulsion. ‘No. That won’t be necessary at all.’

‘But—’

‘Look, I don’t want to have to speak to a member of the crew about this, so if you wouldn’t mind.’ Finally, his polite facade slipped under the obvious horror of contemplating sitting beside Kay.

What the hell had Harry done?

‘Well I never,’ the woman muttered and heaved herself back up.

Kay jumped to her feet too and Dean leapt out of her way like she was brandishing a freshly filled nappy. Had Harry convinced him she had the plague or something?

She barely noticed the woman shuffling her way back into her seat as her eyes narrowed on Harry, who was just emerging from the toilet. Hurrying down the aisle, she caught him by the lapel of his coat and pushed him back inside the tiny cubicle, locking the door behind them.

‘What did you do to him?’ she hissed. She’d wanted privacy, but she hadn’t thought about it being quite such close quarters, as she squeezed into the slender gap between the toilet and the door, blocking his exit.

‘I’m sorry?’

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