Page 36 of Witch You Weren't Here

Kay shook her head and chewed on her lip. Her initial response was to be irritated that he could summon up yet another handy spell – but didn’t most witches do the same, if they could make sure it went undetected? Why was she truly taking so much offence at him being able to do a level of everyday magic which she couldn’t? She didn’t regret stifling her gift – because it was useless and distracting and suppressing it just now was, according to Madam Hedvika, necessary – but that wasn’t his fault. And this was another example of him using it to help her out.

She’d been so angry with him, so bitter about the past, she could have hardly blamed him for not offering to share this shelter with her. She’d rejected his gift, chewed him out over influencing Dean … perhaps it was time that she called a truce. Internally. They were older now – adults – and stuck in this situation together. She didn’t exactly have to trust him or accept it if he tried to use his influence over someone immorally – but she didn’t have to bite his head off either.

‘We should start walking and make the most of it then, right?’ she said evenly.

He nodded slowly, and picked up his duffel bag, slinging it over his shoulder, and they started walking.

It was relatively quiet through the town, and Kay was sure that the comfortable bubble they found themselves in helped them make good time. The city was picturesque, but it felt like she was walking through a virtual reality game because she couldn’t really hear its noises properly; the rain was hushed outside and the only real connection to it was the smell of the soaked pavement, which was undercut by the damp wool of Harry’s big ridiculous coat, with notes of his aftershave, too.

They had to walk closely together to stay under the shelter of the umbrella and match their pace, which was a lot easier than she would have expected, given their different stride length. Harry was consulting the GPS on his phone to find their way and it was a reassuringly normal thing to do. At this stage, she wouldn’t have been surprised to see him bespell a homing pigeon and chase it across the city.

They stopped at a bakery not far from the train station when they saw they had a good thirty minutes to spare, and Harry went in to grab some food. Despite the pastries he’d eaten earlier, he was still hungry. She expected the spell on the umbrella had used up a fair bit of his energy. Magic wasn’t something witches had an infinite supply of.

She kept hold of the umbrella as he now had a sandwich as well as his phone out for directions and it meant he needed to duck his head down closer to hers. They turned a corner and found themselves facing a three-storey building, painted across the whole exterior as though it was see-through. An X-ray of rooms with people carrying out their everyday lives inside a bunch of different apartments. Without even discussing it, they both stopped and stared, taking in all the details as Harry polished off his sandwich.

‘Would you ever want to paint something that big?’ she asked, before she could help herself.

‘No. I don’t think I could. It would be too hard to do without bringing magic into it – and then I would probably shrivel up and die from expending too much into it,’ he laughed, and then his laughter abruptly stopped, as though he’d heard the words back to himself and not found them funny. He swallowed. ‘It’s not like it needs magic anyway. I think NMs can wield as much power to move others emotionally, to create and influence and heal, it just hits the barrier of their physiology and science as they understand it. Some are capable of more, some less, depending on their innate skill and determination, just like how we differ within the application of our gifts.’

Kay let her eyes follow the lines of the huge mural, seeing the depictions of family and friends and loneliness laid out before her. ‘There’s something to that, I guess. What witches have is just an extension of gifts people already have.’

‘Maybe some even push themselves that little bit extra and start accessing magic.’

She blinked and looked over at him in surprise. ‘You think NMs can work to become witches?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe,’ he repeated, with a smile.

‘That’s a surprising theory coming from an Ashworth.’

His smile turned rueful. ‘I can see why you’d say that. People act like being from an old magical line is some kind of proof of pedigree but,’ he shrugged, ‘being one of them, I can confirm that you still have to work to understand and wield your magic just the same as everyone else. Why wouldn’t it be possible for others to focus in a way that tapped into magical energy too?’

She raised an eyebrow, part of her immediately wanting to reject his humility, or the theory that it was some kind of meritocracy, with scepticism, because, of course, he didn’t want to seem like he’d been born with a silver spoon in his mouth, but at the same time … if everyone expected you to perform and your legacy was staring you in the face every day, she supposed you would work hard to make the most of what you’d been given. His dad certainly wouldn’t have allowed him to slack off. Which still meant being an Ashworth led to a high level of skill, but more because of circumstance than because of the gene pool. Nuture as well as narture.

‘Wasn’t it you who had the theory that there were lots of people back in history who were witches and didn’t know it?’ he said, drawing her thoughts back to the conversation. ‘It could all be part of the same thing.’

It hadn’t just been the intersection of non-magical history and witch history she’d been fascinated with – it had been the idea that some of the people celebrated as geniuses throughout history had been witches and hadn’t known it. Or had hidden it. And he remembered her talking about it?

She shifted her grip on the handle of the umbrella when she thought of how she would randomly text him the name of some historic figure who’d cropped up in her schoolwork that she thought might fit the bill, and then when they next met up they’d debate it as a possibility.

‘Maybe,’ she said and the doubt that infused her tone wasn’t really about her not believing it was possible, it was about her having rejected her plans to study history in favour of technology. She couldn’t really answer him, because her theory was no more developed than it had been when she was a teenager.

Her plan had been to do a history degree, immerse herself in sources and evidence and root out the truth where she could – paint an accurate picture of the past that involved her ancestors. And instead, she’d chosen to spurn that for a job developing mobile phone apps.

Thinking about her job, and her irritating boss, she had to wonder if maybe she’d tried to convince herself that it was what she wanted because it was easier to ignore the magical side of herself that way and all the misery it had brought her. She hadn’t stopped to think there might be a cost to that too.

She didn’t really want to think about it now.

She nudged his arm. ‘Come on, we’d better catch that train.’

‘Just a sec, I want to take a photo.’ He raised his camera, and she lifted the umbrella to help him get a full shot. As he lowered his phone, his thumb slipped over the button switching the camera to face them and she saw them framed on his screen for a moment. Her blue hair was practically the same shade as his coat as she leaned in closer to him than was warranted. He smiled, catching her eye, and hit the circle to take a photo.

‘What did you do that for?’

‘Maybe I wanted proof that we could be this close without you wanting to kill me.’

‘The photo only proves we could be this close without me trying to kill you, it does not prove that the desire wasn’t there,’ she retorted, but there was no bite in her tone.

‘Let a man delude himself for at least thirty seconds, would you.’ He smirked and slipped his phone away.

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