Page 43 of Witch You Weren't Here

‘Harry …’ she started.

‘Don’t worry, we’re not going to be hanging out in this part …’ He sent her a sly smile. ‘Unless you want to?’

She wrinkled her nose. ‘No. Thank you. Probably wouldn’t be the best idea when we’ll be going through customs in a few hours.’

‘Good point.’

There was a huge man behind the counter, with shoulders the width of a doorway, long, wavy, dark-blond hair, a beard, and eyes a pale, icy blue. He did a double take as they grew closer to the bar and then slammed his hands down on the counter, leaning forward with a wide smile.

‘Snoepje!’ he boomed. ‘Leon, Leon, Harry is hier!’

‘Hallo.’ Harry laughed and started to respond but was interrupted by someone else calling his name from the other end of the bar.

The man had just come into the coffee shop via another door, holding two plates with steaming toasties on them. Smaller in height and build than the Thor lookalike, with long locs pulled back into a ponytail and covered at the front of his head with a bright red bandana, he moved through the gap in the counter and started towards them. Then, he remembered himself, backtracked and slid the plates in front of a couple sitting at one of the small wooden tables. Once he was free of the food, he was bounding again towards Harry, grabbing him in a huge hug, and placing three smacking kisses, alternately, on his cheeks before leaning back.

‘What the hell are you doing here?’ he demanded, with a huge grin. ‘You should have told us you were coming.’

‘I was in Prague for a signing and the storm came in. It screwed up all the flights and we’re trying to get home.’

At the mention of a ‘we’, Harry’s friend looked over at Kay.

‘Hello.’ She gave a little wave.

‘Hallo there,’ he had a barely noticeable Dutch accent. ‘Are you going to introduce me? Are you together-together, friends, or work colleagues?’

Well, here was a man who didn’t beat around the bush with his questions.

‘This is Kay. An old friend. We bumped into each other in Prague and teamed up, I suppose.’ Harry looked over at her, his cheeks a little flushed. ‘Kay, this is Leon—’

‘Don’t you dare call me an “old” friend.’ Leon raised his eyebrow at Harry and moved around him to hold out his hand to Kay. She shook it and raised a tentative smile in the face of all this enthusiasm and familiarity.

‘And Alex, his husband,’ Harry continued, as Alex leaned down from his great height, offering her a hand the size of a pizza box.

‘Nice to meet you, Kay. You are from England too, I take it?’

‘That’s right. Harry and I grew up in the same village.’

Leon gave a gasp. ‘You’re that Kay.’

‘Leon …’ Harry started, but Leon just gave what could only be described as a roguish smirk.

‘Relax, H. That’s great. It means you can both come through to the back.’ His brown eyes twinkled as they studied her, and Kay’s feeling of being all at sea only increased. He threw one arm around her shoulders and the other around Harry’s waist and turned them towards Alex. ‘Join us when Marje arrives for her shift?’

‘As soon as I can,’ his husband agreed.

‘Perfect. Let’s go through.’ Leon continued to steer them.

‘I’ve got a favour to ask actually,’ Harry commented as they walked across the wooden floor towards the back.

‘Sure, sure.’

‘You don’t even know what it is yet,’ Harry said with a laugh.

‘I know you’d never ask for anything unreasonable.’ Leon shrugged as they came to the far end of the bar and a full-length tie-dyed curtain in shades of sunset red, orange and yellow. Beneath it was a pair of narrow wooden doors which looked like they had been crafted from pieces of driftwood but lacquered to a smooth-honeyed finish, with an all-seeing eye painted on each.

A faint tingle of magic touched Kay’s skin, but nothing more, and Leon held the curtain back and ushered them through. There was a moment of coldness on the back of her neck, as though someone was watching her as she passed through, and she hesitated, but Harry was right behind her. The warmth of his body simultaneously reassured her and made her want to leap away in an act of self-preservation like that morning in bed.

At first, the other side just seemed like it was an even prettier extension of the coffee shop. There was a small stage in the back right-hand corner, carved wooden booths with embroidered cushions surrounding the tables, swaths of gauzy fabric hanging tepee-style over each, decorated with what looked like fairy lights but on closer inspection were glowing gems sewn into the weave of the delicate fabric.

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