Page 57 of Witch You Weren't Here

‘How should we do this, then?’ she whispered.

‘Well, which do you think would be easier? I could help you do the lightening spell, like I did on your luggage and then I’ll push – or we could try just putting as much force behind it as we can together?’

She chewed her lip. The lightening spell wasn’t exactly easy and that would leave him having to use more physical energy when he was clearly shattered. The magical push might be riskier in terms of it going wrong, but then, even her magical mishaps tended towards the brute-force side of things, so it was probably best to lean into that.

‘Let’s push together.’

He nodded and looked back at the car. ‘Right. If it starts slipping in the wrong direction or anything, you just get yourself out of the way, OK?’

‘Right.’ She imagined the car bursting into flames or exploding like something out of an action movie and then immediately pushed the thoughts out of her mind, shutting her eyes to centre herself.

‘Kay. You can do this,’ Harry said again, and then he placed a kiss on her forehead. His lips were freezing compared to earlier, but her heart still flipped over. ‘Thank you.’

He let go of her and moved back, closing the boot, and putting his hands to one side of it, leaving a space for her on the other side. She mirrored his posture, the cold metal biting at her hands as she dug her boots in as much as she could to the icy ground.

It was the most elementary use of magic in all honesty. Something most witches had learned to do with control by the time they were eight or nine. The biggest challenge was getting kids not to use it when they were fighting or trying to get a cookie jar down from a shelf.

Harry looked at her, gave her an encouraging smile and then she felt it – he was pushing the little energy he had left into the car. Or rather, into a force to push the car. She felt the weight lifting off her shoulder somewhat and reflected for a moment that he had been bullshitting her a little bit. No matter what he said about how he believed her to be of equal power to him – he was still managing to shift an entire car, even if it was only a centimetre or two, when he was almost completely drained.

Although, maybe that was just his own physical strength doing it. Which was equally impressive.

‘Kay?’ he said with a slight grunt, and she realised she wasn’t even trying yet.

She dipped down into her well of energy and imagined it funnelling up through her chest, through her arms, down to her palms against the car and pushing, a shove of kinetic energy drawing out from her. The car rocked forwards a little further.

‘That’s great. You’re doing it,’ he gasped and she felt his magic kick up a notch as though encouraged.

They made it a foot further up the slope, beads of sweat prickling at the edge of Kay’s hair and a light-headedness making her feel odd. But then they hit a harder patch of ice and the wheels just kept spinning rather than moving forwards.

‘C’mon, c’mon,’ Harry muttered and when she looked at him, a stab of fear sliced through her. His freckles were stark against the pallor of his face, there were lines at the edge of his mouth and a bright red trickle of blood was just visible at the edge of his nose.

‘Harry, we need to stop,’ she managed to say. Her own heart was pounding in her ears.

‘But we’re so close, Kay,’ his voice was little more than a wheeze.

‘I know, but—’ she broke off and forced more energy into her push. If only the ice would melt a little. They were exerting so much effort and the weight of the engine would probably put it onto the road if this ice just melted. Her muscles burned with the strain and she glared at the tyre to her right as it slipped and slipped, picturing it catching in her mind. They would have to stop in a minute if they couldn’t get it that little bit further. Harry was going to pass out and then the weight of the car would roll back and run them both over because she couldn’t hold it on her own, magic or no magic.

Then she noticed the water, the way the snow under her feet was softening, growing slick. Beneath the car too. It was melting.

But it was still snowing—

Before she could think of how or why that was happening, the car caught and all the energy they were pushing into it sent it forward in one big surge. It tipped forward and rolled onto the road. Both she and Harry lost their grip and went down on their knees in what was now puddles of icy mud, rather than snow.

They stayed there, side by side, for a moment, dragging in great lungfuls of air and staring at the car.

‘I told you … you could … do it.’

She looked over at him slowly, catching him wiping his nose on the sleeve of his jumper. ‘Are you OK?’ she asked, shuffling on her knees towards him. He was swaying a little, and when she reached him, he sank back to sit on his feet.

‘I’ll be fine … it’s just a little … overexertion. I’ll be … all right in a minute.’ He gulped some more air and then smiled at her. ‘You did it, Kay.’

She nodded slowly back at him and tried to smile. She had done it. But she wasn’t sure it was the way she’d intended. They were sitting in a puddle of melted snow when she’d been focused on wanting that ice beneath the tyre to disappear.

Did that mean …? Had she melted the ice without meaning to? Did she have some affinity to weather from her mum’s side of the family that she’d never recognised before? She’d never learned the spell for melting things without conjuring a flame. It wasn’t the kind of spell you could usually do without extra juice and lots of practice … unless you had an affinity to it.

And if she did, what if her magic had been throwing out other weather effects? Things that were hindering them more than helping?

Chapter Fourteen

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