Page 77 of Witch You Weren't Here

Suddenly all the champagne Kay had drunk was leaching the moisture from her mouth. She couldn’t use her magic. Not unless they wanted a chair to smash through one of the Grade listed windows. But she hadn’t told anyone about her magical problems – except Ilina and Harry – and now wasn’t the time to bring it up.

She shook her head and backed away, relieved she had an excuse. ‘I’ve got to meet the minister. He’ll be here any minute and we’ll be coming in here, so be prepared.’

‘We will be.’

She didn’t have time to help them. She hadn’t even had time to help herself.

Chapter Nineteen

4 p.m.: sunday 31 october

Ashworth Hall

The Wedding

The final hour before the wedding disappeared in a blur. Kay’s dad and the other two witches finished decorating the parlour (manually) around the minister being shown in. All the chairs had been placed facing the rear of the room, where there was a long table beneath a wide mirror, reflecting the windows with their view of the trees and hill down to the woods. The ushers arrived and, not long behind them, the guests.

Kay hurried upstairs to join Sandy and the other bridesmaids and discovered they’d already gone and had to rush back downstairs to find them.

Jaz was carrying a box across the lobby and spotted her. ‘This way,’ she called, leading Kay into what turned out to be a dining room. All the bridesmaids were in there, now in their gowns, along with Sandy’s dad. Sandy was luminous in her lush green dress, covered in embroidered flowers that wound from the deep V neckline, around one side of the bodice, to spread out across the long skirt. Her caramel hair was down, adorned with a simple tiara, and shining, but not as much as her eyes.

‘There you are, Kay,’ she exclaimed and Kay hurried forward to kiss her cheek.

‘You look so beautiful, Sandy.’

‘It’s almost time. We’ll be sisters soon.’

They could hear the chatter in the room beyond a door, which must have led into the parlour where the ceremony would take place.

Jaz was busy unboxing the bouquets at the end of the long glass table and handed them out as they got in line. Kay stood behind Chelsea, in front of Erin, breathless, even though it wasn’t her getting married.

‘How are we old enough for this to be happening?’ Jaz said, as she gave Kay hers, refreshing the petals with a brush of her fingers that was either too subtle for any non-magical person to notice or deflected by the spell work in the house. Kay had noticed runes over the door of nearly every room.

‘It’s crazy, isn’t it?’ She looked down at the flowers in her hands, a mix of amaryllis, eryngium and sunflowers, nestled within orange oak-leaf foliage. The sunflower made a blush come to Kay’s cheeks, but she smiled up at Jaz. ‘These are gorgeous.’

‘Thank you.’ Jaz squeezed Kay’s arm. ‘Hopefully I’ll catch you at the reception.’

‘We might be old, but at least it means we don’t have to steal the dandelion wine now.’

‘And try to figure out how to open it.’

Kay laughed, and a few moments later, the door cracked open and the music started. The empty room from earlier was full of guests now. Her eyes darted over the people gathered, and it felt like there was a hum of magic in the air, but she wasn’t sure whether it was from the high concentration of witches, or simple excitement.

Either way, as she followed Chelsea’s slow walk, a few paces behind, it was like it was building beneath her skin, her diaphragm heavy with a pressure she thought she recognised as the need to dispel her magic. She concentrated on the tender stems of the flowers in her hands and taking even steps and then, as Chelsea moved off to sit on the left, on her brother, the smartest he’d ever looked, standing in front of the minister with his best man beside him.

Kay matched his huge grin with one of her own and then came to the end of the aisle and looked to the right. There was her seat, next to her mother, and in the row behind, Harry.

Her heart leapt dangerously as he looked up at her, and his smile was so warm and inviting, she almost decided to sit on his lap. It was stupid and extremely vain that it felt like he was there for her, when both Joe and Sandy had asked him to come. And it was his house. Still, his presence made her feel like all her harassed and nervous energy was easing a little.

Her mother looked up and Kay remembered herself. Tallulah patted her hand as she settled down, latching onto her wrist, her smile trembling. There was a handkerchief already in her other hand. They weren’t going to make it through this without tears – thank the Goddess for Tina’s magical mascara.

Kay’s own smile faltered as she looked down the row of chairs and saw that her mum had placed Auntie L and her husband between her and Kay’s dad. He was the father of the groom and he had been shoved almost into the corner. She stiffened and was tempted to pull her arm away from her mother, but it wasn’t like they could discuss it right then and she didn’t want to taint the ceremony in any way.

Joe’s face when Sandy appeared at the back of the room started the avalanche of emotion again within her. The wedding march began and when Sandy had been given away and they started to say their vows, everything was bubbling up inside Kay. It was the equivalent of knowing you had a sneeze building while you had a mouthful of food, a tension developing in her chest as she tried to suppress it rather than metaphorically spray the congregation with crumbs.

Resting her flowers on her lap, she reached back with her left hand, slipping it behind the gauzy tail of the bow decorating the top of the chair, not quite sure what had possessed her, but Harry’s fingers were there a fraction of a second later. Top digits hooked over hers, which should have seemed tenuous, but instead just focused all her nerve endings on the warmth and strength of his hand.

She took a couple of deep breaths, still jangling inside, and he shifted, the spicy scent of his aftershave wafting over her as he inched close enough for his hand to cover hers, fingers around her wrist and his thumb tracing a shape in the centre of her palm. He repeated it slowly.

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