Page 12 of Witch You Weren't Here

Pushing Benedict Cumberbatch from her thoughts, she found the desk for her airline, wheeled her case over to join the end of the queue and perched herself on top of it to give her feet a rest for a minute and check her messages.

Mum: Are you on your plane yet?

Kay: We’ll be leaving soon. Fancy anything from the duty-free while I’m here?

She was beginning to consider picking up a bottle of vodka herself. That might make the wait more bearable.

Mum: I don’t know. Let me get back to you. I still haven’t decided whether to take one of the pills for the rehearsal dinner tomorrow, or just leave it until the wedding? I might need you to drive my car for me if I do. What time are you arriving again?

Kay rolled her neck. This was not about her mother taking pills – it was about wanting to arrive with Kay and stay glued to her side when she was in the same building as her ex-husband. They might dampen her mother’s ability, but they weren’t going to make all the anxiety she was feeling about seeing Kay’s dad disappear.

Kay: Probably mid-afternoon.

Mum: You could come straight here from the airport? I don’t mind waiting up for you.

Kay rubbed her temple. It was like her mum thought Marvin was going to pop out of the rosebush at the bottom of the garden or something. Relationships really wrecked people.

A lifetime with a gift to read people’s moods had left her mother a chronic people-pleaser, always trying to ‘fix’ bad feelings. When you coupled that with a husband who boosted people’s motivation, it transpired to create a really unhealthy dynamic, encouraging Tallulah even more to try to make him happy all the time. And of course, ultimately, it had been a lost cause. With or without magic, you couldn’t make people love you.

Although relationships with other witches might seem easier from the perspective of them understanding the supernatural world, both partners having gifts led to too many complications, in Kay’s opinion. Especially if those gifts fell under the influencer, empath or seer designations. It all got too messy. Ripe for manipulation, over-sensitivity and second-guessing. Since she was in the empath camp, Kay thought it safest to only date non-magical people. It tended to keep things light – brief – and she’d managed to avoid getting hurt that way.

Kay: I have to pick up my clothes for the wedding first. I didn’t bring them to Prague.

Mum: Oh, of course. Silly of me. Let me know when you’re back home, OK?

Kay agreed that she would and debated sending a message to Joe about the level of their mother’s anxiety, but held off. When she’d looked earlier, the WhatsApp chat for the wedding party had seventy-five new messages in it – partly to do with drinks before the rehearsal tomorrow and partly to do with cravats. He had enough he was juggling at the moment.

Standing up to wheel her suitcase forward a few paces, shuffling forward with the queue, a flash of blue caught her eye. Kay leaned around the couple in front of her, looking down the line, but whoever it had been wearing something the same colour as Harry’s coat, they had disappeared. She was seeing Harry Ashworth everywhere and it was not helping her mood. Not least because she knew the initial leap in her stomach was excitement, before common sense took over.

And what was that coat all about, anyway? It was so long and dramatic – like he wanted to be pegged for a wizard or something. Maybe it was a male-ego thing? Joe had tried to get people to call him a sorcerer when they were little. Ha. Kay made a mental note to ask Sandy if he’d presented himself as a sorcerer rather than a witch, when he broke the magical news to her. It definitely would have appealed to her. Sandy tended to get excited about anything magical. It reminded Kay a little bit of how she used to be before the sparkle wore off and her gift had woken her up to the truth; magic was a paper aeroplane. It looked fun and easy, but it required engineering and, despite seeming harmless, the edges could still cut you.

An hour later, Kay had finally made it to the customer service desk. The woman there had explained that planes were grounded in the UK as winds of seventy-five miles an hour plus were expected for at least twelve hours. No flights were going in or out anymore. But she could transfer her to a flight to Paris that was leaving in the morning and – by that time – the storm should have passed and Kay would be able to get another flight into the UK or a ticket for the Eurostar.

Kay wasn’t sure twelve hours for this storm sounded right at all, and even if the bad weather had moved on from the UK, where would it have moved on to? Surely it was heading east?

For want of any better options, though, she agreed to the transfer and thanked the woman. She’d been remarkably helpful and patient, considering the amount of grumpy travellers she was having to deal with. It made Kay wonder if maybe she was some kind of empath, but it was just as likely she was a non-magical person who was really good at her job. Kay left her with a thank you and the small box of chocolates she’d received as part of some swag at the conference.

The queue she walked away from was just as long as when it started, with more people arriving and finding their flights delayed. Gifting that box of chocolates felt like leaving someone a colander as a ‘helpful tool’ to empty a swimming pool. Everywhere she looked, there were people, and all the bars, eateries and shops were packed too. Finding somewhere to camp out for the night was going to be a challenge, but how much easier would it be to find accommodation in Prague now half the people at the airport were stuck?

Another flash of blue from inside one of the bars drew her eye. She swore, catching herself before she tried to find it again and instead spotted a small table tucked in the corner by the wooden barricade. Pushing past the throbbing in her feet, she raced over to claim it, dipping and dodging between people as fast as her suitcase would allow, and throwing herself onto the tall bar stool so it teetered onto its back legs and she had to grab the edge of the table to steady it.

She let out a breath of relief. An actual seat. Step one of the plan complete. Next, she needed some food and maybe a strong drink. Just the one. Something like that woman over there had. She was holding a large tumbler filled with bright orange liquid, a slice of orange on the side and a sprig of rosemary inside. Kay’s mouth watered at the thought of all that refreshing citrus, she could almost feel the burn of vodka in her stomach now.

And then the drink was flying out of the woman’s hand, speeding towards Kay like it was a bullet aimed at her face. All she had the time and brainpower to do was scream ‘no’ in her head. It arrested its motion mid-air, hovered for a second and smashed to the floor.

Heart pounding, Kay’s cheeks flamed as the woman and her friends exclaimed over it – mostly swinging from joking about how she must have gestured and it slipped out of her hand, and apologising to the bartender who came over to sweep it up. Kay wanted to apologise too, but she couldn’t. Obviously.

She put her elbows on the table and bracketed her face with her hands, trying to block out the scene she had created. It was so lucky no one had been hurt by the flying drink. How in the hell was she meant to stop using her magic, when she wasn’t making a conscious choice to use it in the first place? And where was the so-called ‘blockage’ when her magic was shooting out of her like a geyser?

‘Kay. Kay?’ Outside Kay’s little bubble of denial, a male voice was calling her. Getting closer. It wasn’t husky and gentle, so her stomach decided it wasn’t worth doing backflips, but when she dropped her hands to face the owner, she stifled a sigh. A young man of medium height and infinitely too much hair gel was grinning at her. ‘Hey. It’s me. Dean. You remember? From the conference bar last night?’

‘Yeah.’ How could she forget? ‘Hi, Dean.’

He crossed his arms on the table, leaning towards her. ‘Guess you’re delayed too. We were probably meant to be on the same flight.’ He pointed over his shoulder to a small booth closer to the bar that was spilling over with more of the sales team, suit jackets strewn everywhere in a fog of beer and aftershave. ‘Why don’t you come and join us?’

‘Oh, that’s OK thanks, I don’t think I can see a spare seat.’

‘Don’t worry, we’ll squeeze you in. I don’t mind getting cosy.’

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