Page 3 of Witch You Weren't Here

‘Urgh, Joe,’ she started to groan, as her brother stepped out. But just as she was about to pick some choice insults to fling back, Harry Ashworth came into view and all the air vanished from her lungs. Tall and lean, his crisp white polo shirt as bright as the coppery perfection of his tousled hair, he walked into the clearing alongside her brother. Joe could have turned green and sprouted feathers and she wouldn’t have noticed.

‘Ignore him – there is nothing wrong with your nose,’ Harry said, in that husky voice that made her stomach flip.

She dropped her arms to her sides and twitched her nose, as if she could shake off all the attention it was getting. His mouth hitched up at the side like he was trying to repress a smile and her heart did a little flutter in her chest.

Fine, it wasn’t a declaration that he found her stunningly beautiful, but Kay would definitely take it.

‘He didn’t say anything about your ears.’ Joe held his hands up on either side of his head and flapped them like Dumbo.

Harry shook his head, his beautiful blue eyes still on hers, eyebrows quirking in a way that said: I don’t even have to say anything for you to know that’s not true, right? And she treasured that even more than the smile. It implied that they knew each other. Properly. Like they had an understanding of one another that went beyond having to say the obvious.

And maybe they did. Sometimes, they would have a late-night study snack in her kitchen, their voices hushed to avoid waking the rest of her family. Or they’d watch Game of Thrones together in the mornings in their pyjamas after he’d stayed over, before Joe was even up. Or he’d be there sketching while she was reading, and she’d get distracted, watching him experiment with how his gift to influence through artwork truly worked, while Joe obsessed in the background about the car he was saving up for.

OK, that wasn’t exactly getting to know each other – that was more her being a bit stalkerish. Maybe she was just imagining it all, amplifying every small kindness into something more, like her brain was made entirely of dragon’s eye stone, because, oh my Goddess, it was wishful thinking. Of all the wishes Kay had in the world, that was probably the biggest. That Harry Ashworth liked her as much as she liked him. That he wasn’t only being nice to her because she was Joe’s little sister. After all, Joe might tease and insult her, but he’d never let anyone else be rude to her.

‘You know, tarot isn’t actually magical unless you’re a seer. Otherwise, they’re just a deck of pretty playing cards,’ Joe said, crossing his arms and looking down at Tina and the mix of major and minor arcana she had in front of her.

‘You know, no one actually invited you.’ Tina mirrored his crossed arms.

Kay didn’t feel guilty about not applying the same sibling rules when it came to Tina arguing with Joe. She loved her brother, but it was almost always valid self-defence when he was being a pompous pain in the arse.

‘Gutting.’ He laughed. ‘This is the lamest illicit party I’ve ever been to.’

‘Feel free to leave. Don’t let a tree topple on your head as you go.’

‘No,’ Kay blurted out. Her heart ricocheted around her chest and she sent a little look of pleading to Jaz. Help me. Distract them from that desperate plea. But, also, don’t let Harry leave.

Jaz’s eyes widened and she cleared her throat, dusting soil off her hands. ‘Yeah, er, stay. The more, the merrier.’

‘You are aware that this is actually Harry’s land, it’s not really for you to say whether he can stay or leave,’ Joe pointed out.

Harry blushed, the pale skin beneath his freckles turning adorably pink. ‘Joe, it’s not like that—’ he began to protest, but Tina interrupted.

‘We weren’t talking to Harry, obviously.’

‘Quit flirting, you two, or I’ll be forced to invent a new version of seven minutes in heaven. “Misbehave in the cave”.’ Jaz waved her hand through the air like she was envisioning a banner with the words written across it. Then she pointed her finger. ‘And you two will be the first ones I send in.’

Joe rolled his eyes and Tina mimed gagging. Because the idea made Kay want to do the same, she grabbed the bottle from where they’d propped it against one of the logs and handed it to her brother. ‘Why don’t you make yourself useful. Know how to get a bottle of wine open without a corkscrew?’

‘Sure we could figure it out.’ He cocked his head to consider the bottle, never lacking for confidence, and Harry came over to examine it too.

Jaz set some music playing from her phone and the girls upended one of the logs and danced around it as though it was a maypole, only to the sound of Macklemore and Ryan Lewis’s ‘Can’t Hold Us’, and whenever it came to the chorus, they shot different colour sparks up from their fingers.

When Kay glanced out the corner of her eyes, it looked like the boys had frozen the liquid in the bottle and then decided to give it a bang of energy on the bottom. There was a loud pop and the cork sailed into the air, with them all cheering. They thawed the dandelion wine out again with a small handheld fire and then the bottle was passed around, with them all taking swigs of warm alcohol as they continued dancing.

‘Go inside and wait for Harry,’ Jaz whispered as she twirled Kay around.

‘What?’ Kay hadn’t noticed the fact her friend had danced her over to the cave’s entrance.

‘I’ve got a plan. Trust me.’ And before Kay could ask what exactly that meant, Jaz was pushing her through the ivy into the cave.

Kay’s mouth went dry as the cool air washed additional tingles of magical awareness over her, unsure whether to be more nervous about the fact she was in a dark cave or that Jaz might be trying to launch ‘misbehave in the cave’ using her and Harry. She swallowed and turned on the spot, staying inside the curtain of ivy and out of the darkness, peeking out through the gaps between leaves to see what was happening.

Tina and Joe were sitting on one of the logs arguing again, backs to the cave, as Jaz refereed. She paused to say something to Harry and he nodded and …

And he was coming over.

Kay drew in a shaky breath and squeezed her eyes shut for a moment.

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