Page 7 of Witch You Weren't Here

Kay glanced at the man to her right to see whether he was listening, but with the way his head was tilted back against the chair with his mouth open, she was pretty certain that he was asleep. And that he needed to have his tonsils removed. ‘My aunt. She’s as accurate as you ever can be with that, I guess.’

It wasn’t an exact science, after all. It presented itself differently in everyone, even if you had the exact same gift. Aunt Lucille’s was all about intensity and how it corresponded to the ailments in her body. If her teeth were aching that badly, the temperature was about to take a serious dive. And as for gale-force winds … well, you didn’t want to be anywhere near her when that was happening, poor woman.

Thankfully, Lucille appeared to have kept that personal information to herself, but since the news had been warning people about a ridiculously severe storm front headed for Europe, with hurricane-level winds and torrential rain barrelling in off the Atlantic, Kay couldn’t dismiss her mother’s warning easily.

‘Do you need to try to catch an earlier flight to be on the safe side?’ Ilina asked.

Ideally, yes. Joe was getting married on Sunday and Kay was one of his fiancée, Sandy’s, bridesmaids. There was also a rehearsal dinner tomorrow night, and her mother was already getting tense at the prospect of having to spend time around Kay’s dad, her ex-husband. Kay needed to get home as soon as possible and mitigate any risk of getting delayed because of bad weather, but …

‘I can’t. I have to see Madam Hedvika this afternoon.’ It was Kay’s last chance to try to fix her magic before Joe’s wedding. The mishaps were getting ridiculous and she was becoming increasingly concerned she was going to have a magical outburst in the middle of the ceremony. Her soon-to-be sister-in-law was not a witch and therefore over half of the guests were going to be non-magical.

Although public displays of magic were forbidden, witches didn’t have to keep magic a complete secret from non-magical people. That wouldn’t have been practical given the small numbers of witches. They were permitted to reveal their abilities to a long-term partner, so Sandy knew the truth – as did her parents – but that was it, and if Kay accidentally levitated a flower girl, it was going to take a lot of explaining and somewhat ruin the wedding. Especially if a mass cover-up operation by the Witches Council was needed, including the possibility of them wanting to nullify her powers …

She needed to make this appointment.

‘You should just go. To be sure you will make it,’ Ilina told her, and she wasn’t wrong. The two different sides of Kay’s life were battling to be seen as the priority, but again …

‘I can’t. Mark is behind us.’

She’d been trying to find the best time to speak to her boss about needing to skip this session, but he’d been tied up networking almost all weekend. Which he hated. Which made him even grumpier than usual. He wasn’t an awful boss, but he was the type who would flay you alive if you tried to skip out of work early and thought his employees should have the gift of foresight, even though he was as unaware of the magical world as most people.

OK, so maybe he was a pretty awful boss.

‘Tell him you have an emergency and need to go.’

‘Hmm.’ Kay didn’t mind telling the odd white lie, but saying there was an emergency meant conjuring up a falsehood about something serious – and that always felt like tempting fate. Words held power.

It was becoming kind of an emergency, though.

Kay sneaked a quick glance behind her. Maybe she could email him from here and then indicate for him to check his phone? But, of course, he would object to that. And he hadn’t even blinked in her direction. Short of waving her arms around and shouting ‘yoo-hoo’, she couldn’t see how she was going to get him to tear his eyes away from the speaker and try to decipher her attempts at miming. His heavy grey brows were pulled right down over his eyes so they were resting on top of his glasses. Classic single-minded focus mode for him. Balls.

Kay turned back to Ilina. ‘He won’t even look my way when I’m staring right at him. I can’t exactly zap him with electricity from here and blame it on the seats.’

Ilina gave a little snort. ‘Maybe it’s the hair. He probably doesn’t recognise you.’

Last night, they’d been unable to shake a group of salesmen trying to chat them up in the bar and Kay had been worried she might manifest a hole in the floor for them to fall into, so they’d gone up to Ilina’s room to chat and make use of the minibar. One too many tiny bottles of vodka had led to Ilina demonstrating her gift – which she protested was as useless as Kay’s since it was basically a party trick or favour to be used among her witch friends and family.

But with a head full of beautiful indigo hair that she’d always wanted and the memory of their laughter as Kay geared herself up to look in the mirror, she begged to differ. Her own gift – seeing the emotional bonds between people – was useful for precisely nothing, other than telling people what they already knew or didn’t want to hear. Oh, and to completely distract her with all the glowing colours floating from chest to chest. She’d been so lucky her cousin had the ability to infuse magic charms into objects and been able to make her glasses to filter it out.

‘I doubt it’s that. He saw me this morning at the team meeting. I had to say we’d gone out and bought the hair dye from the nearest pharmacy, then had an impromptu evening of pampering.’

As the speaker at the front of the auditorium took a deep breath and raised the clicker in his hand to move to the next slide, Kay crossed her fingers and wished – for the briefest of moments – that she had taken after her dad, the same way Joe had.

And then she remembered that being able to manipulate others was a moral sinkhole and contented herself with plain old hope.

Please let this finally be it. Please let the next slide on the PowerPoint presentation be the ‘Any Questions’ wrap up, signalling the end of the talk. There would only be two or three questions maximum from the audience if the other sessions at the conference were anything to go by and she could be out of here within fifteen minutes, if she was lucky.

The room dipped into blackness as the presentation transitioned between slides, exaggerating the heat of the hundred or so bodies and the smell of stale coffee …

Another page with three spaced-out topics.

She should have known. Luck had never exactly been on her side.

Kay didn’t even bother to read the bullet points as she released a slow breath of frustration. She crossed her arms over her chest and tried to pay attention to the speaker again. Maybe the next one …

And then the presentation began to flick forward seemingly of its own accord, if the confusion and embarrassed laughter of the presenter was anything to go by.

‘Oh, crap,’ Kay muttered, grabbing the armrests of her chair tightly and sucking in her tummy, trying to contain the crackling flow of energy that was frying the poor man’s computer and ruining his day. At least it wasn’t visible.

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