Page 10 of Witch You Weren't Here

Kay frowned and bit her lip on a number of retorts. First and foremost, the fact that she had come to Madam Hedvika to be told why she had this problem. That was the whole reason she was there – not to be instructed to go off and figure it all out by herself. If not practising magic and just thinking about when the problem started was going to fix her, then she’d already been doing that.

‘I haven’t really been doing magic for weeks,’ she offered, working to keep her exasperation in check. ‘I don’t understand how I’m blocked, if the problem is that magic is happening when I don’t want it to. That’s more of a magical excess than a blockage, surely?’

Madam Hedvika raised an eyebrow. ‘I can only tell you what my gift has shown to me. If you don’t think it’s right and choose to try other methods, that is, of course, up to you.’

Kay’s cheeks flushed. ‘No. I’m sorry. I’m just … very frustrated.’

‘I understand.’ The woman relented. ‘Would you contact me once you have removed the pinned husk from your doll? To tell me what has happened? In fact, ideally, I would like you to come back here to do it. That way, if it hasn’t worked, we can immediately try something else.’

‘Sure, thank you.’

‘You are welcome,’ Madam Hedvika said with not a little hint of reprimand. Clearly, she felt Kay should be very grateful for her help and hadn’t really shown it. Probably the fire hadn’t helped in that respect.

The woman rose from the table, signifying the end of the meeting, and showed Kay to the door. She’d removed all the water from the table, but Kay’s doll was still soaked and she tried to cradle it in a way that it wouldn’t drip onto the floorboards.

‘Good luck. And remember. You must clamp down on every single impulse you have to do magic. Yes?’

Kay nodded and thanked the woman again, though by the time she was at the bottom of the stairs, stuffing the soggy doll into a plastic bag within her tote and wheeling her suitcase out again, she had to wonder why. It felt like a colossal waste of time. Clamp down on her magic? Think about when it got blocked? Find her centre? It all sounded like impossibilities and riddles.

She sighed, stepping onto the busy Old Town Square, and pulling her phone out. The sky was darkening to a smoky purple above the ornate roof lines of the old buildings, splashes of bright orange sneaking between clouds, but, even if it wasn’t particularly warm, it didn’t look quite brooding enough for her to believe a hurricane was on the way. Aunt Lucille was rarely wrong, though. Kay needed to bury the magical time bomb ticking away inside her beneath several tonnes of metaphorical concrete so she could concentrate on making her flight. And not setting fire to anything else along the way.

There was a crowd accumulating in front of the astronomical clock as the minutes counted down to the hour, so she skirted around them, finding a spot on the corner that turned into the wider, open area of the square. She was pretty sure she needed to head north, to get to the A-Line Metro that would take her underneath the river; she just needed to reference some of the landmarks to get her bearings.

Diagonally across from her on the left was the statue of Jan Hus, greenish grey with age, people sitting on benches beside the fence surrounding its wide dais. Almost directly opposite her, the spires of the gothic cathedral stretched up, dwarfing the rest of the buildings but still not managing to dull their own individual shine. It was such an old place, so many different periods of architecture. There was the Storch House with its arresting fresco of a saint on a horse and its bay window overhanging the street below—

The clamour of bells rang out, some loud, some small chimes, and the crowd exclaimed in delight. Kay couldn’t let herself get distracted. Maybe another time, it would be nice to visit, to get a guidebook and look up the history. But not now. She gave the map on her phone one last check, zipped it away and took the handle of her suitcase again. The weight of it made it feel a bit like trying to do a three-point turn in a monster truck. It teetered off the small kerb and she stepped down too, turning to straighten it, before she set off.

Only, as she tried to pivot back towards the main square, her leg didn’t come with her. She tugged. Tugged again. The heel of her boot was caught in the small groove between two cobbles.

This was because she wished she could stay, wasn’t it? Her magic had taken the opportunity to weld her heel into the ground. Want to stay? Here’s a perfect excuse, it was saying. You’re welcome.

Kay let go of her suitcase entirely, to pull at the spiked heel. Momentarily, she wished she could just blast it with a shot of telekinetic magic – or send a little magical lubrication its way – but no. No magic for her. Witch doctor’s orders. In her current panic, she’d probably end up with an exploded suitcase, the street littered with marketing-brochure confetti while she was escorted to the nearest police station.

She glanced up, as though the solution might be found somewhere else, and saw the little skeleton figure on the closest corner of the clock, ringing its tiny golden bell. If that wasn’t a cosmic message that time was a-ticking, she didn’t know what was.

Right, push was coming to shove. She was going to have to take the boot off. On the plus side, at least she had other shoes in her suitcase, and if she had to snap the heel off her boot to free it, she could always mend it – or get it mended by someone who wasn’t magically impaired.

Taking off her tote, so it didn’t smack her in the head as she bent over to unzip the knee-high boot, she tucked it between her and her suitcase. Now the show on the clock was over, the crowd were dispersing and she had to keep her hands on both bags, apologising for getting in the way of people walking by, and simultaneously making sure no one stole her stuff. She’d just have to wait until the crowd had cleared.

Someone jostled her from the side and she wobbled, forced to crouch to avoid toppling over and breaking her ankle. Frustration bubbled up inside of her, her chest growing hot.

‘Are you OK?’

Kay’s heart did a strange tumble as she heard a man speaking from just behind her, the huskiness of his voice familiar. But – no. It couldn’t be. She was in Prague. Not Biddicote. Or London. Or wherever he lived now.

And her luck couldn’t be that bad. Could it?

‘Can I help you?’ A pair of white trainers, with a big rainbow Nike tick on the side that looked like it was dripping paint to the soles, came into view. And then he was crouching beside her and she was looking up, feeling like it was happening in slow motion. ‘K-Kay? Is that really you?’

Yes, it was her. And apparently, it really was Harry Ashworth, too. Her luck was that bad.

‘It’s me,’ she said, struggling to keep the defeat out of her voice.

He blinked. ‘Wow. It is you. I didn’t realise … your hair’s blue, I mean …’ He broke off and she ignored the tiny shiver that zoomed down her neck as his gaze followed the way her hair framed her face. He swallowed. ‘It suits you.’

‘Right. Thanks.’ She frowned at him, hating that his compliments always sounded so genuine, even though she knew they weren’t. She was also wondering why they were talking about her hair when they’d just bumped into each other in another country after not speaking to each other for years.

An awkward silence grew between them. He scratched his thumb against his temple for a second and cleared his throat. ‘What’s the problem, then?’

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