Chapter Nine

10.30 a.m.: saturday 30 october

Dusseldorf Central Station

384 miles and 28(+1) hours and 30 minutes until the wedding

They couldn't get a train leaving for Amsterdam until midday, which didn't make Kay optimistic about getting to the wedding rehearsal dinner that evening and felt like hours and hours to wait until they saw how ridiculously packed the station at the airport was. The journey to Dusseldorf central station was only about fifteen minutes but waiting in the queues was going to be tedious.

‘Are you wearing comfortable shoes?' Harry asked her, as they stared down the ticket line. ‘Fancy getting some fresh air and stretching your legs? It'd be nice to see a bit of Dusseldorf.'

‘How far is it?' She wasn't worried about her feet. Despite all the marketing material she'd been lumbered with, she'd had the forethought to pack her purple flowery Doc Martens, and had put them on today to travel in. She couldn't help feeling a wave of sadness at the loss of her killer knee-high boots to the baggage claim system, though.

‘About five miles.'

‘That's a touch over a stroll across the city, isn't it?'

‘For someone with your leg muscles, I would've thought it was a breeze.' He grinned and glanced down at her legs, possibly thinking about last night where she'd snapped the sofa bed in half, seemingly without the use of her magic.

His eyes lingered, moving up slowly, and Kay felt a betraying heat in her loins. At least she thought it was her loins.

He cleared his throat. ‘Pretty boots.'

‘Thanks.' She looked away and made her voice breezy. ‘It might be nice to see something other than airports for a while, though. Do you think we'll make it?'

‘If it gets tight, we can try to flag down a cab. I'm not sure I can face standing still for so long, if that makes sense? What if it takes longer waiting than to just get on with walking?'

She cocked her head, studying the queues again. Honestly, she doubted it. Everything was moving efficiently; it was just the sheer volume of people making the queues long. But she understood his desire to keep moving – at least to a certain point. Psychologically, it felt more productive. Perhaps he had that itch going in his chest too. Since she'd thrown her lot in with him, it made sense to pander to his whims just in case.

An issue that must crop up regularly if you were in a relationship with someone who had a seer designation. How would you know if they were genuinely convincing you to get Thai for the third date in a row because an accident was going to befall the Italian restaurant you wanted to go to, or just because they were leveraging their gift to get their own way? Trust, she supposed. Great big helpings of trust, that could backfire on you spectacularly.

Not dissimilar to the situation she was currently in, she reflected, as they made their way outside, and immediately realised this wasn't going to be a relaxing stroll through a picturesque city. Why she had imagined there was going to be blue skies and sunshine, when they had walked off a plane buffeted by high winds, she didn't know. Possibly her subconscious had been conjuring up rainbows too, as she and Harry walked hand in hand along cobbled streets.

You're losing your grip on reality, Kay.

She glanced at the fake tattoo he'd drawn on her hand and wondered if he had infused it with some kind of charm, even though he'd promised not to. Something that made her biddable and more prone to agreeing with him. But she couldn't feel anything emanating from it. Not that you could always tell. If it was mostly a push towards something people already wanted to feel, they might not even think to question it. Amplifying, subtly twisting, the things people genuinely felt was the easiest way to go undetected.

She flipped her collar up, buttoning it across her neck and burrowing her chin down into it – as though that would help her from being absolutely drenched by the time they reached the other train station.

‘Are you sure this is a good idea?' she asked, watching people barely able to stand up straight against the driving rain as they waited for taxis.

‘The weather is a tad more vigorous than I was expecting, admittedly.' Harry put his duffel bag down by her feet. ‘Have you got an umbrella on you?'

Her eyebrows rose. ‘I really don't think an umbrella would stand a chance against this wind.'

‘Humour me for a minute.' He gave her his half-hitched smile, eyes warm with amusement, and she probably should have felt annoyance at the hint of smugness – or maybe even affection – in the expression.

‘I can't, I don't have one.' She tucked the strap of her tote a little higher on her shoulder.

‘Right. I'll be back in a sec.' And then he disappeared inside the airport.

She sighed, dribbling his bag out of the entranceway as she quickly sent another update text to her mum and a silent plea to whatever deity might take mercy on her that she wouldn't immediately receive a phone call about it.

When Harry returned five minutes later, he was brandishing a large golf umbrella. Kay rolled her eyes. He was still thinking this would work? ‘Harry – the wind must be forty miles an hour. Unless you're planning on getting us there Mary Poppins style, I don't think that's going to help.'

‘That's an idea, isn't it.' His eyes darted upwards, like he was picturing it happening in the sky. ‘I wonder if there is anyone out there who could—'

‘Not sure we've got time to find them even if there is,' she interrupted, when a familiar expression passed over his face. This one was different to the tuned-out look of concentration he got when he was sketching. It was the glazed, staring-into-an-imaginary-distance one, when he was coming up with his ideas or picturing the world a different way.

How could she have come to know him so well, all those years ago – and yet not have known him at all? Did falling in love with someone make you develop a photographic memory of that person—

Hold on. No. She'd never been in love with him. Just infatuated.

He blinked and focused on her face again. ‘No. Of course not. Though it would be fun. We'll have to go for something a little more elementary.' And then he put the big umbrella up and stepped right up close to her. He shut his eyes for a moment, gripping the handle tight as the wind tried to carry it off, exactly as she predicted, and then his lips moved over a couple of phrases and Kay's ears popped as a hush descended.

The force on the umbrella disappeared, as did the cold wind and the splashes of rain which had been driving underneath it to soak her coat and jeans. She watched as droplets rolled away in front of her face as though there was now a windscreen around them, the circumference of the big umbrella.

‘I'm not sure if it'll last the whole walk but …' he trailed off, looking at her face with a faint frown. ‘What?'

Kay shook her head and chewed on her lip. Her initial response was to be irritated that he could summon up yet another handy spell – but didn't most witches do the same, if they could make sure it went undetected? Why was she truly taking so much offence at him being able to do a level of everyday magic which she couldn't? She didn't regret stifling her gift – because it was useless and distracting and suppressing it just now was, according to Madam Hedvika, necessary – but that wasn't his fault. And this was another example of him using it to help her out.

She'd been so angry with him, so bitter about the past, she could have hardly blamed him for not offering to share this shelter with her. She'd rejected his gift, chewed him out over influencing Dean … perhaps it was time that she called a truce. Internally. They were older now – adults – and stuck in this situation together. She didn't exactly have to trust him or accept it if he tried to use his influence over someone immorally – but she didn't have to bite his head off either.

‘We should start walking and make the most of it then, right?' she said evenly.

He nodded slowly, and picked up his duffel bag, slinging it over his shoulder, and they started walking.

It was relatively quiet through the town, and Kay was sure that the comfortable bubble they found themselves in helped them make good time. The city was picturesque, but it felt like she was walking through a virtual reality game because she couldn't really hear its noises properly; the rain was hushed outside and the only real connection to it was the smell of the soaked pavement, which was undercut by the damp wool of Harry's big ridiculous coat, with notes of his aftershave, too.

They had to walk closely together to stay under the shelter of the umbrella and match their pace, which was a lot easier than she would have expected, given their different stride length. Harry was consulting the GPS on his phone to find their way and it was a reassuringly normal thing to do. At this stage, she wouldn't have been surprised to see him bespell a homing pigeon and chase it across the city.

They stopped at a bakery not far from the train station when they saw they had a good thirty minutes to spare, and Harry went in to grab some food. Despite the pastries he'd eaten earlier, he was still hungry. She expected the spell on the umbrella had used up a fair bit of his energy. Magic wasn't something witches had an infinite supply of.

She kept hold of the umbrella as he now had a sandwich as well as his phone out for directions and it meant he needed to duck his head down closer to hers. They turned a corner and found themselves facing a three-storey building, painted across the whole exterior as though it was see-through. An X-ray of rooms with people carrying out their everyday lives inside a bunch of different apartments. Without even discussing it, they both stopped and stared, taking in all the details as Harry polished off his sandwich.

‘Would you ever want to paint something that big?' she asked, before she could help herself.

‘No. I don't think I could. It would be too hard to do without bringing magic into it – and then I would probably shrivel up and die from expending too much into it,' he laughed, and then his laughter abruptly stopped, as though he'd heard the words back to himself and not found them funny. He swallowed. ‘It's not like it needs magic anyway. I think NMs can wield as much power to move others emotionally, to create and influence and heal, it just hits the barrier of their physiology and science as they understand it. Some are capable of more, some less, depending on their innate skill and determination, just like how we differ within the application of our gifts.'

Kay let her eyes follow the lines of the huge mural, seeing the depictions of family and friends and loneliness laid out before her. ‘There's something to that, I guess. What witches have is just an extension of gifts people already have.'

‘Maybe some even push themselves that little bit extra and start accessing magic.'

She blinked and looked over at him in surprise. ‘You think NMs can work to become witches?'

‘I don't know. Maybe,' he repeated, with a smile.

‘That's a surprising theory coming from an Ashworth.'

His smile turned rueful. ‘I can see why you'd say that. People act like being from an old magical line is some kind of proof of pedigree but,' he shrugged, ‘being one of them, I can confirm that you still have to work to understand and wield your magic just the same as everyone else. Why wouldn't it be possible for others to focus in a way that tapped into magical energy too?'

She raised an eyebrow, part of her immediately wanting to reject his humility, or the theory that it was some kind of meritocracy, with scepticism, because, of course, he didn't want to seem like he'd been born with a silver spoon in his mouth, but at the same time … if everyone expected you to perform and your legacy was staring you in the face every day, she supposed you would work hard to make the most of what you'd been given. His dad certainly wouldn't have allowed him to slack off. Which still meant being an Ashworth led to a high level of skill, but more because of circumstance than because of the gene pool. Nuture as well as narture.

‘Wasn't it you who had the theory that there were lots of people back in history who were witches and didn't know it?' he said, drawing her thoughts back to the conversation. ‘It could all be part of the same thing.'

It hadn't just been the intersection of non-magical history and witch history she'd been fascinated with – it had been the idea that some of the people celebrated as geniuses throughout history had been witches and hadn't known it. Or had hidden it. And he remembered her talking about it?

She shifted her grip on the handle of the umbrella when she thought of how she would randomly text him the name of some historic figure who'd cropped up in her schoolwork that she thought might fit the bill, and then when they next met up they'd debate it as a possibility.

‘Maybe,' she said and the doubt that infused her tone wasn't really about her not believing it was possible, it was about her having rejected her plans to study history in favour of technology. She couldn't really answer him, because her theory was no more developed than it had been when she was a teenager.

Her plan had been to do a history degree, immerse herself in sources and evidence and root out the truth where she could – paint an accurate picture of the past that involved her ancestors. And instead, she'd chosen to spurn that for a job developing mobile phone apps.

Thinking about her job, and her irritating boss, she had to wonder if maybe she'd tried to convince herself that it was what she wanted because it was easier to ignore the magical side of herself that way and all the misery it had brought her. She hadn't stopped to think there might be a cost to that too.

She didn't really want to think about it now.

She nudged his arm. ‘Come on, we'd better catch that train.'

‘Just a sec, I want to take a photo.' He raised his camera, and she lifted the umbrella to help him get a full shot. As he lowered his phone, his thumb slipped over the button switching the camera to face them and she saw them framed on his screen for a moment. Her blue hair was practically the same shade as his coat as she leaned in closer to him than was warranted. He smiled, catching her eye, and hit the circle to take a photo.

‘What did you do that for?'

‘Maybe I wanted proof that we could be this close without you wanting to kill me.'

‘The photo only proves we could be this close without me trying to kill you, it does not prove that the desire wasn't there,' she retorted, but there was no bite in her tone.

‘Let a man delude himself for at least thirty seconds, would you.' He smirked and slipped his phone away.

They started walking again and she tried not to look at him and think about why he would even care. He was the one who had dumped her. As a friend. They hadn't even made it past that.

The German train felt wider than British ones – everything had a squared-off, right-angled feel to it and they managed to get two seats at a table. It was chilly with the air conditioning, especially after the gentle warmth of being under the umbrella bubble for the walk, and it gave the whole place the feeling of a clean, efficient office, reminding Kay of work again. Unfortunately.

On Tuesday, she was going to have to break it to her boss that all the expensive marketing materials were lost, and she doubted he'd react reasonably, despite it not being her fault. They had a networking event at the end of the week and the company would have to pay a premium to get the brochures made up in time – if it was possible at all.

But she had to relegate that to a substring of worries, as the one taking the top spot priority-wise was obviously making sure she was back in time for Joe's wedding. She could deal with work crap later.

After they'd been travelling north-west for at least half an hour, the sun broke through the clouds and the rain eased off. Perhaps they were on to something, going in this direction. Maybe they would manage to outrun the storm and circle back around it.

‘ Regenbogen ,' the child sitting across the aisle from their table erupted loudly.

Kay looked up and saw Harry watching the boy with a smile. He caught her eye after a moment and pointed with one of the pencils he'd been sketching with.

‘Rainbow,' he explained.

Kay leaned forward and spotted the wide arc in the distance through the train window, the colours standing out against the grey sky. ‘You understand German, too?'

‘Too?'

‘I heard you speaking some Czech in Prague.'

‘Oh.' He nodded and scratched the end of his pencil against the hair at his temple. ‘I always try to learn some basics before I go to another country. Reading road names and signs can be a challenge sometimes, so it's easier to speak to someone.'

Kay was quiet for a moment. She hadn't forgotten about his dyslexia, but equally hadn't considered the ongoing complications it might add to his life. Especially in situations like this, where he might need to decipher other languages he was unprepared for as he got detoured across Europe. ‘How many languages do you have a sample of, then?'

‘Is that your way of finding out how well travelled I am?'

‘I suppose I am curious. We did used to talk about the places we wanted to go …' she trailed off and his eyes flicked up from his sketchbook to catch hers. Yes, that's right. She'd gone there and mentioned the time they'd spent with each other as teenagers. He'd made reference to things he knew about her from before, but the relationship between them hadn't been referenced directly. The moments they'd shared. She could feel the mutual memories burning in her chest, like he'd scored that smiley face from his napkin note into the skin over her heart, and it was throbbing as she picked at it.

‘We did,' he agreed slowly, like he was waiting for her to spring a trap. ‘I haven't made it to South America yet, but I've been to a lot of European countries which were on my list. What about you?'

‘Hardly any. I've been to New York at Christmastime, though.'

His eyes lit up and he folded his arms, leaning on the table towards her. ‘What was that like?'

‘Cold. Busy. Beautiful.'

He nodded, one side of his smile slowly lifting into place as his gaze scanned her face, as though he could read how much she'd enjoyed the trip there and was giving himself a moment to absorb it. The fine hairs rose on her arms, but she told herself it was just the over-enthusiastic air conditioning.

‘Were you there for work?' he asked after what felt like an hour but was likely only three seconds.

‘Oh, no. Graduation gift from my family. I don't do a lot of international travel for work. If fact, I only …' She caught herself before she admitted she'd only pushed to go on the Prague conference so she could get to see Madam Hedvika. That was still not something she wanted him knowing about. ‘I only usually do UK events,' she switched it to, and then cleared her throat. ‘Is all the travelling you do for work?'

‘Generally.'

‘I guess your dad's business must be thriving with all those foreign clients, then?'

‘Oh, no.' He shook his head, the smile fading as he sat back. ‘No. I don't work for my dad.'

‘You don't? I thought that was always the plan? What do you do instead then?'

‘I'm an illustrator. Mainly for children's picture books.'

Her mouth fell open. ‘Oh. Wow. That's really different from marketing. What made you decide to do that?'

‘It was just … what I found I enjoyed doing most when I was at university. When I'm doing that kind of artwork, everything flows. And, I don't know … the idea of bringing stories to life for kids, maybe help them discover a love for reading … it feels like a good use of what I can do.' He gave a one-shouldered shrug.

She refused to melt at that. Absolutely, point-blank, refused. ‘How did your dad take it?'

Harry turned his head to squint out of the window. ‘Honestly, not great. He felt that I'd missed the point that working for the business would have been a good use of my affinity too. The money goes towards the estate and the estate is there to help protect the community, which is important. Very important—' He broke off from what Kay suspected was a recitation of an argument with his dad. He swallowed and looked back at her. ‘Joe hasn't been keeping you up to date?'

Kay stiffened. Did he really expect her to believe that he and Joe were still friends, when her brother never mentioned him? Not even in passing. Harry might have been invited to the wedding, but so was Minerva, their second cousin once removed, and they'd only met her a dozen times throughout their whole life. Some guests were an obligation. She didn't understand what he was playing at. ‘With news about you? No. You never come up in conversation,' she said, pointedly.

‘No. Of course. That makes sense.' He averted his eyes back to his sketchbook this time, his cheekbones flushed.

Kay pulled out the latest novel she was reading, pretending to get absorbed in the pages, when truly she was wishing it was a thriller rather than a romance. Although five minutes of peace from the constant roller-coaster of adjusting to being around Harry might help to soothe the ache in her chest, she didn't need to read any kissing scenes or swoony declarations of feelings.

Admitting there was a distance between them, that had widened and widened over time, made it impossible to avoid the fact that once there had been closeness too, which had been lost. The more he mentioned things from the past, the more she slipped into feeling comfortable with him, and enjoying their conversations, the more confused it made her.

She'd forced herself to believe that he'd only acted friendly with her that year because he'd needed to keep Joe on side to help him with his A levels. It made sense. Once they were done, he no longer had to pretend, and he could give her the shove she needed to stop mooning over him.

But he wasn't talking to her now like he thought of her as a nerdy irritation. And he needn't keep her on side. She was the one getting help from him . So, had she got it wrong? And if so, why had he pushed her away so hard? Or was it just that he'd changed? Had rose-tinted glasses on now? It was a problem she didn't have the capacity to try to figure out at the moment.

Flakes of snow began falling, but that didn't keep the little boy opposite them entertained for very long. He started to get remarkably fidgety and even though they were speaking in a different language, Kay recognised that frayed but subdued tone his mother was using to try to get him to calm down without hollering at him in public.

Harry shifted over onto the spare seat beside him next to the aisle so he was closer to them and used some of those German words he learned to get their attention. He showed the boy a flick book he'd made in the corner of his sketchbook. Kay couldn't see what he'd drawn but it enraptured the boy.

Then he pulled another smaller book out of his coat of many pockets, along with a pencil and gave it to the little boy. Harry and the mother exchanged some more words in German, and Harry scooted back across, the boy moved next to him and the mother moved over to sit next to Kay.

She gave her a smile and they both watched with interest – the mother openly, Kay covertly over the top of her book – as Harry started to show him how to draw what looked like a superhero, and then an assortment of animals.

Kay kept a sharp eye on him for a moment to see if Harry was going to use magic through his drawings to calm the boy down – modifying his behaviour – but she couldn't see any influence in them other than things that accentuated the picture. A sense of cheekiness in a monkey, the joy of a bird singing. The boy was captivated, and yet somehow still bouncing about, only occasionally settling to copy the shapes as best he could. Mostly, Harry appeared to be giving the mother a break from trying to entertain him.

She wondered if Harry used his influence in the illustrations for the children's books. Would that even work en masse and once it had been through a computer and printed out in production? Unlikely, as far as she understood magic (although perhaps she didn't understand it quite so well as she'd thought). Regardless, if it was only the initial artwork he could put his influence into, did that mean that he'd used an unfair advantage to move the commissioning editors when they were viewing his portfolio?

But he was a great artist – she knew that. And people wanted to be moved by art, didn't they? That was the point of it. If he could bring joy to children, help them enjoy the experience of reading or inspire them to be artistic themselves, was that so terrible? Joe using his gift in his teaching was acceptable, as long as it wasn't anything to do with behaviour, so why wouldn't Harry using his gift this way be?

And, sweet Goddess, she was tired of feeling self-righteous when it came to him. She supposed it was easy to judge how other people chose to use their gifts, when she'd been given an ability which she could block. Her day-to-day life wasn't complicated any further than her putting on a pair of glasses. Was she really that morally superior because she had chosen not to use her gift at all, rather than learn to balance it with who she was and make choices every day about what was best?

As one of the stops in the Netherlands was coming up, the mother of the boy started getting her things together to leave and accidentally knocked Kay's tote over, spilling some of the contents on the floor beneath the table.

‘Entschuldigung ,' she said, getting down on her knees in the aisle to gather the things that had escaped, as Kay rescued her bag. ‘ Es tut mir leid .'

Even Kay could translate that. ‘It's fine. Don't worry,' she said gently, taking her purse and hairbrush back with a smile.

Then the woman straightened, holding something pale and lumpy in her hand. She handed it slowly over, the bemusement plain on her face.

Kay reached for it, confused herself until she saw the scorch mark and realised it was her demented corn-husk doll. Heat rushed into her cheeks, and she forced a laugh. ‘Souvenir,' she offered weakly and jammed the thing back in her bag.

The woman gave her a tentative smile and continued to organise their things so they could disembark at the next station. They left with profuse thanks to Harry, who looked like it had been as much a pleasure for him as it had been for them.

He glanced over at Kay briefly, gaze drifting to her tote bag, which was on the seat next to her, and looked like he wanted to say something, but she raised her book in front of her face again. There were too many mixed emotions swirling around inside her at the moment to face talking to him. Until she had to. And once they got off the train in Amsterdam, the conversaion would all be focused on journey logistics again, steering well clear of any awkward topics.

She stifled a sigh and glanced out of the window. The snow was growing heavier, the further north they went. So much flat land now, covered with pristine white blankets. Were they going to get stranded in Amsterdam next? She wasn't sure if there would be any other options to travel back if they were. And what would that mean? Them trying to find a hotel together?

She'd deal with that if it happened. For now, she was here, on the train with Harry, and part of her – the part that was considering he wasn't quite the evil villain she'd painted him as – kept trying to make her sink into the memory of last night when they had curled up together in a bed and she'd played make-believe on a future she'd once dreamed of.