Chapter One

4 p.m.: friday 29 october

Prague Congress Centre

820 miles and 47(+1) hours until the wedding

Mum: Aunty L says her teeth are aching like she's eaten nothing but hard toffee for a week. You need to leave Prague as soon as possible.

Kay swore quietly as she read the message from her mother and tucked her mobile away before the glow disturbed the people sitting around her in the conference auditorium. Her boss, Mark, was only three rows behind her and had a pathological hatred of his staff getting distracted by their phones – even though their whole business was designing apps for people to download onto said phones.

She squinted up at the large presentation screen, but all her brain could compute was that the speaker had spent far too long fiddling with the transitions for the text animations and set the time at least a second too long for each. Some floated onto the screen, some span across, others faded in. It was, in fact, a pretty accurate visual representation of the thoughts her subconscious was now trying to push up to the surface.

A little jolt of electricity made Kay jump. Ilina, a fellow project manager from the German IT company Kay's UK employer was partnered with, was sitting next to her and had leaned in close enough to bump their shoulders. Ilina had always been one of the few people at work Kay looked forward to talking to, but they'd clicked as soon as they met in person at the conference. It was like they'd known each other eighteen years, rather than eighteen months. Realising they were both witches may have escalated the friendship between them, too.

‘Hey,' Kay whispered, rubbing her shoulder theatrically. It hadn't really hurt, but there had been a leap in her chest, both of her own magic and of the anxiety that she was going to react without meaning to. She had no idea what her haywire magic was going to produce at the moment. It seemed capable of spells she'd not so much as learned, let alone tried to implement, and this conference had been one big stress-fest, with her terrified she was going to accidentally animate a cardboard cut-out on a stand, or start sneezing pink sparks.

‘Sorry. Static. These seat covers must be nylon.' Ilina looked at her, all innocence, and Kay rolled her eyes, unable to suppress a smile.

‘Yeah, sure.'

‘Promise you won't report me for breaking WWT-One?' Ilina batted her eyelashes.

‘As if I would even know where the Council stands on that kind of infraction at the moment. They probably changed their minds three times already today.' The first Worldwide Witching Tenet, ‘Never use magic to do harm,' was always up for debate and led to constant making and breaking of smaller laws lobbied by the individual council in each country. And Kay had long since ceased paying close attention to current witch affairs, it made little difference to her life and the bureaucracy of it all frustrated her because it never seemed to be centred around putting the majority of witches or non-magical people first.

Ilina gave the little cackle that always made Kay want to join in too.

‘What was that for anyway?' Kay asked, her voice hushed even lower.

‘You are squirming since you got your text message. Has something happened?'

‘Not precisely. That storm is closer than the weather forecasters think.'

‘You know someone with an affinity for the weather?' Ilina whispered back. ‘How accurate?'

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.

Stop. It's OK. I'm not in a hurry, she recited to herself, trying to convince her magic to knock it off, but all that happened was a couple of light bulbs popped, causing a rising murmur of concern throughout the crowd.

Ilina nudged Kay firmly with her elbow – this time without the added burst of electricity. Clearly she didn't need any more energy to add to her overflow. ‘Go.'

‘ I can't. '

‘Yes, you can. And you need to. Now, before the fire alarm goes off or something. I will find your boss afterwards and tell him you got your period. You know men, he'll be so mortified, he won't even question you about it.'

‘I wouldn't be so sure—'

‘Fine, food poisoning then. You had a prawn sandwich at lunch, yes? If he had one too, he will not be surprised your stomach has rebelled. I think it was only the level of alcohol in my bloodstream that managed to kill off the bacteria.'

Kay chewed her lip, and then glanced around at the room where all the delegates were shifting and looking up at the lighting overhead suspiciously, while the presenter struggled to return to his place in his talk. ‘Right, OK, yes, I'll do it. Thank you.'

‘You're welcome. I hope she can help.'

‘God, me too.'

‘Let me know you made it safely onto your flight. Auf Wiedersehen .'

Kay squeezed Ilina's hand gently in lieu of kissing her on the cheek to say goodbye and inched her way out of their row. She slung her handbag over her shoulder, put her hand over her mouth as though nauseated and kept her eyes trained on the exit as she hurried towards it, hoping that if her boss had noticed her leave, she would look like someone who had an unpleasant date scheduled with the toilet.