Chapter Two

5 p.m.: friday 29 october

Old Town Square, Prague

819 miles and 46(+1) hours until the wedding

Madam Hedvika seemed to have taken the old adage of ‘hiding in plain sight' to heart and literally themed her shop, Baba Yaga's, as a witch's shack – albeit one that was clean and attractive and sold souvenirs – playing off the regular witches' festival where effigies of witches were created and burned every year. Nice. Madam Hedvika obviously had a dark sense of humour and a flare for retail positioning.

Small children milled around inside, giggling at the cartoonishly ugly witch dolls made of corn husks. There was also all the typical ‘witch' memorabilia to buy, from crystals and candles to little velvet-covered books claiming to hold love spells. The air was heavily scented with incense, which Kay might have dismissed as being part of the atmosphere, but she could detect the familiar notes of sage and rosemary beneath and there were at least two runes painted above the door. She doubted anyone ever shoplifted from this establishment.

As Kay approached the desk, the young woman at the till looked up at her with a smile. ‘Kay?'

‘Yes, that's me,' she answered.

‘She's waiting through there for you,' the woman said in heavily accented English and pointed to a small doorway, covered with beads and wind chimes, which clacked as Kay pushed her way through.

Rather than the small room she was expecting, she came up against a wall and had to turn right to find a steep, narrow staircase. Kay sighed, looking at her wheelie suitcase, and decided to risk leaving it at the bottom of the stairs.

It wasn't that she'd overpacked for the three-day conference, but once she'd expressed an interest in going – somewhat more enthusiastically than would have been expected of her, so she could guarantee an opportunity to get to see Madam Hedvika – she'd been given the joyous task of ferrying across all the marketing material for their stand. Just for once, she wished any of the men in her office could have been chivalrous and offered to take the bulk of glossy brochures – which probably equated to the loss of a small Christmas tree farm – but no. It was equal opportunities in her office when it came to back strain and dislocated shoulders. Shame they didn't have the same attitude towards salaries.

She hurried up to the first floor and found a square sitting room with waxed wooden floors, a high ceiling and beautifully arched windows that looked out over the Old Town Square, the famous astronomical clock just within sight, the setting sun flashing off its gleaming dials.

A woman, around her mother's age, was sitting at a square worktable before one of the windows. A bunch of corn husks, thread and scissors was spread out before her.

‘Kay,' she said without looking up from where she was organising the materials, sharing them out between her place at the table and the one opposite her. ‘Come and take a seat. Would you like a drink?'

‘Oh, no thank you.' She took the seat opposite Madam Hedvika and shrugged her coat off, letting it rest against the back of the chair. Her mouth was dry, but she doubted any liquid would help with that.

Madam Hedvika inclined her head in acknowledgement and carried on with her organising. She had a long plait draped over her shoulder, her hair a deep brown, streaked with grey.

Kay glanced out of the window again and linked her fingers tightly in her lap to avoid drumming them. She was here now. Seeking help for this crazy magic problem she was having. Even if she did have a flight to catch, she needed to be patient. Magic couldn't be rushed and Madam Hedvika's approach needed to be respected. She was the IT support of the witching community. Except there was only one like her in the whole of Europe and getting an appointment was as difficult as folding a fitted sheet neatly. (There were some things even magic couldn't help with.) All this … methodical approach might be vital to the ritual they needed to undertake.

‘What I need you to do is copy how I'm making a corn husk doll,' the older woman explained once everything was organised to her liking, her grey eyes studying Kay's face calmly.

Kay restrained herself from lifting an eyebrow at the possibility she was being charged to help create stock for this woman's shop. Surely, that wasn't the case. Benefit of the doubt, Kay, give it the benefit of the doubt. It wasn't like she didn't know corn husk dolls were tied to magic. She used to make one each year at the Lughnasadh celebrations at Ashworth Hall … Her mind couldn't help wandering to the last year she'd done it, though. When the house had felt empty because a certain someone had been absent and she couldn't wait to leave.

‘And as we work, I will ask you some questions about your magic and about your issues with it. Then, when it is finished, I'll take it and draw from it – hopefully – an answer as to what is going wrong and what you might be able to do to fix it.'

Kay nodded. ‘Right. I'm not very crafty, though.'

‘You don't need to be.' Madam Hedvika lifted some cotton batting and started to make a ball of it, the fluff moving pliantly between her skilled fingertips. ‘Now, this is going to be the head. Tell me how you think of your magic when you access it.'

Kay licked her lips and picked up a bunch of the cottony stuff too, trying to compact it, but it kept fuzzing out of shape. ‘Erm … I kind of visualise a well, inside me, where my energy is stored, and I dip down – like mentally – to pick out what I need to do a spell.'

Madam Hedvika's eyebrows pulled together slightly, so Kay immediately became paranoid that the way she accessed magic was not the same way as everyone else. She'd never really thought to ask. Her mother had described it to her in a similar way when Kay was little and trying to practise small incantations, and it had just kind of stuck.

The older witch picked up a piece of husk and wrapped it around the cotton batting, drawing it over, and then selecting a piece of thread to tie it in place. A bracelet on her wrist jingled faintly as she moved. ‘And when it goes wrong, how does that happen? What do you feel?'

‘I don't really feel anything until it's too late.' Kay fumbled to try to get the thread around the husk without letting go of all of it. ‘It rushes out of me without warning. One minute I'm completely normal, and the next, a burst of magic has escaped and is causing havoc.'

Madam Hedvika nodded slowly. ‘When did the problem become apparent?'

‘Around … springtime, I guess. Although, I think it started before that. Smaller issues that I didn't take much notice of to begin with.'

‘And how do you use your magic on a day-to-day basis?'

Kay licked her lips and tried her best to copy making the stick-like bundles which turned out to be arms, while also figuring out how to answer. She wasn't sure what was making her more frustrated, attempting to make the corn husk doll, or thinking about her magic. ‘I have a job full-time in an office, so not much. Just small spells at home.' And even then, sometimes, when she was too tired, she didn't bother.

Madam Hedvika made a soft sound that Kay couldn't decipher and moved on to snipping the edges of one of the pieces of corn husk to help tear it into little strips.

It was actually quite therapeutic, but when it came to bundling them up and wrapping them around to make the bulk of the body, Kay's looked like it was trying to smuggle potatoes under its skirt. She was just about ready to throw the whole thing out the window, at the clock face which was taunting her as it counted down the minutes towards her flight. But Kay had to see this through.

‘Now, wrap this large piece around the bottom and pin it in place. Then trim off the excess and stand it up. Take a deep breath and focus on it. Imagine it's you, using your gift.'

Kay stared at her doll, uneven pieces of corn husk poking out in odd places, completely lopsided, and the memory of her as sixteen-year-old came to her. How her gift had rushed in on her as she'd stumbled down the stairs at home, foggy-headed from having just woken up. Going into the kitchen where her family were all eating breakfast—

Whoosh. Her doll went up in flames.

Madam Hedvika let out an unfamiliar word that was probably swearing in Czech and leapt up from her chair. She grabbed a vase of flowers from her sideboard, yanked the flowers out and upended the water on Kay's corn doll, sending a flood across her worktable, soaking all the husks and dripping onto the floor.

‘I am so sorry,' Kay whispered, looking at the wreckage and her smouldering doll.

Madam Hedvika opened her mouth and closed it a couple of times before she set the vase down. ‘No need to apologise. It is why you're here after all.'

‘Has this happened before then?'

‘Er … no. Not precisely this.'

‘So, you're not sure what this means?'

‘Not yet.' She leaned across the table and picked up the soggy doll. ‘But then I haven't done my part.' Madam Hedvika wrapped both her hands around the body of the doll lightly and closed her eyes.

Kay waited awkwardly, wanting to fix the mess that had been made of the table, but equally not wanting to disturb Madam Hedvika when she was concentrating.

After a minute, she opened her eyes, the little frown appearing between her eyebrows again. ‘You have a blockage. You must see past it to find your centre again.'

Kay blinked a couple of times. ‘What centre? The centre of my magic? Or, like, my centre as a person?'

Madam Hedvika tilted her head for a moment and studied Kay with infuriatingly opaque eyes. She passed Kay the charred doll and then held her hands out, palms down over the table. With a muttered spell and a gentle exhale, all the water rose and evaporated from the corn husks, thread, and puddles on the table.

She sat down opposite Kay once more and laced her fingers together. ‘I think the best course of action is for you to stop using your magic entirely.'

‘What? Forever ?' Kay's stomach did a queasy flop at the thought. She wasn't the most active witch, and her feelings towards her gift were best left unsaid, but being told she couldn't ever use her magic was a little like someone insulting your sibling. You might find them irritating, but to have someone else hurt them was just wrong. An affront.

‘No, no.' A small smile touched Madam Hedvika's lips. ‘Just until you have had a chance to work out when precisely this blockage occurred and why. Once you've figured this out, you must take your doll, remove the pinned husk that is helping to shape her and repeat what you did 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?'

Where to start? She pushed her glasses up her nose, her mind first leaping to the strange idea that he was asking her what her problem was with him . As though he didn't know.

‘Have you twisted your ankle? Are you feeling unwell?' he elaborated, tilting his head. He was still handsome in that unconventional way that made him even more infuriatingly gorgeous, but some of the softness had evaporated from around his cheekbones and jawline. Not from his mouth, though …

She must be unwell if she was letting herself appreciate Harry Ashworth's mouth. She looked away. ‘My heel is stuck. In the cobbles.'

‘Oh, right. May I?' He bent his head, giving her a perfect view of how shiny and soft the waves of his hair looked, as well as assaulting her nose with the smell of his shampoo, all stomach-tinglingly fresh.

‘Sure,' she said between gritted teeth, even though she could think of any number of tortures she'd prefer to enjoy rather than Harry Ashworth examining the embarrassing situation she'd found herself in, even more closely. Especially in a way that meant him putting his head level with her butt.

She stood up abruptly, belatedly realising that it would give him a perfect view up her skirt if he decided to look. His fingers touched the back of her heel and as soon as she felt the tiniest magical push, she yanked her boot free – and would have toppled over again, if he hadn't quickly stood up and caught her elbow.

‘Cheers,' she said, stepping back up onto the pavement as though the cobbles were lava.

‘What brings you here, then?' he asked, glancing around the square, his head starting to turn towards Baba Yaga's.

‘Work. Conference,' she blurted out. Getting his attention back on her. He was bound to know it was Madam Hedvika's shop. If he figured out she was having problems with her magic …

Well, it didn't really matter. It wasn't like he was friends with Joe anymore – that he had ever truly been friends with him – so her family wouldn't find out. Still, she'd prefer to keep her issues private.

‘Ah. You do something clever in IT, don't you?'

‘Clever' was rather overstating it, but Kay gave a robotic nod.

How did he know that? Maybe just through his parents listening to the small talk in the village – it was a tiny place. It was a surprise, nonetheless. What with Harry showing zero interest about whether she was alive or dead for the last ten years. Since the ‘smiley-face' incident.

‘Have you had a chance to do any sightseeing? The architecture is—'

‘I have to go,' she interrupted with zero shame. She truly didn't have time to stop and make small talk. Definitely not with someone who was acting like they were going to sit and reminisce, or bond over shared interests, or whatever it was he was pretending would be totally normal between them.

‘Oh, right. Sure.' He looked down at the cobbles which had very recently held her prisoner. When he met her gaze again, his eyebrows were drawn together in a way that shadowed his eyes. ‘It was nice to see you.'

Every polite bone in her body was screaming at her to return the empty platitude. But she couldn't. With a quiet goodbye, she hurried away. And if she couldn't help glancing over her shoulder, it was just because she wanted to make sure he wasn't going in the same direction as her.

He wasn't. He was where she'd left him, his long, deep blue coat making him stand out among the tourists walking around him. He was facing Baba Yaga's again, rubbing a hand absently against his chest.

It didn't matter, Kay reminded herself. She'd left him behind. And she had a plane to catch.