Page 10 of A Witch in Notting Hill

Willow

W e’d agreed to meet on the South Bank in the morning, as the outdoor book market was coming to life.

And once again, Vera and I wordlessly decided she’d stay in the hotel room.

She didn’t seem to love the Tube, and it was a nice day by London standards, so I figured she’d rather spend it lounging by the open window and watching the city than stuck in the carrier on public transport. I hoped I was right.

I got a Vietnamese coffee from a street vendor and walked the length of the river while I waited for Oliver, contemplating any other way out of this mess.

The book I’d brought home last night seemed to have what I needed to hopefully grant Vera the power to speak, but I was lacking the confidence necessary to cast a spell, and we all knew what happened when someone cast a spell without conviction.

(See: literally any witchcraft movie where any spell backfires.) With my luck, I’d cast the spell and suddenly neither of us would be able to speak.

But since I couldn’t leave her hanging, I’d have to find the confidence somewhere.

I stared at the river, watching it cut its centuries-old path through the city, murky and unforgiving and still somehow oddly peaceful, if I didn’t think too hard about it.

I tracked it under the London Eye and past Big Ben, watching it wend its way around landmarks it wasn’t impressed or intimidated by.

Landmarks that reminded me I was alone in the city, six thousand miles from home, solving a major problem with only the help of a man I’d met three days ago who didn’t believe in magic.

I’d hoped the realization might give me the confidence I needed, might make me feel like an empowered woman on a mission, but instead it only made me feel more alone.

And while I knew there was a solution to this feeling, it came at a price.

One of endless mockery and I told you so s and the kind of teasing only family was capable of.

I was going to call my sister.

I hadn’t done more than shoot my mom and my sister a quick text telling them I was headed to London for “work stuff,” so calling Ivy would mean I’d have to tell the whole story, from the beginning.

Fortunately, my mom was on some women’s spiritual retreat in Banff all summer, so she was mostly unreachable.

One fewer explanation of my stupidity. And one fewer burden on my family.

Even before I dialed, I was already trying to figure out how to spin it in a way that wouldn’t make Ivy look like the Good Witch and me look like... well... Even the Wicked Witch was way better at magic.

It was 10:00 a.m. in London, which meant it was 5:00 a.m. in New York, which meant Ivy was on her way to the gym before she put in another twelve-hour day doing whatever portfolio strategists did all day.

Perfect. I’d catch her on the walk to her workout class, so we wouldn’t have more than a few minutes to talk.

That way, she couldn’t ask questions. She couldn’t be secretly annoyed or disappointed in me.

She could just skip to the support part, and we could all get on with the day.

She answered on the second ring, and hearing her voice brought an unexpected lump to my throat.

“Morning, Wills.”

“Hey.”

“Everything okay? You sound weird.”

“How do you know I sound weird? All I said was ‘hey.’”

“Yeah, and it sounded weird.” Sisters. Especially the witchy ones. They knew everything.

“I am weird,” I moaned eventually. “I’m going to tell you what I’m really doing in London, but you can’t freak out. I’m only calling for sisterly support, not unsolicited advice or reminders that I’m the black sheep of the family or anything, okay?”

“You’re freaking me out. It’s too early in the morning for me to be freaked out.”

“But it isn’t too early in the morning for you to go sweat your ass off in some fancy yoga studio?”

“Speaking of which, I’m almost there, so get to the point.”

“Vera’s a cat,” I blurted. Silence. “Okay, now that that’s out of the way—”

“Did you say a cat ?”

“Yes, but I’ll explain.” I told the story as fast as I could under the guise of wanting her to get to her yoga class on time but really wanting to gloss over the part where I totally fucked up.

Older sisters, however, are genetically predisposed to home in on precisely where you totally fucked up, so I don’t even know why I bothered trying.

Her DNA wasn’t going to let me get away with it, so I didn’t have much of a choice but to accept my fate.

“Wills, how did this even happen?” she asked, and I could practically see her rubbing the space between her brows like she could somehow massage my failures out of her frontal lobe.

“If I knew how it happened I would have fixed it by now,” I said. “That’s the whole problem. Were you listening?”

“Truthfully, it was hard to listen to anything after ‘Vera’s a cat.’”

“Can you just say something supportive anyway? Pretend you listened and pretend I’m not the worst witch our family has ever seen and pretend you have something supportive to say.”

“You are not the worst witch our family has ever seen,” she said, more matter-of-fact than compassionate, but I had to take what I could get.

“Aunt Clare is the worst witch our family has ever seen.” Okay, I couldn’t argue with that.

To this day, none of us were sure Aunt Clare had ever conducted a spell correctly.

And any time we thought she did, we’d later find frog ears on her dog or vines growing from her showerhead or gibberish on the local news.

“And I don’t have to pretend to support you,” Ivy continued. “I always support you. I just wish you were more careful.”

“It’s not like I tried to make this happen,” I said.

“I know, I know. I’m sorry.” She always did this. When she sensed I was getting upset, she immediately backpedaled. That was also in her DNA, I supposed. It was what made her a good sister. She could get under my skin, but she hated to see me upset.

Growing up, and even now, it was like I had all the sensitivity for the both of us. She was practical, logical, sensible. And I was chaotic, emotional, creative. It was what made us good at our jobs. And what made her a better witch.

I didn’t even mind that she was a better witch. I just minded that I was a bad witch. But true to form, Ivy snapped me out of my pity party before it really kicked off and ruined my day.

“Listen, Wills. You’ve got to dig deep here, okay?

You do your best magic when you’re in touch with yourself.

And it sounds like you’re outside, so that’s already a good start.

You have what it takes. You wouldn’t have been able to cast the spell in the first place if you didn’t.

You just have to find it, which starts with believing it’s in you.

You aren’t a bad witch, Willow. You’re brilliant.

The only thing you fail at is believing in yourself.

So get your shit together, okay? Get Vera talking, then get your ass out and about in the city to find that book or whatever you need to turn her back into a person, then come home.

And maybe choose a flight with a layover in New York.

My class is about to start, so I have to go in.

Call me later if you need anything. I love you. ”

Before I could even thank her and tell her I loved her back, the line was dead.

But I got exactly what I came for. She might have sounded like she was all business, but her words carried more warmth than she even knew.

Ivy had been my compass since we were kids, despite our differences, and I knew she was always right (even if I spent half our childhood telling her the exact opposite).

It was time for a Main Character Moment. The kind when the heroine stares out at a river with the wind in her hair and her face turned toward the sun, some vaguely familiar nineties song plays in the background, and the audience’s eyes well up as she comes back to herself.

And it would have been cinematic, had Oliver not interrupted just as the soundtrack in my head was reaching its climax.

“Don’t think too hard,” he said, leaning on the railing beside me. “It’s just a river.”

I dug my elbow into his side, trying not to laugh when he did. “Some of us actually have something going on up here,” I said, tapping my temple.

“Care to share with the class?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” I gestured around, though the truth was, there was more going on in my head than I was willing to admit.

I was thinking about Vera, sure, and my sister and how I was going to handle this mess, but I was also thinking about the undeniable flutter in my chest at the sight of Oliver.

At the sound of his deep voice and his melodic accent and the size of his watch on his wrist and the easy way he leaned on the railing.

A crush was the last thing I needed right now.

For a million reasons. I needed to focus on the task at hand and keep my magic under control and save Vera and not run the risk of having a single feeling for anyone whatsoever.

That was a surefire way to make things worse, and I could not afford to make things worse.

I could barely afford for things to be this bad.

“Nothing about what goes on in your head is obvious,” he said.

His tone was calm, collected, measured, but it didn’t take away from the weight of his words.

If anything, it only made them heavier. Was he just talking about what we were doing here, or was there more he wanted to know?

And couldn’t I say exactly the same about him?

“Well, in this case, I’m ready to find this book and reverse the spell and be done with the whole thing,” I said, hoping that cleared things up.

“Isn’t your gran reversing the spell?”

Had I seriously already almost slipped up? I’d been distracted by—what, his forearms? And forgotten the lie? Ivy was right. I needed to get my shit together. And fast.