Page 14 of A Witch in Notting Hill

Oliver

O ur final stop was the British Library.

Though I’d never admit it, this probably should have been our first stop.

In the occult bookselling community, we sometimes got so caught up in our own network we forgot about the public network.

The network that had seemingly innumerable resources available at all times.

A short Tube ride let us out at King’s Cross, where we were swept into commuter traffic.

“God, I forgot how bad commuting sucks,” Lola complained as we joined the throngs funneling onto the escalators.

“You go to happy hour every other day,” Minho said. “You’re literally in these crowds the second your workday ends.”

“You also go to happy hour every day,” she argued.

“Which is why I’m not complaining.”

I glanced over my shoulder to roll my eyes at their bickering, only to realize I’d been so hellbent on getting out of the crowd that I’d stopped keeping Willow out of the public eye.

While it might not have been technically as important as my other job, it was a job I’d assumed nonetheless, and I was failing at it. And I hated failing at a job.

The second we stepped off the escalator, I hooked a finger through her belt loop and pulled her to my side. “Stay close,” I said. “The crowds are a good place to hide. Keep your eyes low. I’ve got you.”

If I wasn’t mistaken, I could have sworn I felt her exhale.

I guided her through the crush of people with a hand on her hip and Min and Lola close behind, taking my own deep breath when we finally spilled out of the station and onto the street.

It was a balmy night, the heavy kind that wrapped its arms around the city at the end of the summer and made it impossible to go inside.

With the spectacle of St. Pancras behind us and the British Library ahead, I could imagine what the city looked like to a tourist. Grand, historic, full of promise.

So long as you didn’t look too closely at the rubbish in the streets or the panhandlers surrounding the station entrance or the vague blanket of smog that hung in the air.

“Could it really be as easy as the British Library?” Willow asked as we approached the entrance. “Why didn’t we start here?”

“Because Oliver’s a wanker, that’s why,” Minho said, clapping me on the back.

“Mmm,” I confirmed. “He’s right. I dragged us all over the city just for fun when I’ve known it’s been right here all along. Because of my love of witchcraft and all. Just wanted to see a few more stops along the way.”

“All right, all right, we get it,” Lola said, shoving me through the door.

No matter how many times I came to the British Library, I never got used to its grandeur.

The floor-to-ceiling stacks, the glass, the iron, the private rooms and hidden studies and thousands upon thousands of years of stories, tucked neatly against each other for any curious mind to get their hands on.

Ancient Greeks housed in the same stacks as modern literary fiction and the Cold War and cookbooks and music history and every encyclopedia humanity could get its hands on.

It was this kind of variety, this kind of bottomless well of knowledge, that made me want to work in a bookshop in the first place.

The very idea that I could spend my days in a place people came to learn, to be entertained, to escape, to discover themselves.

Bookshops saved me more times than I could count over the past thirty-two years of my life, and I’d always thought it would be a privilege to own one that could save someone else.

That could bring someone back to themselves—or far away from themselves—or that could bring someone comfort or answers or questions or a sense of belonging.

What I didn’t dream of was the occult.

But I didn’t dream of my granduncle dying before his time, either, so. Life was nothing if not full of surprises.

“Right, then.” Minho clapped his hands, bringing me back to the present. “Where do we begin?”

I rubbed my jaw, trying to remember Diane’s instructions. “We need to find Basil Whitlock, at the second-floor research and reference desk. He’s supposed to be able to grant us a day pass so we can access the occult collection, and it’s apparently in there.”

“I can’t believe it’s as easy as the bloody British Library,” Lola said.

“Don’t jinx it,” Willow said. “Nothing about this has been easy.”

“Superstitious?” Lola asked.

“She’s witchy,” I said, waving my hand. “Or her gran is witchy. So she’s witchy by association.”

“She’s standing right here,” Willow said, gesturing to her body.

A body I had no business admiring in the British Library.

A body with soft curves that were somehow still no match for her face, if I was honest. The more time I spent with her, the more I noticed every freckle, the deep set of her dimples, the smooth lines of her jaw, the changing shades of her brown eyes.

And the more ridiculous I felt for feeling anything for this woman, this American celebrity, who was likely to leave London on the first flight out the second she had her hands on this book. This woman who believed in witchcraft.

“Let’s get to it, then,” Minho said. “There are a couple pints calling our names when we’re done here.”

“Min, it’s been a long day. I’m sure Willow wants to—”

“A pint sounds great, actually,” she said. “Hopefully we have something to celebrate.”

“That’s the spirit!”

“One thing at a time,” I said. “Let’s find the second-floor research and reference desk and go from there.”

We poked around the library for longer than I’d have liked before we stumbled on the occult section, hidden down a winding corridor.

An older gentleman, one I hoped was Basil Whitlock, sat at a nearby desk thumbing through a stack of crumpled papers.

The kind that looked like the ones you used to make with a wet tea bag for a school project.

“Excuse us, sir,” I said, approaching him like one might approach a deaf dog. He seemed easily startled, and I needed him on our good side. “Are you Mr. Whitlock?”

“Who’s asking?” He lowered the stack of papers, skeptical.

“I’m Oliver Hadley, sir. Of Coven and Codex in Notting Hill. Diane Hughes sent us.”

“Diane!” he shouted, entirely too loud for a library. “Why didn’t you say so?”

“Didn’t you just say so?” Lola whispered, and I stepped on her foot.

“What is it you’re looking for?”

“ Rewind: A Manual for Counter Magic ,” I said, holding my breath while I waited for his response and sensing the others doing the same.

“Aye, a Rewind volume,” he mused. “Let me see here, now,” he mumbled to himself, banging his keyboard one key at a time. “Would you look at that!”

“You have it?” Willow asked, stepping up to my side.

“Indeed I do, my dear. Right this way now.”

We followed him like moths to a flame, hot on his (very slow) heels as he wove through the stacks, clicking his tongue and humming a quiet tune. He ran his knobby knuckles over the spines, repeating the call number until he found exactly what we’d all been looking for.

“Here we are,” he said, pulling it gently from the shelf and presenting it like the grand prize it was.

“Now, you can’t check it out, as I’m sure you know, but you can look at it as long as you’d like.

And since you’re friends of Diane’s,” he whispered, leaning in, “I’ll look away if you take a photo. ”

He returned to his desk as we thanked him profusely, assuring him we’d be out of his way long before closing time.

“I can’t believe we found it,” Willow said, turning it over in her hands. “Well, I shouldn’t say we found it. I didn’t do much of anything. You guys found it.”

“Don’t be silly,” Minho said. “Lola didn’t do anything, either.”

“Does moral support count for nothing?” she argued.

“Not exactly an emotionally taxing journey, this,” I said, ignoring Lola’s middle finger when she flipped it in my face.

“Thank you,” Willow said. “Seriously. I know this might be Oliver’s job, but this kind of treatment, especially on a day off, was above and beyond. From all three of you. I’ll find a way to thank you properly.”

“Tickets to a premier wouldn’t hurt,” Lola said, and I was impossibly relieved when Willow laughed.

“I’m sure I can make that happen.” She might have been smiling, but the worry wasn’t gone from her eyes. It manifested in a glassy sheen and two identical, impossibly cute wrinkles between her brows.

“Well, go on,” Lola said. “Open it.”

“You can’t possibly be interested in this part,” Willow said. “You’ve all done more than enough. Please go back to your real lives before I feel even guiltier for taking so much of your time.”

“Are celebrities usually this humble?” Lola asked. “This feels very far from what I’ve read of Americans in general, let alone—”

“Must you always say exactly what you’re thinking?” I asked. “Seriously, is there anything stopping you from spewing your every thought directly into the universe?”

“Yeah, you,” she said, “complaining all the time.”

“Well, apparently I’m not doing it enough, since you’re still—”

“Children, please,” Minho said, taking his turn as peacekeeper. “Willow, we’ve come this far—”

“You’ve been to two stops—”

“—to not see this through. Do please open the book and let us know if it has what it needs for your gran.”

“I couldn’t bother you with all that. You don’t even believe in witchcraft, and—”

“ Oliver doesn’t believe in witchcraft,” Lola said. “Open the book, love. In case you’ve not noticed, we’re very clingy. And now we’re invested in your business, so we need to see how it plays out.”

“It might take a while . . .”

“We’ve nowhere to be except the pub,” Min said.

Willow looked at me with expectant eyes, undoubtedly awaiting my approval.

It wasn’t about me, so it didn’t matter whether I believed in witchcraft.

What mattered was that she got the answers she came here looking for, and that I did my job and helped a customer procure an old volume.

Then she could be headed off to LA or New York or Toronto or wherever her next film would take her, and I’d head back to Coven & Codex like this never happened.

A simple fact, a preferable solution, really, that shouldn’t have made my stomach turn.

“Go on,” I said, savoring the flicker in her eyes when she finally opened the book.

“Remind me again what kind of spell we’re looking for?” Lola asked.

“One to reverse a spell completed on the solstice,” Willow said without looking up from the page.

“Which sounds ridiculous, I know, but still. And this book has some old reversal spells, especially some that have to do with shape-shifting and the seasons...” She let her sentence trail off as she frantically flipped through the pages, their crinkling the only sound in the room.

For all we knew, it could have been the only sound in all of England.

After a while, she stopped flipping pages. Stopped mumbling. Stopped breathing, as far as I could tell. “Did you find it?” I asked, trying not to sound as eager as I felt.

“I found it, all right.”

“Why aren’t we excited?” Lola asked. “We should be excited, right?”

Willow turned the book around, and the three of us fell into a trance as we stared back at a page filled with a list of six tasks, all of which were required to complete the spell. Willow’s hard swallow was audible in the silence.

“Holy shit,” I whispered. “This was only the beginning?”

“This was only the beginning.”