Page 4 of A Witch in Notting Hill

Oliver

W hen I’d inherited Coven & Codex from my granduncle, I’d been informed I’d be inheriting more than just an occult bookstore in Notting Hill (that I wasn’t allowed to sell, under any circumstances, no matter how prime the real estate was).

His barrister apparently subscribed to the same belief system he did, and she believed his stories of spirits between these walls.

Informed me that this was a place where “ things happened .”

As far as I was concerned, the only “things” that “happened” were hordes of tourists wandering in, running their fingers over spines without reading titles, picking up candles by the lids and dropping them on the floor, and asking me questions about Harry Potter .

Anything else was a result of Uncle Arthur’s old age and lack of upkeep of the place: flickering lights, drafty windows, groaning floorboards, whistling pipes. All to be expected in an old build that hadn’t been properly cared for in years.

Otherwise, nothing else “happened.” Day in and out, I stood behind the mahogany desk, manually conducting transactions with a two-hundred-year-old till despite the computer that sat on the desktop, or I wandered through the stacks reorganizing the books that seemed to move themselves around the store, or I managed inventory and hunted down unique selections that customers requested and were willing to pay a lot of money for.

Which is exactly what I was doing this morning when I first noticed her.

A petite woman with auburn hair, a baseball cap pulled low over her eyes, and a floor-length trench coat in the middle of the summer, whispering to what looked like a designer picnic basket hooked over her arm.

Between the basket and the wide-eyed look she was trying to hide, it was all very We’re not in Kansas anymore , and I had no interest in being her Glinda.

I tried to look away, to refocus on the archives I had pulled up on the computer, but her whispering was painfully distracting. Soft but frantic. Melodic. Familiar.

“I’m trying,” she was saying. “It’s going to take time. Just hang on.”

Who was she talking to? And had I actually heard her voice before?

Realizing immediately that would have been impossible and that I likely needed to get out more, I shook my head and returned to my work. Just another tourist. And whatever the whispering was about, I didn’t want to know.

I clicked through the digital archives of A Witch in Time and Hexed, two other local shops, trying to find a first-edition copy of UnHearthed: Tea, Herbs, and Natural Mysticism for Mr. Blackburn.

He was a repeat customer, and most of the time his books were easy to find—I suspected he just didn’t have the energy to try to find them.

Though if I had the amount of money he did, I’d be paying someone else to do it, too.

I’d only made it through a few more pages before my attention was once again ripped from my desk—this time by a loud crack in the Fables and Folklore room. While it wasn’t exactly a library, you’d think in a bookstore you’d at least be able to find a singular moment of peace.

Suppressing the melodramatic sigh climbing up my throat, I made my way through the maze of shelves to the back.

Uncle Arthur’s last wishes also specified that I did not rearrange the store, no matter how little sense the layout made to me.

He’d insisted the books were organized in a way that they would find their owners, as opposed to the other way around.

The store speaks to people , he’d always said. So long as they are willing to listen.

I’d tried to be willing to listen. Really, I had. For the sake of the business, if nothing else. But I was either terrible at it or Uncle Arthur was messing with me, because I hadn’t been able to find a bloody thing in here since I was a kid.

The Fables and Folklore room was at the back of the shop, behind Celestial Craft, around the corner from a display of incense and tarot cards and lunar calendars, and through a warped archway so low I had to duck underneath it (a lesson I learned the hard way).

It only took a second of fumbling for the light switch and a crunching under my feet to realize what the sound had been—an exploded lightbulb.

They flickered often, but exploded? Never.

Even if they were from some long-forgotten era that left them hanging exposed from the cracking ceiling.

The only light left in the room came from a small stained-glass window, painting the space in jewel-toned shards.

It would have been beautiful had I not had a massive safety concern on my hands.

And just as I was thanking some higher power that the lightbulb hadn’t exploded on a customer, her voice cut through the silence.

“I’m sorry,” she said, a little too loud for the quiet of the shop. “I have no idea what happened.”

“Are you hurt?” I asked, following the sound of her voice with my eyes until I spotted her clutching her basket with one hand and clutching imaginary pearls with the other.

“No, no, just surprised.” She dropped her hand and exhaled, but she kept her eyes cast toward the floor. “Let me clean this up. Do you have a broom around here somewhere?”

So she was American, which I suppose I could have guessed from the baseball cap before I heard the accent. We got a lot of Americans in the shop, but that didn’t account for the familiarity of her voice.

She cleared her throat, alerting me to the fact I had yet to respond.

“No, please, it’s fine,” I said, waving her away.

“I’ll take care of it.” I was already shaking out the antique rug to gather the glass in the center of the room, keeping an eye on her to make sure she didn’t get any closer.

One sideways piece of glass could go right through her little white trainers, and the last thing this shop needed was an injury on the premises.

And the last thing I needed was any more interaction with this woman.

I couldn’t place her and I didn’t want to.

“Really, I’d like to help.”

“No need. Not like it was your fault the lightbulb exploded, there, was it?”

She laughed, but nothing was funny. It had a kind of self-deprecating tone that made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. “With the way my life has been going lately, I’m sure it was,” she said, and sighed.

I didn’t want to ask. I didn’t want to know. Or rather, I didn’t want to want to know. And yet, I heard my voice before the thoughts passed through my brain. “Streak of bad luck, then?”

“You could call it that.”

“What would you call it?”

Another long exhale. “Bad genetics, maybe. I’m not sick or anything.

That sounded foreboding. Sorry. I just.

.. You know when you’re supposed to be one thing, like it’s in your blood and your family is good at it, but then you’re terrible?

It’s one of those. Not that that’s a common experience for everyone, I guess.

It actually might be oddly specific? Not that you care either way. Now I’m just—”

“I know exactly what you mean.” What the hell was I doing? I hadn’t wanted to know anything about this woman, and now I was on the verge of confessing my life story to her? I didn’t believe in witchcraft, but I would have been lying if I said I didn’t feel like I was under some kind of spell.

“You do?”

I looked up from the rug just in time to see her eyes widen, two huge marbles in her perfectly round face.

She chewed on her thumbnail, her hand obscuring the lower half of her face, but I didn’t need to see any more than her eyes to know she was beautiful.

The live wire swinging from the ceiling sparked once more, but even that made it hard to look away.

“Why do you look so surprised?” I asked, trying to ignore the inherent danger sparking above our heads. And maybe also in the space between us.

“I... have no idea.” She laughed, for real this time. I was nearly tempted to do the same. “I don’t know you at all, obviously.”

“Obviously.”

“But I’m surprised at the thought of you being bad at something. You don’t have that kind of vibe.”

“And what vibe is that?”

“The sloppy kind that makes people bad at things.”

“Ah, like whispering to your picnic basket while you shop?”

She gasped, but I could hear her smile, even if I didn’t dare risk another look. I could also hear a rustling in the basket, at which I dared look even less.

“Aren’t British people supposed to be polite?”

“Only the posh ones.”

“You run a bookshop in Notting Hill,” she said. “Feels pretty posh to me. Maybe you are capable of being bad at things.”

“It’s a good job there aren’t rumors about Americans being polite,” I said, finally letting my lips contort into something that resembled a smile. I might not have been friendly, but I wasn’t a monster.

“Add the American rumor mill to this list of things I’m bad at,” she said, returning my smile, though hers didn’t light up the rest of her face like I’d expected it to.

“Hiding out in London, then?”

“Looking for something, actually. But can’t say hiding isn’t also on my agenda.”

In the moment I was trying to decide whether I was going to ask what she was looking for, or what she was hiding from, the bell on the checkout desk rang through the shop, letting me know someone wanted to pay and I needed to hustle back to the till before they changed their mind.

The sound was more of a relief than I was willing to admit.

If something tangible hadn’t pulled me from this conversation, I wasn’t sure how I would have gotten myself out.

For what might have been the first time in my life, I wasn’t faking interest in a chat with a customer.

And I wasn’t prepared to unpack how I felt about it.

“I have to get that,” I said, gesturing toward the till like an idiot. “Please be careful around the glass. And please close the door behind you so no one else goes in.”

“Are you sure I can’t clean this up?”

“Certain,” I said. “Just try not to explode anything else, will you?” I shot a glance at her over my shoulder, and she nodded.

“I’ll try my best.”

All at once, the heater rattled, the shelves creaked, and the door swung shut between us.

Just like that, the spell was broken, and I was pulled from the trance back into reality.

A harsh one. One with incessant dinging and a floor covered in glass.

And a strange, beautiful woman on the other side of the door.