Page 102 of A Witch in Notting Hill

A curious woman. Wee bit odd. Asks many questions. Cupboards open and close of their own volition when she’s near.

Curtains caught fire above the radiator today when she was in the back room chatting to a bloke. I suspect she was the culprit.

Wants Volume II. Call Fergus.

Back for tea. This time with her daughter. Another lovely thing.

Wants to introduce me to a friend in America. I’ve no desire to go to America.

Came with me to Jo’s for a dinner party. Seemed to have turned the punch to gelatin at the exact moment I heard her turning down a date with a handsome fella because she was meant to go back to America. Like I said: a bit odd.

Plans to return home. I do suspect she’ll take the magic with her. Good for the linens, bad for the soul.

Maybe her daughter will return on her own once she’s grown. If I’m here, I’ll welcome her for tea. Perhaps she, too, will be magic.

I closed the ledger, afraid what might happen to the pounding in my chest if I continued. It had to have been Willow’s gran. There wasn’t a doubt in my mind.

And while I didn’t think Uncle Arthur ever did meet Willow’s mum again, I had the sense I’d finally have the chance to make him proud. To do something we both wanted. He mightnot have been here, but the least I could do was invite the granddaughter for tea on his behalf.

Because the granddaughter was more magic than the whole lot put together.

And if Anise’s magic had misfired because sherejecteda man’s advances, I had a feeling I knew exactly what had happened with me and Willow the night of the full moon festival.

Chapter 33

Willow

Oliver Hadley:fancy a tea?

After weeks apart, all I could do was stare at the text like it might spontaneously combust. We hadn’t spoken since the night of the full moon festival, and I couldn’t tell if these three words were a threat or an olive branch.

Did I fancy a tea?

I supposed the question was more like,couldI fancy a tea? Of course Idid. I wanted nothing more than to pretend the last few weeks never happened, to slip back into the life I’d only been trying on for size, to make it real and tangible and mine, even if it was only temporary.

But I knew it wasn’t fair, to either of us, so the right thing to do would have been to politely decline, produce the spell, leave London all together, and disappear back into the depths of Hollywood.

But if I was good at doing the right thing, I probably wouldn’t have been in this mess to begin with, so... I entertained theidea of fancying a tea. I did have to convince a skeptic, after all, and while I wasn’t sure Oliver Hadley could be convinced of a damn thing, hewasthe only skeptic I knew, so it was worth a shot.

The clock was ticking, and if I didn’t convince someone magic was real before the solstice next week... I shuddered at the thought.

Fortunately, since I hadn’t left the flat much, the paparazzi didn’t have a whole lot to report on. They continued circulating the photos from that night, along with the story about Kit, both of which Vera was working as hard as she possibly could (considering she didn’t have thumbs) to get taken down. She kept telling me to stay focused on the spell and she’d stay focused on the media, which made sense, all things considered, but I wasn’t happy about it.

Even less happy when I told her Oliver texted me and she told me we needed to talk.

“What’s going on?” I asked, gently lowering myself onto a barstool next to where she sat on the counter.

“I have to tell you something, but I don’t want you to freak out.”

“You know I’m already freaking out, right?”

“Then I might as well rip off the Band-Aid.” She sighed. “I was the one who told the media about Kit.”

“You... what?” I’d heard her perfectly fine, but I needed to hear her again to understand. And maybe even again after that.

“It was right when we got here,” she said. “And we decided we were going to pretend you were seeing him so you wouldn’t have to worry about Oliver and you could focus on the spell and—”

“And you deliberately put me in the center of a scandal?” I asked. “Isn’t your job to do the opposite?”