Page 27 of A Witch in Notting Hill

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 youjustsay so?” Lola whispered, and I stepped on her foot.

“What is it you’re looking for?”