Page 96 of A Witch in Notting Hill

And like clockwork, she first appeared with the wind through the leaves. Whether I’d done a decent job on the spell or she was watching and helping me out, I couldn’t be sure, and I wasn’t sure it mattered. What mattered was the wind that swirled around me where I sat, rustling only around the trunk of the tree.

I squeezed the brooch tighter, planting the palm of my other hand firmly against the cold ground, willing her to give me another sign.

The wind whistled a gentle melody, like a lullaby, before lifting my hair off my shoulders, out of where it was tucked beneath my hood, and letting it float around my head like a halo. I had to stifle a laugh as the wisps tickled my cheeks, knowing she was with me. Even as a slow tear slid down myface, my hair continued to swirl, the wind continued to sing its song, and the stillness of the morning now buzzed with unmistakable energy.

“Hi, Granny,” I whispered, smiling at the bird that fluttered across my path. It had no business being in London in the winter, but I had a feeling I knew why it was here. “Please forgive me for doing this spell. I have to turn Vera back into a person, and of course you’re the only one I want to commune with. And I’m sure you know by now that Vera’s a cat, since you could always sense when I was in trouble even if you couldn’t see me, and now I feel like you can see me all the time, so I’m sure none of this is a shock to you.”

The bird came back and landed on a low branch right above my head, quieting its wings and looking down at me. I knew I was rambling, but I also knew she didn’t mind. She was always the best listener. The kind that never made you feel like you had to say anything at all.

“Anyway, I’ve messed up. And I don’t just mean turning Vera into a cat. I’ve messed up in a lot of ways.” The sunrise bled across the horizon, and I listened to the bird flap its wings once more. Even if I wasn’t talking to Granny, sitting on that hill still would have felt like I was hardly on earth at all.

“I haven’t been giving my magic the attention it deserves,” I confessed. “And I’m sorry about that. I’m sure you’re disappointed. I am, too. I’ve been making excuses, letting acting distract me, prioritizing that part of myself because I was ashamed of this one. Not ashamed of being a witch, but ashamed I was never as good at it as you and Mom and Ivy. But since I’ve been on this quest, testing the limits of my powers and pushing myself, I’ve realized I could have been doing this all along. Hell, had I not hidden from it my whole life it probably wouldn’t have ended up always causing such a scene.”

Slowly, so slowly I thought I might have been imagining it, snow began to fall. Soft, gentle flakes I couldn’t even feel with my palms turned toward the sky. But I could see them, white and puffy and impossibly delicate, floating to the ground.

“I know now that it needs nurturing. It needs practice and care and trust and a million other important things I haven’t been giving it because I’ve been afraid. I shouldn’t have let it be on the back burner. But you should know I don’t plan to do that anymore. I’m going to honor our family and do the right thing and stop complaining that Ivy is better than I am at everything.”

The bird made a soft sound, which I hoped was a laugh.

“And I messed up with Oliver,” I said, almost more to myself than to Granny Annie. When I didn’t say anything else for a while, the snow began to fall harder. Fat flakes collecting in my hair, on my eyelashes, the toes of my boots.

Even though I hadn’t lived here long, I knew it almost never snowed in London.

“I assumed it wouldn’t work out because nothing ever works out, but I didn’t even give it a chance. I told lies to protect myself. I held him at arm’s length and still somehow had him right in the cross fire. And now I’m the face of a cheating scandal for a relationship I was never even a part of.” A sharp wind whipped my hair across my face, stinging my eyes. “Okay, okay, you’re right. It isn’t the rumors I’m upset about. I know better than that. It’s that I used them to drive a wedge between us. And for what? So no one would get hurt?” The wind softened, and my hair settled. “So much for that idea.”

I closed my eyes and held my face to the sky, letting the snowflakes mingle with the tears on my cheeks. Granny always said if you were going to cry, it was best to do it outside. There was little that fresh air and Mother Nature couldn’t heal.

“It doesn’t make sense, Granny,” I continued. “I hope this isn’t awkward to tell you, because if you actually do knoweverything then I guess you already know, but we slept together, and nothing malfunctioned. I meannothing. Well, other than whatever we’d been dancing around for the past five months. But nothing exploded or caught on fire or anything. How do you explain that? Every other time I’ve even gotten close to someone, Oliver included, something has gone awry. And now, after we’d gotten as close as we possibly could have, nothing. I don’t know what to make of that. I’ve turned it over in my mind a thousand times, and I’m at a loss.”

The wind whistled another tune through the trees, but I wasn’t sure what to make of that, either. So I kept talking, wondering if it would make sense the more I spoke it into existence.

“And if nothing catastrophic happened that once, does it mean we might be so lucky again? Or does it mean the next time catastrophe might hit twice as hard?”

Silence.Come on, Granny. I can’t figure this part out on my own.

“I know you’d say it was worth the risk, but if it hurts this badly now, how badly is it going to hurt if we try and fail again? And does it even matter? The solstice is only three weeks away, which means all I have left to do is convince a skeptic of the existence of magic and then I can perform the spell. And the only skeptic I know at the moment is Oliver, and I think I’d be hard pressed to convince him to do anything. Especially believe in magic. So I’m not sure where to go from here on that front, either.”

The bird made another sound, and I opened my eyes to find it looking right back at me.

“I know I just said I was working on honing my magic, but this feels beyond a spell or a manifestation or a little moon water. But I can’t have come this far for nothing.”

I let my head fall back against the trunk, reeling from the physical pain radiating from my chest at how much I missed her. How much I could feel her with me now. How much I would have given anything to hear her voice.

Had it really been five months since I last listened to that voicemail? Since I last heard her husky laugh, her familiar timbre telling me—

I am the magic.

It didn’t have to be a spell or a manifestation or a little moon water. She’d been telling me this all my life, and most of the time I’d been too stubborn to listen. The same way I hadn’t even remembered she’d told me to find Coven & Codex until I went back and listened to the voicemail again.

I am the magic.

“You’re not saying I can change his mind without a spell, are you?” The bird fluttered out of the tree and landed right in front of me, stern eyes and tight wings. “Surely that’s a little conceited, even for us James women.” This time, the bird didn’t laugh. It only took a step closer.

“What if the magic is gone?” I asked, so quietly I could hardly even hear myself. Afraid to say the words loud enough that the universe might hear them. “What if I burned right through every ounce of magic we had together?”

There was the wind again. Cold, biting.

“Okay, I get it,” I said, laughing through my tears. “You never know until you try, right?” She’d always said that when we were nervous to try spells as kids, and she was always right. Even when we failed, we didn’t know until we tried.