Page 67 of A Witch in Notting Hill

I used to think I’d been comfortable in my life, but I was starting to realize that comfort might have been complacency. I’d gotten used to slow, easy routines, a low-maintenance lifestyle, two close friends, and my family just outside the city, and I didn’t need much more than that. Or at least I thought I didn’t, until Willow walked in the door.

But now as I watched her weave a string of lights around my stack of books, piling the end into a mason jar and stepping back to admire her handiwork, I couldn’t imagine the hole she’d leave behind when she left.

“You’re a natural,” I said.

“Runs in the family.” Her soft smile hid the edges of something that looked dangerously like embarrassment, and it cut through me like a dull knife in my shoulder blades. I didn’t have to believe in witchcraft for it to be real for her. And it seemed like my disbelief was starting to make her feel bad about it, and that was the last thing I wanted.

“Tell me about them,” I said.

“My family?”

“Mm-hmm.”

We both busied ourselves untangling another string of lights, undoubtedly trying to keep from looking at each other while wehad this conversation. I wanted to know, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t nervous for whatever came next.

“It’s just us girls,” she said. “My grandmother before she died, obviously, then my mother, my sister, Ivy, and me.”

“All witches?”

“All witches.”

I risked a glance at her and clocked a raised eyebrow. A challenge. “Do you, er, do you learn a lot from them?”

“I do,” she said. “But apparently not enough. They’re both much more talented than I am, and though they try not to show it, I know it frustrates them, having to constantly help me clean up my messes. I try not to burden them anymore, especially since I’ve moved out of the house, but even when they’re annoyed, they still usually know the right thing to do. Neither of them would have ever found themselves in this position.”

“Seems like you’re doing okay, all things considered,” I ventured. “You’ve done everything you’ve set out to do since you’ve been here, no?”

She sighed, and the sound burrowed under my skin. “I suppose so. Though I wouldn’t be here in the first place if it wasn’t for the disaster back at home, so.”

“How’d it happen?” I asked.What the hell am I doing?Entertaining this conversation was so far out of my wheelhouse, but the more she spoke, the harder it was to stop myself. I wanted to know everything there was to know about her. Even if it wasn’t real.

“You really want to know?” she asked, lowering the string of lights and looking right at me.

“Wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t.”

“Even though you don’t think it’s true?”

“Doesn’t matter what I think. What matters is what’s true for you. And I’d like to hear the story, if you don’t mind.”

I, too, dropped the lights so that I could look at her properly. So I could make sure she saw I was earnest.

“It was humiliating,” she started. “Vera and I were having an argument in my trailer because I didn’t want to entertain the idea of doing a romance film instead of a drama, and in the heat of the moment she just... turned into a cat. And I know how it sounds. You don’t have to say anything. But I don’t know how else to explain it. One minute she was Vera, and the next she was a cat.”

“Why didn’t you want to do the romance?”

“What?”

“The romance. Why’d you say no?” There was so much to digest in what she’d said, but I couldn’t move past this part. Maybe I was clinging to something familiar. Something that wasn’t witchcraft. Or maybe I was clinging to the idea of Willow and romance in the same sentence. Hard to say.

“Oh, it’s just, uh... it’s not my thing.”

“Romance movies or romance in general?”

“Both?” She laughed. “I mean, even the conversation about doing a romance turned my manager into a cat. So, doesn’t bode well for filming the actual movie, does it?”

“What about this guy you’re seeing? That’s surely a romance, yeah?” Was I a masochist? Was that a new development in my personality at thirty-two years old?

She went back to the lights, and I wondered if I’d said the wrong thing. Or maybe the right thing, because every time we talked about him she seemed less and less invested.