Inside, the bookshop was lovely and inviting. It was very clean, and Mika caught a faint whiff of lemon antibacterial spray (kids, of course, being veritable hotbeds of germs), but it was also delightfully untidy. Books and cushions were all over the place, stacked in wobbly piles and scattered higgledy-piggledy, and someone had left a box of crayons strewn across the rug. Jamie winced slightly, like he felt he’d just walked into the chaotic hellscape of his darkest nightmares, but Mika suspected that the shop was supposed to be messy. This way, a child coming in wouldn’t be intimidated by perfectly ordered shelves and untouchably pristine books.

A middle-aged white woman smiled warmly at them from behind the till. “Lovely afternoon, isn’t it?” she said, abiding by that ancient and most sacred British law of only ever starting a conversation with a comment on the weather.

After chatting with her for a moment, Ian made a beeline for the one shelf crammed with books for grown-ups, almost all of which were romance novels (“Perfect!” Ian said blissfully), and it took Rosetta less than five seconds to peel herself from Jamie’s side and race over to the brightly coloured spines of a mystery series she’d recently fallen in love with.

So passed a peaceful thirty minutes. Mika wandered around the different sections of the little shop, dividing her attention between finding books the younger girls would like and keeping a watchful eye on the mischievous gold dust that had gathered around Rosetta.

Jamie approached her after a while, a crease between his eyebrows. “Will you be okay keeping an eye on Rosetta if I go out for a few minutes? I’ll only be round the corner.”

Mika could see he was frustrated. He didn’t trust her (yet, she hoped), but wherever he planned to go, it had to be important or else she was quite sure he wouldn’t have dreamed of leaving Rosetta with her. If Ian hadn’t been there, too, he probably wouldn’t have.

“Go,” she said sunnily. “We’ll be fine.”

He hesitated a moment longer, his eyes on the back of Rosetta’s tight black curls, and then left with a brusque nod.

Mika turned her attention back to her young companion and dispelled an especially enthusiastic cloud of gold dust with a wave of her hand. Magic meant well, but it did so want to be used and it had an irksome habit of taking matters into its own hands if witches didn’t take the hint.

She and Rosetta were poring over the mysteries when Ian approached them, puzzled. “Where’s our handsome escort?”

“He said he had to pop out for a few minutes,” she replied.