‘She’s actually crazy,’ Keira laughed, as we opened the door to our room.

‘It’s awful,’ I said, but I couldn’t help laughing along with her. ‘I’m going to have to go around in disguise for the rest of the trip so he doesn’t see me.’

‘Are you group crying?’ Connie burst in behind us. ‘Let me join in.’

‘What did you do?’ I was laughing and horrified at the same time. ‘Did you speak to him?’

‘I employed masterful spy tactics, actually.’ Connie beamed.

‘Does that mean you marched right up and said, “We’re going to do a spell about you, what’s your name?”’ Keira climbed on her bunk.

‘I won’t bother next time, then,’ Connie said, crossing her arms over her chest, making a humpfing sound.

Keira chucked her bag of Starbust at Connie but she didn’t notice. It hit her head and exploded wrappers and sweets everywhere.

‘Sorry, Connie.’ Keira leant over the bunk. ‘That was supposed to be a thank-you.’

‘Did you actually do something?’ I asked. My heart started to race a bit at the thought of her talking to him. ‘Seriously, what did you say?’

Connie climbed up the ladder. ‘Well, I didn’t say anything, actually.’

Most of me was relieved but a tiny sliver was disappointed. Maybe he would have said, ‘Your friend is enchanting, would she like to gaze through a fish tank with me sometime?’

‘Thank god,’ I said, slumping down on to my bed. ‘So what did you actually do?’

‘I did exactly what you told me to,’ Connie beamed. ‘I found out his name.’

Me and Keira both yelled at the same time, ‘What is it?!’

‘Do you really want to know?’ Connie said, climbing on to the bunk with Keira. ‘It might ruin the mystery.’

‘What is the point of fancying someone if you don’t know their name?’ Keira picked up a pillow and put it on Connie’s tummy before sitting on it.

‘Romeo and Juliet didn’t know each other’s names.’ Connie squirmed. ‘I can’t breathe.’

‘It’s called Romeo and Juliet,’ Keira said. ‘Romeo, Romeo … Remember.’

‘Yeah, but they don’t know in the beginning, it gets the romance going. Keira, I’m gonna vom!’

‘I don’t fancy him,’ I said. But even I could hear how weak it sounded. ‘I only … looked at him.’

‘That’s how it all started with Juliet,’ Keira said. ‘A couple of looks through the fish tank and then – BOOM! True love.’

‘Maybe we should all ask for a fish tank for Christmas,’ Connie said.

Keira wailed. ‘Connie, can you please just shut up and tell us his name?’

‘It’s not actually physically possible to shut up and—’

‘Tell us his name!’ Me and Keira both screamed at the same time.

‘OK, OK … Look, if you guess his name, I’ll tell you. That makes it more fate-ish.’

I groaned. Keira said, ‘Is it Leonardo?’

‘No.’ Connie wriggled herself free from Keira and reached across to the top of the wardrobe and got Mr Jambon out. He purred in her hand as she fed him a bit of carrot.

‘Leroy?’ said Keira. ‘No, actually not Leroy. Link?’

Connie shook her head. ‘It’s not a fancy name. It’s just a normal boy name.’

‘George?’ Keira said, and started doing a tiny plait in her hair.

‘It’s exactly like George but not George. It’s the most like George you can be without being George.’

‘Porge?’ I said.

All three of us simultaneously burst in to hysterical laughter. It was the first time I’d properly laughed for ages. I could hardly breathe. Each of us kept trying to speak but couldn’t because we were laughing so hard. It was like crying; once I started I couldn’t stop.

‘OK, OK,’ Keira said at last, wiping her eyes. ‘Not Porge, then. What about John?’

‘John is super close.’ Connie started waving her arms about. ‘It’s actually closer than George. It’s the most John name without being John.’

‘Jack?’ I said.

Connie squealed and leapt in to the air. ‘Yes! It’s Jack. Oh my gosh, it’s actually Jack!’

‘Oh my god, it’s definitely true love,’ said Keira. ‘You guessed his name!’

‘So, how did you find out if you didn’t speak to him?’ I asked.

‘I just stood near him and pretended to check my messages,’ said Connie. ‘And then their teacher came over and called him Jack.’

‘No way,’ Keira said, shaking her head.

‘I think Jack suits him,’ Connie said.

‘We don’t even know him,’ I laughed.

Keira jumped down to the floor and walked over to the window and opened it. ‘Jack, Jack, wherefore art thou Jack?’

Connie was rocking and unable to speak she was so hysterical. I covered my eyes in mock horror. Keira shut the window and pulled the curtains closed dramatically. She went over to her bag and rifled through it before taking out a book. In purple sparkly letters on the front it read: ‘The Teen Witches’ Book of Spells’.

‘Right,’ said Keira, opening the book. ‘Love spell time. Let’s do this.’

I had absolutely no idea what was happening, but I just went with it.

‘First,’ said Keira, ‘we need to form a coven. But we have to do it properly. Magic is a powerful and chaotic art form. It’s about the energy you bring to the spell. This is not some childish game – it’s deadly serious.’

‘Can Mr Jambon be our mascot?’ Connie said, giving him a kiss.

Keira sighed. ‘He can be our familiar. You don’t have mascots in magic.’

Connie whispered, ‘Did you hear that, Mr Jambon? You’re a familiar now.’

Keira tapped the book with her finger. ‘Now, the next thing is to cast a circle. Let’s make one with our clothes.’

We all rolled our clothes in to sausages and made a weird little oblong circle between the bunks. Keira looked at the book. ‘The only problem is we are all supposed to have a wand.’

‘We need to go to a wand shop.’ Connie said. ‘Monsieur, où est le shop de wand?’

‘No, maybe we just need to go outside and find some.’ She studied the book. ‘It says here, “You will find the right wand for you when you go looking for it.”’

‘Can’t we use a temporary wand?’ I said. ‘I mean, surely we can improvise and then find proper wands tomorrow?’

‘Well, it doesn’t say you can’t improvise,’ Keira said.

‘Exactly. Maybe the right wand for us is right in this room?’ I suggested. ‘Maybe the right wand for us isn’t a wand. Well, maybe it’s not even wand-shaped.’ I reached into the bottom of my bag. ‘Maybe the right wand for us is a head torch.’

‘I think you’re right,’ Connie said. ‘And I think we should dress up.’

Keira rolled her eyes. ‘I swear you’re obsessed with dressing up. As what?’

‘Ourselves,’ said Connie. ‘Our witch selves. Group hug!’

She screamed, and she and Keira jumped at me. I squealed as they squeezed me, and jumped along with them.

Connie put on her lion onesie and drew warpaint on her cheeks in purple felt tip. Keira had drawn tiny stars next to her eyes, and changed into an all-black outfit, except for brown socks with owls on them.

I rifled through my bag again. ‘I don’t really know what my witch self is.’

‘I know,’ said Connie. ‘Your witch self should be Juliet. Because Jack is your Romeo.’

Connie started wrapping the bedsheet around me, and then made me a crown out of a belt and a T-shirt.

‘I look like a Roman,’ I said.

‘Or a mummy?’ Keira offered.

‘I think it’s perfect,’ Connie said. Keira drew a heart on my cheek in red felt tip to complete the effect.

‘OK, now we have cast the circle and embodied our true witch selves,’ said Keira. ‘Next, we need to find the spell.’ She flicked over to another page. I suddenly wondered if the book had a spell to make you a better dancer. Or maybe even turn back time.

‘Got it,’ Keira said and smiled. ‘Irresista-spell.’

Connie squealed. ‘Jack and Mouse, sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G!’

‘Er, it’s a bit more complicated than that,’ Keira said. ‘We need paper and a pen. A true belief in magic. A full moon – I can’t see it so let’s presume it’s full. A hair from your head and a jam jar.’

The only thing we didn’t have was a jam jar, so Connie scooped her suntan cream out of its pot and rinsed it out.

As Keira was the most experienced witch she took control. ‘OK, so, Mouse, you need to stand in the centre of the circle.’

‘Oh, I’m getting a bit scared,’ Connie whispered.

‘Don’t be silly. It’s not a hex, it’s a totally white magic spell,’ Keira said. ‘The first rule of teen witchcraft is not to wish harm on others.’

‘Yeah, but we could be opening a vortex in to another world,’ I said, smiling.

‘OK,’ said Keira, ‘you have to put the hair from your head into the jam jar.’

Keira pulled one out and handed it to me and I dropped it into the sticky pot.

‘Now you have to write his name and put it in the jar.’

‘This feels really weird and psycho,’ I laughed, scribbling his name down.

‘OK, now we’re going to hold hands, and we all have to sing, “Name is written/Hidden singing/Compel the object to my bidding/So mote it be.”’

‘“So mote it be”?’ Connie burst out laughing.

‘And then we all have to sing his name three times and Mouse has to sing it into the jar.’

‘I don’t know if I can remember all that. Can we practise?’ I said.

We stood in a circle and the others held hands and I held the pot and we all started chanting the song.

‘Now!’ Keira shouted and we all shouted, ‘Jack! Jack! Jack!’ and then Connie yelled, ‘Wherefore art thou, Jack!’

There was a pause, then Connie screamed, Keira hit the floor and I froze in terror.

Someone was knocking at the window.

Jack

Me and Max locked eyes in panic.

‘Why are they screaming?’ he whispered. ‘They told us to come!’ He jumped to the left of the window and pinned himself against the wall, out of sight.

‘Maybe they were expecting us to knock on the door, like normal people,’ I muttered.

Suddenly, the curtains were flung open and I was face to face through the glass with the tall, curly-haired girl who’d been hanging around at the end of the film night. She boggled her eyes at me, then squealed and flapped the curtains shut again.

Max was still standing flat against the wall, his eyes darting about like a nutcase.

‘What’s going on?’ he whispered. ‘Is it the girls or not?’

‘It’s a girl,’ I said. ‘Just not any of the girls we were looking for. I think we’ve got the wrong room.’

Max unpinned himself from the wall and peered up at the window.

‘What are you on about? The curtains are still shut.’

Before he could pin himself back against the wall, Curly-Haired Girl flapped the curtains open again and yanked up the window.

‘Hi!’ she grinned. ‘Come inside, you must be freezing!’

Me and Max looked at each other and shrugged. We had been wandering around the outside of the hotel for a good ten minutes, trying to figure out which window belonged to room 22. Despite wearing two hoodies and a jacket each, we were both absolutely frozen.

‘Er, yeah, OK. Cheers,’ I said, trying not to sound too pathetically grateful for the chance to get out of the cold.

I pulled myself up on to the window ledge and looked around the room. I saw that there were two other girls inside, and one of them – sat in the middle of the floor – was Long Hair Girl. I felt my heart jump right up into my throat.

She wasn’t wearing the grey hoodie any more, but what she was wearing was absolutely mental. She had a bedsheet draped over her, a belt tied around her head and a massive red heart drawn across the side of her face. The two other girls were also rocking the same mad, hippy look.

I became suddenly aware that my nose was actually dripping from the cold. I ran my glove over it, hoping none of them had noticed. In proper light, and closer up, Long Hair Girl looked seriously hot. Even the fact she was dressed like a nutter couldn’t disguise it. The combination of the shock and the cold and her serious hotness was too much, so I just hung there on the ledge for a few seconds with my mouth open. The girls just stared back at me.

Finally, Max broke my trance by yelling, ‘Can you get inside, Jack! I’m freezing my face off out here!’

I hauled myself through the window and tumbled into the room.

‘Well, this is a bit of a surprise,’ said Curly-Haired Girl.

I stood up and brushed myself off. My heart was beating so hard I could feel it bumping against my T-shirt.

‘Er, yeah, sorry,’ I stuttered. ‘We were actually …’

I caught eyes with Long Hair Girl, and something inside me said not to tell them that we’d been looking for another group of girls.

‘We … were actually just bored so we thought we’d go for a midnight walk,’ I said.

‘Nice idea!’ beamed Curly-Haired Girl. ‘Midnight walks are my favourite kind of walks.’

‘I, erm …’ I tried to think of something to say. ‘I like your outfits,’ was the best I could come up with, and I felt the sudden urge to curl up in the corner and die.

‘Thanks!’ said Curly-Haired Girl. ‘We made them ourselves. Well, except, I didn’t make this lion onesie. I got it for Christmas from my Auntie Alison.’

She beamed at me. The other two girls looked mortified and slightly in shock. Behind me, Max hauled himself on to the window ledge and propped himself up on his elbows.

‘All right, girls?’ he grinned. ‘What’s with the dressing up?’

Suddenly, there was a knock at the door. We all froze. Outside in the hall, we heard a woman’s voice.

‘Girls? I thought I heard some commotion. Everything all right in there?’

Curly-Haired Girl mouthed, ‘Oh no!’ and Long Hair Girl suddenly sprang up and whispered, ‘It’s Miss Mardle!’

‘Jack, let’s go, man!’ hissed Max, dropping off the windowsill and back on to the snowy ground outside. I made to follow him, but there was another knock at the door and this Miss Mardle woman’s muffled voice said, ‘Girls? Are you OK? I’m coming in now.’

The door clicked and started to creak open. Long Hair Girl mouthed the word ‘Sorry’. Before I could ask what she was sorry for, she shoved me into the wardrobe and slammed the door.

In the darkness, over the sound of my heart thudding in my ears, I could hear the girls getting grilled by Miss Mardle.

‘I thought I heard someone screaming in here,’ she said. ‘What are you all up to?’

‘It must have been another room, miss,’ said the third girl. ‘We were asleep.’

‘Asleep? Then why are you all dressed so strangely?’

There was silence. Then one of them coughed and said, ‘This is just … what we wear when we go to sleep, miss.’

‘Right …’ said Miss Mardle. ‘I don’t mind you having fun, girls, but just try to keep it down. And get some sleep. We’ve got a big day ahead tomorrow.’

‘OK, miss. We—’

I didn’t hear what came next, because I was suddenly flooded with shock, pain and cold, horrible terror.

Something was in the wardrobe with me.