Page 124 of A Ghost’s Guide to Haunting a Witch

A small, sad smile tugged at Augustine’s mouth. “No,” she said. “No, you don’t need to wait for anyone, Roy. You need to move on, too.”

“Move on?”

She nodded slowly. “Yes. You know what I mean by that, don’t you?”

Roy didn’t answer.

“I did some research recently,” Augustine went on. “After Steven came the other day. You remember Steven, don’t you, Roy?”

“He’s the landlord,” Roy replied with an easy shrug, and Augustine winced.

“Yeah. But you knew him before that. In the eighties.” She took a deep breath. “Before you died.”

Roy went very still, and it wasn’t the usual theatrical stillness he used when he was about to make a point or refuse to be emotionally vulnerable on principle, but a real one. Like something in him had misfired and needed a moment to reboot. Augustine watched as his mouth opened and then closed again, before, very carefully, he spoke one word. “No.”

Augustine didn’t push. She just watched him. Gave him this moment.

Roy gave a short, derisive laugh. “No,” he repeated, as if that might correct the universe. “That’s . . . I’m not dead, Augustine. I can’t be. I write. I watch television with you. I listen to music—”

“I called Steven on my way here tonight.” Augustine’s voice stayed soft. “He told me you frightened all the other tenants away. The music. The television. Moving things around. They thought the place was haunted, and they were right. Steven tried to appease you. He kept bringing you albums. Little gifts.”

“Well, I like my music. And television. And my things,” Roy argued.

“I know,” she agreed.

“I’m not dead,” Roy said again. “I’m not.”

“I’m sorry, Roy. You are,” she insisted, maintaining a calm tone. “You died of HIV. In 1992.”

Roy let out a breath that sounded like it had been trapped in him for decades, but Augustine didn’t stop. She wanted to be gentle, but now that she’d started, there didn’t seem to be any kind way to stop.

“I found the memorial,” she told him. “Your obituary. Your family and friends were devastated.” A pause. “But Steven . . .”

Roy’s head tilted slightly at the name, something faintly reflexive in it.

“Steven was inconsolable. For a long time.”

That name seemed to spark something within him, and Roy swallowed.

“You’ve been here a long time,” Augustine carried on. “Long enough for things to blur. For your memory to falter. For the people you’re waiting for to move on.”

Roy gave a short, brittle laugh. “So, what? You’re saying I don’t matter?”

It was so close to what Theo had said that Augustine had to take a deep breath at the memory.

“No,” she said. “That’s not what I mean. You mattered,” she added. “You still do. Steven hasn’t touched this place in three decades because he was so happy here with you.”

That seemed to quieten him. Roy looked down at his hands, flexed his fingers once, like he was checking they still belonged to him.

“I remember being sick. But I don’t remember dying,” he said eventually.

“I know. Steven says you were pretty out of it by the end. They gave you a lot of morphine. It probably felt like you just drifted away.”

“You said it was 1992? You mean I missed the Spice Girls and Girl Power?”

Augustine gave a faint, sad huff of laughter. “Sorry,” she said. “I know. It sucks. At least Steven brought you the albums.”

Roy looked back up at her slowly. “He brought me a new one when he was here the other day. I watched him fix the pipe, and then he . . . he left the album on my chair. Told me I’d love it before he left.”