Page 40 of A Ghost’s Guide to Haunting a Witch

His eyes are that same impossible blue, she realized.

“And the snake?” he asked eventually, pointing to the coiled shape. “That seems like a bad sign.”

Augustine followed his finger.

“The serpent usually represents temptation,” she said. “Or transformation. A decision that can’t be undone once it’s made.”

Theo leaned back slightly, considering that. “So,” he said slowly, “my path forward is . . . a relationship and a terrible life choice? That’s what this card means?”

Augustine hesitated, because suddenly, the figures on the card didn’t feel symbolic at all. They felt familiar. Far too familiar. She looked down at the man and woman again — standing side by side beneath that endless blue sky, reaching for one another for all eternity, and, for the briefest of moments, a strange thought flickered through her mind.

We look like them.

She pushed back from the table so abruptly her chair scraped hard against the floor.

“We should stop this,” she said quickly. “Now.”

Her hands had begun to shake, and that prickling feeling had returned to her skin; the same crawling awareness she’d felt earlier, like something unseen had stepped closer, listening to their every word. Watching their every movement.

“Stop? There’s still one card left!” Theo protested.

Augustine didn’t move, her eyes fixed on the final card like it might bite her.

“I know. That card answers your last question. Who she is,” she said. “But I still think we should stop. Something’s odd here. I’ve never felt like this when giving a reading before.”

This didn’t feel dutiful, she realized. It didn’t feel perfunctory.

No. It felt alive.

“I can’t stop. Not now,” Theo argued. “I need to know who she is, Augustine. I have to find her.”

Augustine felt for him, she really did. But something was wrong, and as if reading her thoughts, a nearby candle guttered, then went completely still.

“I just can’t,” she whispered. “We’re stopping this now.”

There was magic in this somewhere, she suddenly realized. A darker magic than she was acquainted with, but magic all the same. She should have known it from the first turn of the card. Should have sensed it in the air around them.

“No, please, I have to know,” Theo begged, stepping towards her. “Who is she?”

“Theo—”

“Augustine, please.”

Slowly, reluctantly, she reached forward, her fingers brushing the edge of the card.

Don’t, some small voice inside her whispered.

But the cards had already begun speaking.

Too late, she answered her own thoughts — as she turned the final card over.

The air left her lungs. A woman sitting beside a swirling sea, a cup cradled carefully in her hands.

The Queen of Cups.

Theo leaned closer to see it properly.

The woman on the card sat alone on a pebbled shore, an endless sea before her, a sealed cup cradled carefully in her hands as if whatever lay inside it was too precious — or too dangerous — to spill. This was a card of blue, from the sky to the sea to the rick silk of the Queen’s cloak. Augustine’s eyes blurred as she studied it, the blues blending together until it was impossible to tell where one shade ended and another began.