Page 46 of A Ghost’s Guide to Haunting a Witch

“Why, what are you, some kind of witch?” he asks.

I give a small, teasing smile. “You have no idea.”

“I’d like to find out.”

My stomach flips again. He’s not just cute, I decide.

He’s gorgeous.

I decide to be brave. “Over dinner, maybe?”

“Deal,” he replies instantly, and a grin spreads across his face.

A small silence settles after that, but this one feels different from the earlier ones. It’s softer and so much easier.

“So,” I say, after another moment, “do you have a name? Or should I just keep calling you Mr Jobs?”

“Theo,” he says, before he adds, “Theo Manford. It’s nice to meet you.”

He holds out his hand, and the gesture is simple, polite, and almost old-fashioned. For some reason, it makes me smile. I reach out automatically to shake it, his hand warm and solid, and the moment our fingers touch—

Chapter Seventeen

The door slammed behind her with enough force to rattle the floorboards.

Augustine leaned back against it immediately, her hand gripping the handle like the flat might try to throw her back out again, and for a few seconds she just stood there, breathing hard.

Calm, she ordered herself. You’re home. You’re safe. Chill out, before you give yourself a stroke.

The hallway light flickered faintly overhead while somewhere in the wall a pipe clanked ominously. Her mail had been shoved under the door, and Augustine looked down at the pile of junk leaflets by her shoes with a feeling of despair. An advert for a new Indian takeaway. The details of a cleaning service. Price cuts at a local supermarket. All of it felt distant and unreal, like she’d walked into the wrong life by mistake.

Maybe I have, her mind traitorously thought. Maybe this isn’t my life at all.

With a start, Augustine pushed the thought away rapidly, her chest still rising and falling too quickly. “Okay,” she whispered. “Okay. You need to chill. You need to calm down.”

She pushed herself away from the door and stumbled a few steps into the living room before dropping onto the sofa. She felt like a puppet someone had cut the strings off, unable to hold her body upright, her hands shaking horribly. It wasn’t the small, ordinary kind of shaking that came from nerves or too much caffeine either. No, this was much deeper, and much more disconcerting. A bone-deep tremor that hadn’t stopped since the moment she’d snapped back into her body at the table in her shop.

The cards. The memory.

And Theo.

Theo Manford.

Augustine pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes, remembering it all with a mute kind of horror.

She’d run the moment the world had come rushing back to her. Abandoned her shop and her cards, as well as the ghost sitting so hopefully across from her. She hadn’t said a word, just stood, grabbed her coat, and fled like the building was cursed.

She’d barely even managed to lock the door.

Theo had called after her — she remembered that much. His voice had followed her, confused and worried. “Augustine?”

She hadn’t stopped, though. Instead, she’d rushed through the Greenwich streets, past displays of Halloween pumpkins, vampires and toilet paper- wrapped mummies until she’d reached the safety of her home. She didn’t dare turn around or try to explain. Because how could she? How on earth could she tell Theo any of what she’d just been through?

Oh, sorry, I just inhabited the body of your girlfriend from across both time and space. Did you know you met at a Halloween party where she was dressed as a cat? Did you know you caught her when she fell out of a lift? Did you know your hands feel like warm water when they touch someone? Oh, and did you know I might slowly be going crazy? Also, would you mind terribly if we never — never ever — speak about this again?

Augustine groaned softly and let her head fall back against the sofa, while her stomach rolled uneasily. The out-of-body sensation she’d experienced still clung to her skin like static electricity, like her soul hadn’t quite settled properly back into place yet, and worse, much, much worse . . .

She could still feel it.