Page 73 of A Ghost’s Guide to Haunting a Witch

The kiss was almost unbearably soft. So barely there that she wondered if she felt it at all, more of a question than a claim.

She’d kissed him before. Those kisses hadn’t been hers, though. No, they’d belonged to someone else, borrowed from another life. But this kiss? This kiss was different. This kiss was hers, and hers alone.

Augustine hadn’t even been certain she could kiss him, hadn’t known whether the same universe which allowed him to exist beside her would also allow her to touch him in such a way. Now, she had her answer, and she couldn’t help herself from tilting her face further towards his, wanting nothing more than to deepen this new touch between them.

At the same time, Theo’s hand slipped from her face, drifting downward — not breaking the closeness, just shifting — and he pointed, almost absently, towards the spread of cards beside them.

She followed the line of his gesture with her eyes. “The Two of Cups,” she whispered, into his lips.

The card lay between the others, unmistakable now that she was looking at it. Two figures, facing one another, offering something shared, something chosen. It wasn’t fate, and not inevitable, but something found and then chosen.

Of course it would be that one.

The card suddenly shimmered, and at first, Augustine thought it was just the candlelight catching the lacquered surface. But then, the figures on the Two of Cups shifted. They moved.

The tiny painted hands lifted, the cups tilting towards one another, mid-toast. The air between them seemed to ripple, something unseen passing from one to the other — something alive.

Her breath stilled as she tried to speak. “Theo—”

The room was already slipping, though, the walls of her shop wavering, the edges of shelves and shadows softening, dissolving like ink in water. The familiar weight of the space began to tilt, gravity loosening its hold.

And yet still — still — she could feel him, his lips still on hers, his breath warm on her cheek.

Augustine clung to him instinctively, her fingers curling slightly as if she could hold onto him through that single point of contact. The rest of the world unravelled, sound stretching thin, light bending into nothing, but Theo stayed, warm and real.

For one impossible, suspended moment, it felt like she was being pulled in two directions at once, backward into something already lived, and forward into something she hadn’t yet dared to name.

The card flared brighter, and the figures on it stepped closer, the space between them vanishing as Augustine’s world dropped away.

Augustine gasped softly against Theo’s mouth as the pull finally took her, the shop disappearing completely.

But even as the past closed around her, even as everything else changed, she could still feel the echo of him, and it was like a promise.

Like a thread she knew she could follow back.

And then she opened her eyes, and—

Chapter Twenty-Five

There are obvious connotations around the third date, of which I’m painfully, academically, feminist-theory-level aware, and which I know I absolutely should ignore.

I will not ignore them though. Not tonight.

I know, I know. It’s the patriarchy. It’s centuries of social conditioning wrapped up in a neat little three dates equals sex bow. It’s outdated, reductive, and honestly a bit embarrassing.

And yes, fuck the patriarchy. Burn it down. Salt the earth.

However, and inconveniently, this is Theo, and I actively want to sleep with him.

Which is not the same thing as being pressured into it, I would like to state for the record. This is not me succumbing to societal expectations. This is me, a fully modern and self-aware woman making a fully informed and entirely autonomous decision . . . that just happens to align perfectly with a deeply ingrained cultural trope.

It’s annoying, but what can you do?

If anything, I resent that the patriarchy got here first. I would have preferred to arrive at this conclusion independently, like a pioneer of my own bad decisions. Instead, I feel like I’m following a very well-worn path, except I’m doing it in excellent shoes and with better social commentary.

Theo has no idea, of course, although the fact that I’m wearing the same black dress he apparently loves will give him a pretty good hint, as will the knowledge that this is a natural expansion to our second date, which had been a dream.

It wasn’t at a bakery, that second date, but at a tiny cinema that smelled faintly of dust and buttered popcorn. Theo bought tickets for a classic cinema double feature — The Ghost and Mrs Muir and Blithe Spirit — and we sat too close together in seats that were definitely not designed for modern human comfort, sharing popcorn that was lukewarm at best. His arm brushed mine at least twelve times (yes, I counted, don’t judge me for it) and each time felt less accidental than the last.