Page 9 of A Ghost’s Guide to Haunting a Witch

He shrugged again. “I can’t. I like the aesthetic too much.”

“You mean you like the Madonna collection.”

“Hey. Each and every one of her songs is a banger, and you know it.”

Augustine made no reply to that, tapping out an Uber Eats order on her phone. She paid, ignoring the hit it would make on her already diminished bank account, before crossing her arms over her chest and staring into the fire.

“He’s going to come back, you know,” she said, more to herself than Roy, though she felt his eyes fall upon her anyway.

“Who will?”

“You know who.”

“Voldemort?”

She looked up again, rolling her eyes. “No. The customer. From today. He’ll come back.”

“Why would he do that? You already told him you don’t do that kind of thing.”

The fire crackled softly, and for a heartbeat, Augustine could’ve sworn the shadows leaned in a little closer, listening to her every word.

“I can just . . . feel it.”

She wasn’t lying. That odd atmosphere from earlier — that light pressure, that slight hum under her skin — had crept back in, subtle but insistent. Like the world clearing its throat again, waiting for her to pay attention. She shifted in her seat, suddenly restless, and Bird moved away, offended.

Roy watched her for a long moment, then said, “You just . . . feel it? Are you sure you don’t want to start offering clairvoyance at your shop?”

Her smile was wry and entirely too self-aware. The kind of smile that knew exactly where all the bones were buried, as well as who’d put them there.

“I can’t,” she said simply.

“You can,” Roy insisted. “You print off some leaflets, throw a poster up—”

“No.” Augustine’s smile didn’t fade. If anything, it sharpened just a touch. “I can’t. Because as a witch I am, and have always been, one hundred per cent a fraud.”

Chapter Three

There was something to be said for being witch-bred and coven-born but still entirely powerless.

Not that Augustine ever complained. There was no space in her family for complaints. Her mother, Eglantine, had had her hands full with the demands of her coven, her four daughters, and the necessity of living in hiding — which meant maintaining a perfectly ordinary and very visible public life as managing director of the northern branch of a large telecommunications firm.

Samantha in Bewitched had her Derwood; Eglantine in Newcastle had 9 a.m. budget meetings and quarterly forecasts.

Augustine had grown up knowing her mother was one of the greatest witches of her generation. Of that, there was no doubt. Other girls had mothers who served chocolate cake at birthday parties, handed out plastic party bags, and wore jeans with sensible ballet flats. Eglantine, on the other hand, made muffins out of the blood of Hestia (surprisingly flowery; honestly not terrible), gave rose quartz as party favours, and floated around in silk skirts that swished as she walked. Well, at least on weekends she did. Monday to Friday she wore power suits with heels so sharp they could have taken an eye out.

Augustine had watched her older sister, Celestine, grow into a formidable lunar witch, reading stars and planets as easily as other people read headlines. She’d watched her little sister, Clementine, become a powerful green witch, coaxing life out of soil and stem with nothing more than her touch. She’d even watched her baby sister, Madeline, turn into a spell witch of rare precision — someone people sought out for magical interventions and occasional hexes.

Augustine had watched all of this happen with deep pride, mild envy, and the creeping realization that whatever gift she’d been meant to inherit had clearly been misplaced in the post. Her mother was a legendary name in their secretive world, and her sisters were well on the way to being so, too, while Augustine . . .

Well, Augustine was just Augustine — or Ags, but to her sisters only.

“You’ll be a divination witch,” her grandmother had once told her, peering at her closely. “You have the sight, just like me.”

In retrospect, Augustine suspected her grandmother’s sight may not have been what it once was.

She’d been trained, at least. Painstakingly so. Her grandmother, determined if nothing else, had taught her the cards one by one — their symbols, their histories, the careful choreography of a proper spread. Augustine could read them fluently, confidently, even impressively. The trouble was, every interpretation came from memory and pattern, not from revelation. She read the cards the way an actor read lines: well-rehearsed, technically accurate, and entirely devoid of prophecy.

Nothing ever happened.