Page 106 of A Ghost’s Guide to Haunting a Witch

It was like blunt force trauma to the brain, how quickly Augustine’s mind reeled as she tried to make sense of her sister’s words.

He isn’t dead.

But she’d seen him, hadn’t she? She’d touched him eventually too, as the spell, memory, manifestation, whatever it was, evolved around them. She’d felt him. Kissed him. Made love to him, even. As a ghost.

Her stomach twisted sharply, because that wasn’t something you could simply misunderstand. You didn’t just imagine a whole person. You couldn’t create the weight of them against you, the warmth of their skin, the way they moved, the way they lay next to you. The way they felt inside of you.

You didn’t fall in love with a hallucination . . . right?

Augustine’s breath came quicker now, her thoughts tripping over each other. If Theo wasn’t dead . . . then who had she been holding on to? Who had she been talking with? Falling in love with?

“He’s not . . . dead,” she whispered, and Maddy nodded.

“Nope. He’s very much still alive, in fact.”

Everything in Augustine went completely still. “I don’t understand,” she said, completely stunned. “You mean all this time, he’s been alive and well?”

Maddy met her gaze. “Oh, Ags — I said alive . . . I never said he was well.”

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Augustine didn’t remember the journey back. Not properly.

There were flashes that stuck: the DLR rattling beneath her; the blur of glass buildings giving way to something quieter; the sound of her own footsteps echoing a little too loudly as she walked the last stretch. None of it felt real, though, so by the time she reached the flat in Greenwich, it felt less like she’d travelled there and more like she’d simply arrived.

The door clicked shut behind her and she stood there, looking around the hallway with new and knowing eyes. The flat was small and neat. It was filled to the brim with things that didn’t belong to her, things that would never belong to her, in fact. It was safe, yes, but there were no real traces of her here, not in the way there should have been. Not like there had been in the room above her shop. Here, there was no clutter built up over time, or knick-knacks with stories attached to them. There were no little, absent-minded messes that came from actually living somewhere. No photographs on the fridge, or mussed up linen on the bed.

There was no life here. Not really. It was all just . . . placed. All so terribly functional. Completely and utterly temporary.

Like a holding pen.

Augustine let out a breath, her shoulders sagging slightly as she moved further into the flat. Her fingers brushed over the back of a chair in the living room, testing it almost, in the hope that she might suddenly recognize something if she just touched enough of it.

Nothing came, though. Of course it didn’t. This wasn’t home. It had never been home.

It was just where she’d been put after her real life had been carefully dismantled and packed away out of reach. That realization should have hurt, Augustine reflected, but strangely, it didn’t. Instead, there was just a hollow kind of emptiness inside of her, like her grief had been wrapped in cotton wool before it could fully hurt her.

She sank slowly onto the edge of the sofa, her hands falling loosely into her lap.

Theo isn’t dead. The thought passed through her mind again, still as unbelievable as when she first heard it.

Theo wasn’t dead, but then, he wasn’t quite alive either. So, what was he? She’d held him. Spoken to him. Fallen in love with him. What had that been? Relationships were hard enough when your partner was alive. Apparently, they were even harder when he occupied a category all of his own.

Augustine‘s eyes stung, yet no tears came this time. She should have been crying. She should have been furious, or heartbroken, or overwhelmed. She should have taken to her bed like a melodramatic Victorian widow, curtains drawn, hand flung dramatically across her brow.

Instead, there was nothing. Just a hollow, echoing absence where her emotions should have been. It was like someone had reached inside her and carefully removed her feelings, exactly how Maddy had reached inside and taken her memories.

“Well, this is unsettling.”

Suddenly, Roy was there, lounging in his usual spot by the fire, one arm slung lazily over the back of the chair, a book in his lap as always. He eyed her. “You were out all night,” he added, narrowing his gaze slightly. “Where were you? I mean, I know the landlord was here yesterday fixing a pipe, and you didn’t want to hang with him and make awkward conversation and all, but staying out all night and then all day today was a bit of a dramatic avoidance technique.”

Augustine looked up but didn’t say a word.

Roy frowned. “Don’t give me that look,” he added. “What is this, some kind of—” he waved a hand vaguely — “moody, mysterious, don’t speak to me, I’m channelling 1994 Kylie right now phase?”

Augustine just stared at him.

Roy leaned forward slightly, squinting at her. “Hello?” he tried again. “Earth to Augustine? Did someone unplug you?”