Page 114 of A Ghost’s Guide to Haunting a Witch

“She’ll be back,” Augustine told her, over and over again, unsure if she was reassuring Clem or herself.

Finally, the house went still, and Augustine stood alone in the kitchen, her phone in her hand.

She called Celestine once and then again. Both calls went straight to voicemail.

“Come on,” she muttered on a third attempt, pacing now. “Come on, pick up—”

Still, there was nothing, and the silence pressed in around her.

Abruptly, Augustine’s gaze snagged on the table. On her tarot cards, which were still exactly where she’d left them. The Priestess peered up at her, and Augustine frowned slightly, stepping closer, because something about it . . . Something wasn’t right. She reached out, her fingers brushing the edge of the card, looking at it from all angles.

Angles, she realized with a dull thud, and the world seemed to tilt around her.

The card wasn’t upright. It wasn’t upright at all. No. It was reversed.

Augustine stood frozen to the spot, her mind scrambling, racing backwards. The draw. The placement. Her explanation.

Her answer.

“Yes,” she had said. “You can trust him.”

She’d been so certain. Upright always meant yes. But reversed . . . Reversed, and the meaning shifted. It warped, in fact. Turned inward and wrong.

Blocked intuition. Secrets. Hidden truths. A warning not to trust what appears.

A no. A cold, absolute no.

Augustine’s breath hitched. “Oh my God,” she whispered, and her stomach dropped, because she hadn’t read the card from her mother’s side of the table.

Not really. She’d read it from her side of the table.

And so her reading was wrong.

Desperately, terribly wrong.

Chapter Forty-One

“She never came back,” Augustine said, her voice worn thin at the edges, like something handled too many times. “We never saw her again.” She didn’t look at Mrs Clayton as she spoke. Her gaze had drifted somewhere else entirely — back there.

“Celeste came home the next day,” she went on. “She stayed with me. With the others. We did everything we were supposed to do. Called everyone you’re meant to call. The police were kind enough. Social services were even kinder.” There was a small, brittle pause. “But Mum never came home.”

Mrs Clayton’s grip tightened around her bag, the leather creaking faintly under the pressure. “What happened to her?”

Augustine shook her head. “We don’t know. We still don’t know. It’s still open. A missing person case, even now. But Celestine . . .” Augustine felt an old flicker of unease light once more within her. “She didn’t leave it there. She went looking for answers. Found another coven. One that knew about us.”

Mrs Clayton leaned forward slightly. “And?”

“They told her it was a witch hunter,” Augustine said quietly. “That one of them had gotten close. Slipped into our mother’s life. Made her trust him.”

Mrs Clayton’s expression sharpened. “Who?”

Augustine shrugged. “We don’t know. Not his name. Not where he came from. Nothing real enough to hold on to. But we didn’t take chances after that. I mean, we were lucky. Normally when a witch hunter takes one, he takes them all. Celestine thinks mum—” she stopped, taking a deep breath. “She thinks mum must have fought back. Stopped them somehow from coming for us. Bought us some time.” Her gaze steadied slightly now, something firmer beneath the grief. “We left the North. All of us. I took the girls and started over in London. New place, new name.” The corner of her mouth lifted faintly, not taking any real humour with it. “Pepperday.”

Mrs Clayton blinked. “Pepperday?”

“Celestine found it on a gravestone,” Augustine said lightly. “Thought it sounded solid. Untraceable.” A small shrug. “As good a name as any, when you’re trying to disappear.” She added, more quietly, “I left university to look after the girls. Celestine went back — but somewhere else. Different city. Different life.”

“That doesn’t seem fair,” Mrs Clayton remarked.