Page 16 of A Ghost’s Guide to Haunting a Witch

Augustine wanted to stall. Claim she was busy. Tell herself she’d call back later, when she’d had time to think. But she knew this wasn’t later kind of stuff. It was now stuff; she hated now stuff.

She exhaled, long and slow, then reached for her mobile and sank into the sofa. The springs complained softly and Bird immediately leapt up into her lap, curling himself into a warm comma, perhaps sensing her unease yet being entirely unbothered by it.

“All right,” she murmured, more to herself than anyone else, before she glanced back at Roy, still staring at her with blatant interest. “You’re not going to listen to this entire call, are you?”

Roy didn’t even pretend to look offended — just nodded once. “Absolutely I am.”

“This is a private conversation,” Augustine said, as she loaded up Celeste’s number.

“Oh, Augustine, my darling,” Roy said with a knowing look. “Nothing between us is private. Not really. You know that. Now, stop with the pointless arguing. Put that thing on speaker phone. You know you’re going to tell me all about it afterwards anyway.”

She opened her mouth to argue — a whole speech lining up in her head about boundaries and personal space — but annoyingly, she knew he was right. Still, she pulled a face at him as she set it to speaker phone and pressed call.

“Ags?” Celeste answered immediately, and there it was: the tightness in her voice, the careful calm stretched thin over worry. “Are you all right?”

“Yes. I’m fine.”

“Maddy called me.”

“I figured.”

“She told me about this . . . this customer of yours.” Celeste sounded entirely unimpressed. “Frankly, Augustine, I don’t know what you expected. I told you opening a Wicca shop was a bad idea.”

Augustine shifted on the sofa, Bird’s tail flicking against her wrist. “You tell me a lot of things. Sometimes it's hard to keep track.”

“We’re meant to be blending in,” Celeste went on, undeterred. “Living quietly. Normally. Not selling our craft to tourists and bored Londoners with disposable income.”

“I sell candles,” Augustine snapped. “And incense. Overpriced incense at that. I don’t even sell spellwork, let alone my — our — craft.”

“That’s not the point and you know it.”

“It’s my choice,” Augustine said, heat creeping into her voice. “And it’s not as if I’m a real witch anyway, is it? So what harm is it?”

There was a pause. Not a dropped-signal pause, and not Celeste-checking-her-calendar pause. No. It was a deliberate and weighted silence, and Augustine shifted nervously.

“Of course you’re a real witch, Ags,” she said at last, quietly. “Of course you are.”

Augustine said nothing.

Celeste cleared her throat. “Hey. After Maddy told me what happened, I looked to the stars.”

“Of course you did,” Augustine replied flatly. “And?”

Momentarily, Celestine fell quiet. It was a silence that Augustine knew well, the kind that usually meant she was arranging several cosmic dominos before knocking them over all at once.

“I checked the chart for yesterday,” Celestine said. “I mean, I properly checked it. Time, location, the whole thing.”

Roy made a vague circling motion with his finger by his temple. I told you, batshit crazy, he mouthed at her, but Augustine ignored him.

“And?”

“And Uranus is doing something interesting.”

Augustine closed her eyes. “Celeste.”

“I’m serious. Uranus is in retrograde,” she said patiently, “but that’s not even the main point. It’s forming a tight opposition with Mercury, right as the veil’s thinning. Communication, truth, secrets coming out — all of it’s heightened. Especially around people who’ve been deliberately overlooked.”

Augustine opened one eye. “Overlooked by whom?”