Page 20 of A Ghost’s Guide to Haunting a Witch

“Oh, I will. Just . . . later.” She gestured to the pumpkins. “I’m a little busy right now.”

“So I see. You’ll get mice in here if you aren’t careful though,” Mrs Clayton remarked, still staring critically at the floor. “Mr Clayton and I would’ve been shut down if the café had been in the state this shop often is. But then, I suppose you aren’t serving food.”

“No. Even if I wanted to serve food, there’s no kitchen here.”

“No, not any more. It was pulled out years ago. We had it over there, behind some counters,” Mrs C told her, gesturing to the far wall. “And then the customers all sat over this way, while we kept all the dry goods in there.”

“The stock room,” Augustine replied absently. At that, a thought suddenly struck her, and she put her pumpkin down, looking over at Mrs Clayton curiously. “Mrs C?”

“Mmm?”

“When this was the café, was there anything upstairs? Like a room or something?”

Mrs Clayton’s fingers began to tap against the worn leather of her clutch. She looked nervous, the tapping of her fingers quickening with every second that passed, and Augustine felt something a little like dread build within her. Prickles ran across her skin, and she stepped closer to the older woman.

“Mrs C?” she pressed. “Is there something upstairs?”

“Why do you ask?” Mrs Clayton suddenly returned, an edge to her voice, and Augustine frowned.

“Well, Maddy said something about a place upstairs yesterday . . . but . . . but there isn’t one. Right?”

“Right,” Mrs Clayton agreed shortly, but her eyes flickered across the shop to the tall bookcase against the back wall, before they returned to Augustine. She held her gaze a moment too long, then gave a small laugh and straightened on the sofa. “Well, you know what your sister is like. So run off her feet by that employer of hers it’s no wonder she gets herself muddled up sometimes.”

Augustine nodded, but her own eyes drifted to the bookcase now, too.

Mrs Clayton laughed again. “Trust me, dearie. Mr C and I owned this place for years. The only thing upstairs was storage belonging to the estate agents next door. If there was ever a room up there, it’s long gone.”

Augustine nodded. She’d stood outside The Priestess Reversed that morning, studying the shape of the Georgian building. There was very clearly an upstairs — but no way to reach it from her shop.

Mrs Clayton was probably right. Whatever space occupied the first floor most likely belonged to the estate agents.

“Okay,” she said, returning Mrs Clayton’s smile. “No room.”

“No, of course not. If there’d been anything up there, Mr Clayton and I would have made use of it,” Mrs Clayton offered with a wink, and Augustine grimaced.

“I don’t need that visual in my mind, thank you very much.”

“What can I say?” Mrs Clayton grinned. “My Dennis is an attractive man.”

Augustine gave her a look. “Your husband is ninety-one years old.”

“And still as handsome as the day I married him,” Mrs Clayton replied, before she sighed. “1967 we were wed. A spring wedding. I wore a white crêpe dress with a lace overlay. My mother made the whole thing — she was a seamstress, worked in the curtain factory down Limehouse way — and my goodness, the pattern cost her a bob or two. It was worth it, though, when I saw the look in my Dennis’s eyes.”

Augustine nodded, but moved back to the pumpkins, all the same. The move was pointed, or at least, she hoped it was. The yummy mummy yoga session down the road would be wrapping up at eleven thirty and she wanted to catch them while they were still glowing, relaxed, and susceptible to — quite literally — the charms she stocked by the till. She’d sell them a candle or two and maybe the odd fertility amulet — they were mostly cheap moonstone from Taiwan, but in her shop, with the right lighting, they looked the part.

Unfortunately, Augustine knew from experience that Mrs Clayton was about to spiral into some wistful nostalgia for the past. That would be catastrophic for business; happy nostalgia didn’t sell. Witchcraft offered the promise of a better future, a path forward from unhappy past events. Witchcraft was about invoking spirits to rework, reinvent and renew. Mrs Clayton, with her pearl-lined clutch and apparently blissful marriage, wasn’t exactly the best salesperson for her shop, and Augustine needed her out.

“I worry about him, you know,” Mrs Clayton suddenly said, her tone lowering, and Augustine stopped, turning back towards her.

“They’re taking care of him, Mrs C,” she tried to reassure her. “He’s in the best place right now.”

“No.” Mrs Clayton sounded firm. “The best place for him is with me. It’s always been with me.”

At Mrs Clayton’s words, something inside of Augustine suddenly ached, nevertheless she tried to hide it with a half-smile. “It must be nice,” she said, trying to hide the abrupt waver in her voice. “To have that kind of love.”

“Yes,” Mrs Clayton agreed. “It is. You ought to try it for yourself again one of these days.”

Again. Augustine blinked.