Page 3 of A Ghost’s Guide to Haunting a Witch

Witchcraft. This is actual witchcraft. Not aesthetic tarot readings or moon-water influencers on Instagram. Not crystal shops squeezed between vape stores and cafés.

This is bindings. Omens. Messages sent by fire and wind.

Whatever you send into the world comes back threefold, I suddenly remember, and as the Rule of Three flashes unhelpfully through my mind, I stare at the witch. Why is she doing this? Why is she taking this kind of risk?

Another thought strikes me. Why am I?

And then I remember. I remember all of it.

The witch stares at me. “Should I keep going?” she asks.

“Yes.” I nod. “Keep going.”

Chapter One

In the thirty-one years of Augustine Pepperday’s life, there had always been one golden rule: never — never, ever — tell anyone you’re a witch.

That was it. Clean. Non-negotiable.

It was like the first rule of Fight Club, except with significantly higher stakes (as in burning ones). It was like ‘We Don’t Talk About Bruno’, but with a less catchy melody and far more magic.

Witches didn’t talk about witchhood. End of.

With Theo, she broke that rule in under a week. But she was getting ahead of herself.

He first arrived in mid-October, just as she was getting ready to decorate her shop for Halloween. So far as customers went, he was fairly innocuous. Brown-haired, fairly tall. Wearing a coat a size too big for him. Lurking in the runes and crystal healing section and surreptitiously looking at her over a copy of How To Channel Your Inner Spirit Guide. So far, so everyday-straight-guy-out-of-place-in-a-Wicca-shop. He was probably trying to buy a gift for a free spirit girlfriend, or maybe picking up a manifestation candle for his slightly kooky sister. Nothing Augustine hadn’t seen before, and nothing she wouldn’t see again.

She watched him for five minutes as he ambled about her shop, looking at everything from candles to incense sticks to salmon flavoured healing teas for emotionally overwrought cats. She gave him those five minutes out of professional courtesy, which was really just another way of saying she was people watching. Augustine had always been good at that. You didn’t grow up in a house stacked with tarot decks and spell jars without learning how to read someone the way other people read bus timetables.

It was when he gave her another furtive look from behind an oversized apothecary table that something twigged in her mind.

This one is nervous.

Not the usual I’m scared this witch will curse me nervous, either. His hands weren’t twitchy, and he didn’t flinch every time a bell chimed or a candle guttered. He just kept . . . well, hesitating. Circling the same shelves over and over again. Glancing at her in a way that suggested he needed help, and then looking back down when she raised a brow at him.

That, more than anything, was what made her sigh softly and straighten up. “Do you need any help at all, sir?”

Her voice carried through the shop brightly, in the nondescript tone she used to suggest he was very welcome and that there was no judgement here. He could have told her he thought astrology and astronomy were basically the same thing (they aren’t), and that crystals were just rocks with a better colour palette (actually, kind of true) and she’d still sell him some overpriced candles.

He blinked at her. Properly blinked, as though seeing her had derailed whatever he’d been thinking. For a split second he looked genuinely startled she was real, or that she’d noticed him at all.

“Oh. Um . . .” He glanced down at the book that was currently in his hands, then back at her. His eyes were a blue that just crept onto the palette of grey, and he searched her face with them fervently, as though seeking out something hidden within her own.

It was the oddest feeling, Augustine thought, as a spark lit within her at his gaze. It wasn’t quite recognition, but nor was it unknowing, and for just a moment she allowed herself to look back at him, meeting his eyes and holding them. Something that felt a little like electricity slid down her spine, and she held his gaze for a second longer than strictly necessary, before chewing on her lip and looking away, momentarily taken aback by her own reaction. Stunned by the unexpected pull of attraction, pure and unadulterated, she felt towards him.

Then, a beat later, suspicion clicked into place. “Oh God, are you a shoplifter or something?” She crossed her arms over her chest. “Because if you are, I feel like I should warn you there are much better shops in this area to rob. Like, offensively better.”

He flushed, his cheeks turning a deep, immediate red. “I’m not a shoplifter.”

“Are you sure?” She folded her arms. “Because you’ve been staring at that book like you’re either about to steal it or hit someone over the head with it, and as my shop insurance is skimpy at best, both of those options are concerning to me.”

“I was just, uh, looking.”

“Mmm,” Augustine said, in a tone that suggested she didn’t believe him even slightly. She crossed the shop towards him, her long skirts swaying as she moved, and stopped at his side. Leaning in, she peered down at the book in his hands. “’Turning Menopause into Zenopause: A Wiccan Guide to the Change of Life’,” she read aloud, her voice going distinctly flat.

There was a pause, before she turned her head slowly to look at him. “I’m going to be honest,” she said. “Shoplifting might actually be the more respectable choice for you right now.”

If Augustine thought he’d been blushing before she’d been utterly mistaken, because now he went a shade of red so dark he was nearly purple.