Page 41 of A Ghost’s Guide to Haunting a Witch

Just like his eyes, she realized.

Theo frowned slightly. “So what does this mean?”

Augustine didn’t answer, because suddenly the room felt different. The air had grown thick and heavy, like the charged stillness before a storm. The candle flames on the table flickered wildly, bending sideways, despite the lack of wind.

“Theo,” she said quietly, her eyes still fixed on the card. “I think we’ve made a mistake.”

Theo stepped closer to her. “What kind of mistake?”

Augustine didn’t know how to answer that, because now the woman on the card was moving. Not much, but enough that Augustine noticed. There was a gentle rise and fall of her shoulders, and the faint ripple in the water beside her.

Augustine’s breath caught in her throat. “This isn’t possible—” she began, before the words stopped on her lips, because then the woman lifted her head, and looked straight at her.

Augustine staggered back a step as the candlelight flared violently, shadows leaping up the walls. The edges of the room seemed to bend inward, the world tilting as if gravity itself had shifted.

“Augustine?” Theo said sharply.

She could barely hear him now. She could hear water, the sea; the sound of waves breaking against unseen rocks was filling her head. The colours of the illustration began to bleed outward, blue and green spilling across the surface of the card like ink in water.

“No,” Augustine whispered, and her fingers felt wet where they were still touching the card. Hurriedly, she tried to pull her hand away.

But she couldn’t.

The pull was gentle at first, then stronger, like a tide dragging her forward.

“Theo—”

The table vanished. The candles vanished, and Theo’s voice dissolved into the roar of water.

Suddenly Augustine was falling, not through darkness, but through memory. And when she opened her eyes—

Chapter Sixteen

He might be the hottest guy I’ve ever seen.

Or maybe I’m just drunk.

Or maybe it’s a bit of both.

I’m sitting on a sofa, halfway through laughing at something when I first notice him. My plastic cat ears are sliding down my head again, and I’m in the middle of fixing them when he walks past.

Suddenly the joke isn’t funny anymore and I sit up straighter, staring, because he looks so completely, absurdly out of place. I mean, first of all, what even is his costume? This is a Halloween party. People are dressed as vampires, skeletons, sexy pirates, and at least three different versions of Harley Quinn.

But this guy? This guy looks like Steve Jobs circa 1998.

Black turtleneck. Blue jeans. Both of them are extremely well fitted, which I appreciate, but still.

He pauses near the kitchen doorway, glancing around the room like he’s trying to decode it. Or maybe he’s scoping it out as a potential venue to launch a new iPod.

The music is too loud, someone is standing on a table pouring vodka directly into a dinosaur costume’s mouth, and there’s fake cobwebs stuck to the ceiling. Meanwhile this guy looks like he wandered in from a tech conference. He runs a hand through his hair, still scanning the room, looking completely lost.

And for some reason . . .

That makes him even hotter.

“Hey,” a voice says beside me, and a masked face drops heavily onto my shoulder.

“Hey yourself,” I reply, my eyes still fixed on Steve Jobs 2.0 across the room. “Having fun?”