Page 47 of A Ghost’s Guide to Haunting a Witch

Slowly, she lifted her hands to her hair, her fingers hovering over the top of her head. She knew they wouldn’t find anything there, of course they wouldn’t. But still. Still she could feel them, that soft, ridiculous weight of cat ears sliding irritably down her hair, just like they had that night.

Augustine squeezed her eyes shut. “Nope,” she muttered firmly to the ceiling. “No. Absolutely not. Stop thinking about it. Stop remembering it. They aren’t even your memories to remember.”

She dropped her hands into her lap, because if she started unpacking that sensation — the memory of the party, of the lift, of Theo’s hand around hers — she was fairly certain she might actually throw up, or scream, or both. And the worst part? The part that made her stomach twist even harder?

The worst part was that she liked Theo even more now. She really, really liked him.

Augustine groaned. Before the memory, Theo had just been . . . well, a ghost. An extremely handsome ghost with kind eyes and a strangely endearing habit of quoting statistics at inappropriate moments true, but still, all the same, just a ghost. A mildly inconvenient supernatural problem who had wandered into her shop.

That had been manageable. But this? This was very much not manageable. Now she knew what it felt like to stand close to him while he laughed. Now she knew what his hands felt like when they caught someone, warm, steady, and oh so careful on her skin. He had the sort of hands that didn’t drop things, the sort of hands that instinctively held on.

Brilliant, Augustine thought as she stared at the ceiling. Now you’ve got a full-blown crush on a man who has a girlfriend, is currently extremely determined to find and protect said girlfriend, and, oh, yes: a man who is also dead.

There was a long moment of silence in the flat as another thought crept quietly into her mind, unwelcome and persistent: he had a girlfriend. A girlfriend he was trying desperately to find. A girlfriend he believed might be in danger.

Which meant that somewhere out there was a real woman who had loved him. A real woman who had lost him. A woman who was probably mourning him.

Augustine swallowed. That woman deserved better than her sitting here on her sofa developing inappropriate feelings for her dead boyfriend. That woman deserved better than for her to start romancing Theo from beyond the grave.

Augustine pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes. “This is a mess,” she stated, only to uncover her eyes and look straight into the face of her flatmate.

“Bad day?” Roy asked archly, a book in one hand and his glasses in the other.

“You have no idea.”

“You’re home really early,” Roy remarked, watching her with calm patience. He clearly recognized a brewing crisis when he saw one. Then, with deliberate slowness, he crossed the room and lowered himself into his usual armchair by the fire, which gave a soft, familiar creak as he settled into it. He adjusted his glasses, opened his book, and placed it carefully on his knee.

But he didn’t read it. No. Instead he just sat there, waiting.

Augustine stared stubbornly at the opposite wall.

Roy waited.

She picked at a loose thread on the sleeve of her jumper.

Roy waited.

The silence stretched out for a good thirty seconds before he sighed softly and set the book down on the small table beside his chair, crossing his legs languidly.

“All right,” he said mildly. “Tell me what happened.”

“Nothing happened. I had a normal afternoon.”

“You fled your shop two hours early, slammed the door to this place hard enough to shake the building, and then announced to the furniture that your life is ‘a mess’.” Roy paused. “Yes. That all sounds very normal.”

Augustine scowled at him, but Roy simply leaned back in his armchair, folding his hands together over his stomach in that infuriatingly perceptive way he had.

“You’ll feel better if you tell me,” he informed her. “You know you will.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Ah.” Roy leaned forward. “So, something did happen then.”

Augustine groaned. “Roy—”

“Come on,” he coaxed. “Emotional honesty is therapeutic. Strip it down to zero, and you’ll feel so much better on the other side.”

“Strip it down to zero?” Augustine rolled her eyes. “Where on earth did you get that from?”