Page 6 of A Ghost’s Guide to Haunting a Witch

“But I was told you’re a divination witch,” he finally said. “Divination witches . . . they read the cards, don’t they?” He paused, stepping closer to her. “They speak to the dead, too.”

The words hit her like ice water, and she recoiled at once.

“I don’t.” Heat rushed to her face. “No. That’s not true, that’s not—”

“I need your help,” he cut in, not unkindly, but with a weight that stopped her cold. “I need you to read the cards. Speak to the dead for me—”

She was on her feet before she realized she’d moved, stool scraping softly against the floor. Her hands shook, and she curled them into fists to hide it.

“No,” she said sharply, shaking her head. “I don’t do that. Not—” She forced herself to calm down. “Look, you’ve got the wrong person. Please leave.”

“But—”

“I said get out.”

The silence between them became thick and heavy. He searched her face one last time, seemingly looking for something he’d lost. Then his shoulders sagged, all resolve draining out of him.

“Right,” he said quietly. “I’ll go.”

Augustine swallowed hard, fixing her eyes stubbornly on the counter between them, and a moment later, the bell over the door chimed. By the time she looked up again, he was gone.

She stood there for a long beat, heart hammering, before finally exhaling a shaky breath.

You’re a divination witch. You speak to the dead.

Her gaze drifted towards the counter. Almost absently, she slid open the drawer beneath it.

Inside sat her tarot deck, worn soft at the edges from generations of handling. It had once belonged to her mother, her grandmother before that, and — if family mythology was to be believed — several equally dramatic women further back besides.

The cards were ancient. Old enough to have survived at least one plague and, quite possibly, the Spanish Inquisition. Augustine kept them now out of sentiment rather than conviction, because she didn’t read the cards any more.

Not after the last reading.

Still, and almost without meaning to, Augustine reached for them. She shuffled once, her fingers out of practice and clumsy, before drawing a card, holding it momentarily to her chest. Who is he? She asked the question before she could stop herself, laying the card on the counter, tentative and slow.

The Hanged Man.

Augustine swallowed, staring at the image before her. The figure hung upside-down, calm and resigned — but somehow watching her with sharp blue eyes. He was a warning, and not the gentle kind either. The hanged man didn’t mean proceed with caution. No, he was more hit the brakes immediately and reconsider every life choice that brought you to this exact moment.

The last time Augustine had drawn a warning, she hadn’t recognized it for what it was.

She’d been paying for that mistake ever since. She could not afford to make it again.

“Well,” she whispered to the empty shop. “Fuck.”

Chapter Two

Augustine fumbled with her keys, her fingers stiff with both the cold and overwork. She had a bag of shopping weighing down one hand and a box of cat food under the other, and she really, really didn’t have the patience for her rickety old door today.

“Come on, come on,” she muttered, wriggling her key this way and that. The half-rusted, stubborn old lock was one of the many drawbacks of her current home. Ever since she’d moved in, she’d had a bit of a love-hate relationship with the place. The flat sat tucked into the attic of a narrow townhouse on the other side of Greenwich park, all slanted ceilings, worn walls, and questionable insulation. On colder days, the ice crept in like it paid rent, while in summer the place turned into an oven. It once got so hot that a random pot plant her sister, Clem, gifted her — apparently a pineapple plant, though Augustine hadn’t known that until the bloody thing fruited — managed to grow an actual pineapple. More than that, it felt very much like the whole place was held together by nothing more than sticky tape and glue, with a large degree of hope, faith and prayers thrown into the mix.

She hated the way the walls flaked if you looked at them too hard. The way the stairs complained every time you stood on them.

Still. Cheap rent had a magic all of its own.

It had come fully furnished, too, even if it was an odd early 90’s aesthetic set against Victorian walls. A brightly coloured sofa here, neon prints there. Mostly black wooden furniture, battered over time. Glass cabinet doors. Even an old stereo unit, complete with CD player and an enviable collection of Madonna CDs. None of it matched, none of it worked, but to Augustine, none of it mattered, because here, she was allowed to keep her cat.

Augustine could put up with a lot for that — the draughts, the creaking floorboards, the way the building groaned like an old man clearing his throat when the wind picked up. Sometimes it felt like her cat was the only consistent thing in her life these days, though she never thought too hard about why that felt true. Bird was a solid black presence threaded through her life like a constant spell — sleek, clever and opinionated, with bright eyes that missed nothing.