Page 8 of A Ghost’s Guide to Haunting a Witch

She took a deep breath. “A customer came in this afternoon.”

“Isn’t that a good thing?”

“Normally. But this one . . . he was . . .” Augustine thought for a moment. “Odd.”

“Odd? What do you mean? Odd like he had one leg significantly shorter than the other? Or a lopsided beard? Or maybe—” Roy shuddered — “mismatched eyebrows?”

“No, nothing like that. I don’t mean his looks were odd. He was, I don’t know, conventionally attractive, and—”

“Oh, really?” Roy cut in with a delighted raise of an eyebrow. “Conventionally attractive, you say?”

“Stop it.” Augustine tried not to think of the customer’s grey-blue eyes and thick brown hair. “It wasn’t like that. I told you. He was . . . odd.”

“Odd how?”

Augustine stopped scratching Bird’s head, meeting Roy’s gaze and holding it. “He asked me to read the cards.” She swallowed. “He asked me to speak to the dead.”

Roy’s eyes widened. “Can you do that?”

She shrugged. “I can read the cards. But then anyone can, with the right training.”

“Okay. And the other thing?” Roy swallowed. “Speaking to the dead?”

Augustine gave another small, non-committal shrug in reply. “My grandmother could do it.” Abruptly she stood, and Bird gave a hiss of disapproval. “This customer, though . . . He said he’d been told I did it. That I could do it.”

Roy took his glasses off, cleaning the lenses thoughtfully. “He was misinformed then? I mean, your shop gives every impression of that sort of thing. If I walked in off the street, I’d assume you read tarot and communed with the beyond between serving customers and going on coffee runs to Starbucks.”

Augustine shot him a look. “I know it gives that impression. But I’ve never offered it. Not once. I sell candles. Overpriced incense kits handmade in China. Herbal teas that may or may not contain herbs.” She threw her hands up. “I do not and never have, offered tarot readings or clairvoyance. I don’t even stock Ouija boards.”

Roy nodded thoughtfully, his gaze drifting back towards the fire. Augustine didn’t like that look. It usually preceded a suggestion she’d hate.

“Well,” he said slowly, “have you considered that maybe you should?”

She blinked. And there it was. “Should what? Stock Ouija boards?”

“No.” Roy scowled. “Offer readings. Clairvoyance. The whole mystical experience.” He shrugged lightly. “It’d be a whole new income stream. People would pay obscene amounts for that sort of thing from a real-life witch.”

Augustine rolled her eyes, sinking back into the sofa. Bird hopped indignantly into her lap a second later, and she rubbed behind his ears again. “Absolutely not. Never.”

Roy smiled thinly. “Shame. You’d be very good at it.”

“You and I both know that’s a lie.” She sighed, glancing back into the hallway where her shopping still sat abandoned on the floor. “Fuck it. I’m ordering Chinese,” she announced, already reaching for her phone. “Do you want anything?”

Roy shook his head, then slid his glasses back on, expression suddenly serious. “For the record,” he said quietly, “I never talk about you. Not to anyone.”

Her fingers stilled, and she looked over at him with a half-smile, something tight in her chest easing just a fraction. “Thanks.”

Roy smiled back at her, before he seemed to realize what he was doing and straightened his back. “Well,” he said quickly, “when you get to our age, telling other people that you still live with a roommate is a little embarrassing.”

Augustine scowled at him. “You don’t have to stay here, you know.”

“I was here first, remember?”

“All the same.”

He shrugged. “I can’t leave.”

She rolled her eyes at him. “Roy.”