Chapter 4
The shop was nestled in the oldest part of town, where the blacktop buckled like a heap date and the buildings crowded against each other like drunks at last call.
Roots pushed up through cracks in the sidewalk like the earth itself was trying to retch up the past, and the Southern heat wasn’t letting up any time soon.
The lacklustre storefront in question looked less like a business and more like a moldy gingerbread house.
White trim was no longer white, and the brown siding was gappy.
Its stained-glass windows had probably once looked charming, but now just looked worn, depicting moon phases, a few strategically placed snakes, and a very smug-looking goat.
Planters overflowed with aggressively blooming nightshade.
Above the crooked door, was a worn wooden sign.
The Crusty Cauldron.
Charming.
“Let me guess,” I muttered, eyeing the pastel pentagrams etched into the cobblestones. “The local kitchen witch–queen of spite and overpriced baguettes?
Zelda snorted beside me, possibly still nursing a grudge against a teething garden gnome. “Her name’s Gigi Foxworth. Not a real witch… just a wannabe.”
“Even worse,” I groaned.
“Hard agree,” Zelda concurred, as she pushed the shop door open.
The bell above it gave an ominous jangle, and the scent hit me like a mood swing.
Cardamom, clove, scorched cinnamon, and something darker underneath.
Old magic gone sour? Maybe the psychic residue of customers with buyer’s remorse. Probably just burnt croissants.
The place was a riot of color and chaos.
Shelves sagged beneath bread rolls, heavy-looking pies, and cakes.
An entire wall was dedicated to hexed self-help books, and jars labeled things like Confidence in a Dust Cloud and Grudge Butter – Apply Liberally.
The place was the spiritual love child of a metaphysical store, a bohemian bakery, and a very enthusiastic thrift store.
A taxidermied peacock glared at me from the top of a tall bookcase. I glared right back.
Behind the counter stood Gigi Foxworth, all crimson curls and caftan fury.
Her eyeliner winged out like knives, and her bracelets jangled like war bells.
She looked like she’d been born in a séance and raised by wolves.
As we entered she glanced up from the pie crust she was rolling out and smiled.
The kind of smile that suggested she’d enjoy watching me fall into a hole. That she dug. With her bare hands.
“Well, well,” she purred, her voice honeyed and barbed. “Look what the hag dragged in.”
Zelda smirked. “Still selling fake love potions that taste like spare change and glitter glue?”
“I only sell what people need, darling.”
They circled each other in tone and posture like cats in velvet armor, claws sheathed… for now.
“Ladies,” I cut in, voice smooth but tight, smiling just enough to not seem threatening. “Let’s not turn this into a magical slap fight. I have enough trauma without watching two adult witches reenact Mean Girls in technicolor.”
Gigi narrowed her eyes at me, looking me up and down like she was measuring me for an astral coffin. Her mouth tightened at one corner, like she’d just tasted something bitter and was trying to decide if I was the cause or the cure. “You must be the ghost whisperer. You’re taller than I imagined.”
“And you’re louder than I hoped,” I said sweetly, offering her a smile that didn’t reach my eyes. “Good news really does travel fast. I’m here about Beau Moran.”
Her expression didn’t shift, but the air in the shop did.
Just a breath, barely noticeable, but it pressed against my skin like a warning.
The kind of shift that told me someone was putting up emotional wards even if they didn’t realize it.
Gigi didn’t flinch, didn’t blink, but she was suddenly too still.
And silence that precise? That was always deliberate.
One of the candles on the shelf beside her guttered violently, flame bowing as if someone had exhaled directly across its wick.
My senses prickled in response. Not enough to scream guilty, but just enough to murmur that she knew something.
Something she didn’t want unearthed. People underestimate what ghosts leave behind.
But I’d spent enough time listening to the dead to know when the living were holding their breath.
And Gigi? She was practically turning blue.
“Tragic,” she said finally, going back to rolling out her pie crust. “Such a waste of good cheekbones. He used to buy my Love Hexes by the crate. Could never stick to just one woman. Or man. Or—well, anything that moved, really.”
“Were you two close?” I asked, watching her carefully.
She paused for half a heartbeat too long, then lifted her chin in that particular way practiced liars did. “Not close. Entertained, perhaps. We had... transactions.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Magical or personal?”
She smirked, leaning across the counter with a wink. “In this town, it’s all the same thing.”
“Gross—no, it isn’t,” Zelda assured me, speaking out of the corner of her mouth.
Gigi shrugged, all nonchalance and sharp corners. “We flirted. He was easy on the eyes and allergic to commitment. He also borrowed a few of my business ideas and tried to repackage them with worse branding.”
Zelda snorted and made a noise like a dying cat. “Oh, please. You didn’t invent crystal-infused coffee. You just trademarked the phrase ‘drink your damn aura.’”
“I copyrighted it,” Gigi corrected, smug enough to curdle milk. “There’s a difference. And Beau was a parasite. Had the audacity to open a café-slash-‘spiritual lounge’ three weeks after I opened here. Called it ‘Bean There, Hexed That.’”
I winced like I’d just heard a dad joke in the middle of a summoning circle. “That’s cringeworthy.”
Gigi shrugged.
“So you didn’t like him,” I pressed.
“No one liked him, darling,” she said with a roll of her heavily mascaraed eyes. “We tolerated him because he threw good parties and made bad decisions. The man had the moral compass of a squirrel in a diamond shop and the emotional depth of a bathtub plug. But he had charisma, I’ll give him that.”
I glanced sideways at Zelda, who was suspiciously quiet.
“Did you ever threaten him?” I asked, keeping my tone casual, like we were chatting about bad dates and not potential murder.
Gigi let out a sharp, sparkling laugh. “Please. I don’t waste good spells on walking cautionary tales.”
Zelda barked a laugh at the words good spells.
Gigi raised a brow, but continued. “If I was going to curse anyone into the afterlife, it wouldn’t be someone with as much lingering energy as Beau. Too messy. Too sticky. I’d go for someone boring. The kind of ghost no one misses. Like my last accountant. Or Cheryl from the zoning board.”
She began fussing with a tray of pink macarons that shimmered faintly with embedded runes that were probably charged with lust, stamina, or something else that didn’t bear thinking about. Her bracelets chimed with each movement, delicate and distracting all at once.
I turned, about to suggest we cut our losses and bolt when I realized Zelda was no longer beside me.
A cold prickle slid down my spine.
I scanned the shop quickly and found her crouched in the back corner, looking suspiciously guilty, beside a tiered display labeled Clarity Cakes – Now With Extra Self-Awareness!
She had bright yellow frosting around her mouth and the kind of frozen posture that screamed caught in the act.
Her pupils were dilated. Her lips twitched.
And her aura was sparking with a bizarre shade of chartreuse, which was never a good sign.
I hissed, “Zelda. Seriously?”
She looked up like a puppy with a stolen cookie. “I thought it was lemon!”
“It glows, Zelda.”
“Well, now I know,” she whispered, then hiccupped. Her cheeks flushed with unnatural emotion. Then, from somewhere deep in her diaphragm, she belted, loudly, and with alarming pitch-perfect clarity,
“The hiiiiiiiills are aliiiiiiiive… with the sound of muuuuuuu-sic!”
Every crystal in the shop vibrated in response. A candle snuffed itself out in the corner.
I clapped a hand over her mouth mid-aria. “What was in that?” I asked Gigi without looking back.
“Emotional expression enhancement,” Gigi called unhelpfully from the counter, not even pretending to hide her glee. “They’re very cathartic. Sometimes they unlock show tunes. She’s probably repressing something.”
Zelda tried to sing through my hand, but just ended up sounding muffled, indignant, and still somehow in key. I dragged her bodily toward the door, resisting the urge to kick over the entire snack display.
“We’ll be in touch,” I growled, which was a lie.
“Oh, I hope not,” Gigi called cheerfully, waving a macaron like a wand. “Don’t come again. I’ll put your names on the loyalty hex.”
The bell jangled behind us as we stumbled back into the daylight, Zelda humming something from Les Misérables under her breath like a possessed jukebox and me questioning every decision that had led me to this godforsaken town full of cursed desserts, chaotic witches, and ghosts who flirted like it was their job.
Assjacket was going to kill me. Probably with glitter.
* * *
By the time I got back to the funeral home, I had to admit I couldn’t be bothered with setting a circle.
I was working hard and getting nowhere fast, and I felt the familiar defeated slump in my shoulders.
I forced myself to take the porch steps two at a time and trudged inside, floorboards creaking in a way that felt too intentional, like the building was sighing in recognition.
And then I found Beau at the bottom of the stairs.
“You’ve been busy,” he said, eyes glinting as they swept over me before a frown flickered across his face. “... is that powdered sugar on your sleeve?”
I glanced down. Damn it. Gigi’s pastry ambush had left its mark. “Don’t ask.”
“I never do,” he replied, voice like velvet soaked in mischief. “But I’ll imagine.”
“Gigi Foxworth,” I said, brushing sticky sugar crystals from my sleeve like they were personally offensive. “She says you stole her ideas.”
He clutched at his chest with exaggerated flair, fingers splaying over the perfectly tailored vest of his spectral suit.
“Stole is such a harsh word. I prefer to think of it as... creative inspiration. I borrowed. I improved. I made them sexy.” His voice dripped with old-school charm, that sultry Southern drawl curling around the syllables.
It would’ve been easier to dismiss if he didn’t look so damn pleased with himself…
if he didn’t smell faintly of bergamot and firewood, or if his laughter didn’t stir the candle flames around us with each breathless flicker.
But ghosts didn’t breathe. Not really. And the fact that he still moved the air unsettled me more than I wanted to admit.
“She hated you,” I replied, watching the shadows twitch along the baseboards like they were listening in.
“Oh, deeply,” he said, with the kind of wicked grin that probably got him into trouble long before he died. “With a kind of passion usually reserved for exes and inherited enemies. But not enough to kill me.” He paused, tilting his head as if genuinely considering it. “Probably.”
My pulse ticked faster, and not entirely from fear. He wasn’t just charming, he was dangerously compelling. The kind of ghost that leaned too close to being human. The kind that blurred lines you weren’t supposed to cross. I narrowed my eyes. “You’re not very helpful.”
“I’m not very dead, either,” he countered smoothly, his mouth quirking in a lazy, lopsided smile that would’ve turned a lesser woman to syrup. “Well. I am, technically. But I’ve got a whole lot of unresolved flair keeping me fabulous. Call it posthumous rizz.”
I wanted to roll my eyes, but part of me was charmed despite myself. That was the danger with spirits like Beau. They didn’t haunt you with wails or cold spots. They haunted you with what-ifs. With unfinished sentences and looks that made your heart forget they’d stopped beating.
He floated closer, more deliberate now. The charm in his eyes didn’t fade, but something sharpened beneath it, like a stage knife glinting behind a magician’s hand. “You’re not convinced, are you?” he asked quietly. “About Meredith. About Gigi.”
I sighed, the weight of the day pressing down on my shoulders like damp wool. “They’re both lying about something. Both keeping secrets.”
He nodded. “Of course they are. Everyone has secrets.”
“They’re performative,” I said slowly. “Rehearsed. It’s not grief, it’s posture. But grief makes people messy. These women are too… neat.”
He smiled, and this time it didn’t reach his eyes. “You’re getting warmer.”
Beau moved past me, arriving in the way ghosts did, as if pulled along by thought alone.
He brushed close enough to stir the air around me, leaving behind a buzz of energy that clung to my skin like static.
The scent of old cologne and sorrow followed him, subtle but unmistakable.
He disappeared before I could say another word. And the room felt colder for it.
I stood there, surrounded by flickering candlelight, half-burnt herbs, and cursed leftovers from three botched cleansing attempts.
The silence settled around me like dust. Somewhere in the rafters, a whisper I couldn’t quite catch curled into the darkness.
I looked around the circle, the tools, the signs and sigils I’d placed, all the questions still unanswered…
and felt the shape of the truth pressing at the edge of knowing. Not quite ready to be discovered.
If there was one thing I’d learned, it was that the most dangerous kind of lie wasn’t the one that screamed. It was the one that whispered just loud enough to be mistaken for the truth.
And I still hadn’t heard the right whisper. Not yet.