A Ghost Falls for the Witch He Haunts

Prologue

The ribbon is cutting into my skin, black satin wound around each finger until my hands feel numb and swollen with pressure.

The air smells dry and nutty; it's warm but not comforting, because beneath it lingers something heavier: the heavy scent of stagnant water and damp rock.

I breathe carefully through my mouth, trying not to gag.

I want this, I remind myself.

No.

I need this.

Want has nothing to do with it.

I can barely make out my surroundings. This is my home, I know it is, but in the darkness everything feels strange and unfamiliar. A few solitary candles burn, the light flickering on the edges of the room, giving everything shadow rather than shape. I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all.

But the witch insisted.

A witch. That’s all I can see her as right now; all I can think of her as.

She’s cloaked and hooded, her pale hands stirring a pot anticlockwise while incomprehensible whispers slip from her lips.

She looks so stereotypically witchlike that I almost want to laugh, because the transformation she’s managed in just a few short hours feels, annoyingly enough, like actual magic.

Before the ritual, she’d come bounding in, a beautiful mass of energy giving off strong vibes of youth and vitality.

She was friendly and chatty, with two Aldi carrier bags swinging from one hand and a Starbucks matcha latte in the other.

When she spoke, her voice was lilting and kind.

“Are we doing it in here?” she’d asked easily, and then for a time she’d bopped around the room setting up, Apple Beats over her ears, nails painted an electric blue, with ripped jeans tucked into a pair of oversized boots.

She looked less like a witch than the sort of Gen Z hipster I’d avoid making eye contact with on the Tube.

Then she lit the first candle, and things . . . began to change.

She washed her hands first, again and again in a mix of seawater and hyssop, sharp enough to sting my eyes with the salt and spicy mint.

When I next looked at her hands, they seemed decades older — her skin wrinkled, the blue of her nail polish gone, replaced by the blue of veins now showing beneath paper-thin skin.

The jeans and hoodie disappeared too, replaced by a coarse black gown beneath a charcoal-grey cloak, a single pendant resting against her throat.

“Your hands,” I stuttered, and she looked down, completely unsurprised.

“Yeah.” She shrugged. “This spell required a drop of my life force.”

“Blood magic,” I whispered, unease running through me. “Will they . . . change back?”

“I sure as hell hope so. I’ve got a manicure tomorrow at three and then a date at seven.”

She handed me a wooden cup brimming with a thick, cloying liquid. “Are you sure about this?” she asked, not for the first time.

I closed my eyes.

Because no.

I wasn’t sure.

For one brief, ridiculous moment, I thought about saying so. I remembered hands against my skin, a voice soft in my ear, hair slipping through my fingers. Something inside me faltered and in that heartbeat of time, my own heart skipped a treacherous beat.

Then reality slid back in, cold and awful.

“Is it done?” I asked instead. “Did he . . . ?”

She nodded slowly. “Yeah. It’s done.”

I swallowed. “Is he okay?”

She shrugged. “I did no harm, if that’s what you mean.”

Nausea rolled through me. Blindly, I reached for the cup and drank greedily.

“I guess that means you’re sure,” the witch remarked drily, before turning back to her Aldi bags.

Now, through heavy-lidded eyes, I watch her work.

“What’s in that?” I ask, nodding towards the — well, I guess cauldron would technically be the right word.

“This?” Her eyes flick to the mixture. “There’s a lot, but mostly crushed obsidian and poppy seeds.”

Poppy seeds. That explains the nutty smell.

“Oh,” she adds suddenly. “There’s also Lethe water.”

I stare at her. “You got all that at Aldi?”

The witch pauses mid-spell. “What I source from German discount supermarkets is my own business.” She tops up my cup. “Drink.”

Quite frankly, I don’t want to piss her off, so I do. Another sickly mouthful slides down my throat.

The ribbon is still sawing into my fingers and I shift awkwardly in my seat. Drunk isn’t quite the word for what I feel — it’s lighter than that, more airy somehow — and I drag my tongue across lips that are sticky and sweet.

Minutes pass. Or maybe hours.

Still, the witch keeps working. Incantation after incantation. Stirring, muttering, sometimes rocking where she stands before the cauldron. The air thickens around us until each breath feels warm and used, the smell lingering in my hair and on my skin.

Then the candles begin to gutter. One by one, their flames snap and bow violently, caught in a wind I can’t feel. They dance up and down, bright at one moment and then low the next, taking us from light into darkness again and again.

The witch stops. Her eyes fix on the candles, watching carefully.

“What?” I ask. There’s a tremor in my voice I can’t quite hide.

For a moment, she doesn’t answer. “Fire,” she says at last, and her expression shifts. There’s recognition there. Recognition, mixed a little with concern. “My element.”

I wait for her to elaborate, but she doesn’t, so I turn back to the candles. Their flames have settled now, burning low, the light from them soft and steady once more.

“I’ve never seen anything like that before,” I say carefully. “Have you?”

“No.” The witch keeps staring at them. “It’s a sign.”

“Good or bad?”

She shrugs vacantly, eyes still on the flames. “I don’t know. I guess it depends on who’s sending the message.”

Suddenly, out of nowhere, a rush of wind runs through the room. For one alarming second, the candles burn higher, before they’re blown out, one by one. We’re left in utter darkness, and even in my half-sober state, I feel panic run through me. My breath catches.

“What is that?” I splutter, because the air feels wrong now, like it’s moving, pressing hard against my skin. The smell of damp stone swells thick in my lungs, and I choke on it. “Why did they—?”

“Stop it!” the witch snaps. Her voice cuts through the dark, sudden and sharp, and I twist towards the sound, blind terror rising hot in my chest.

“Where are you? What’s happening?” I’m panicking, but my only reply is her voice, still sharp, still pointed.

“Stop it,” she orders again, and it occurs to me suddenly that she isn’t talking to the room, or the spirits, or to whatever is out there doing this, but to me.

She’s talking to me. To the frantic scraping of my breathing and my twisting hands. She’s talking to the panic climbing up my throat. To the terror sitting in my soul.

So I stop. Or at least, I try to. I force air into my lungs and hold still. I chew down on my lips to stop their trembling. I concentrate on the sulphuric smell of the air, on the ribbons still cutting into my fingers, and on the sound of the witch’s voice, telling me to stop it once more.

For one stretched, unbearable moment, nothing happens, and then . . . then the wind dies, and silence settles heavily over the room.

A candle catches, the flame jumping back to life. Another follows, and then another, the witch reappearing by degrees in the returning light. She’s still hooded, still cloaked, her face paler now, and there’s worry in her eyes.

My mouth feels dry beneath the wine as I find my voice. “Should we be doing this?”

The witch studies the relit candles. “No,” she says simply. “But it’s too late for second thoughts now.”

Something cold unfolds in my stomach. Too late.

Witchcraft. This is actual witchcraft. Not aesthetic tarot readings or moon-water influencers on Instagram. Not crystal shops squeezed between vape stores and cafés.

This is bindings. Omens. Messages sent by fire and wind.

Whatever you send into the world comes back threefold, I suddenly remember, and as the Rule of Three flashes unhelpfully through my mind, I stare at the witch. Why is she doing this? Why is she taking this kind of risk?

Another thought strikes me. Why am I?

And then I remember. I remember all of it.

The witch stares at me. “Should I keep going?” she asks.

“Yes.” I nod. “Keep going.”