Chapter One #2
“My soul,” he repeated softly, like he was tasting the word. “The thing is, I can’t afford to lose my soul right now. I really am just looking.” He continued to hold her gaze, and her breath hitched slightly.
“Right, well, um . . .” Augustine momentarily scrambled for words, and she looked away from him, grasping for the safety of something she knew how to handle. “Well, if you need any help, let me know.”
She felt, rather than saw, him continue to stare at her for another small moment, before he shifted his weight. Without meeting his eye again, Augustine offered him another friendly smile before moving back to sit on the stool behind her till.
He’s definitely not a girlfriend shopper, she decided, still watching him from the corner of her eye. Girlfriend shoppers are normally desperate for someone to tell them what to buy. This is something else . . .
She let the silence stretch again, after that, pretending to fuss with a tray of tea light candles while keeping him in her peripheral vision.
The shop was quiet today. A Tuesday afternoon.
No bell jingling, no footsteps from the street outside, just the low hum of the old radiator and the faint herbal sweetness that never quite left the air.
Her shop wasn’t for the real Wiccans. Instead, it catered to ordinary people who liked to dabble in spirituality the same way they dabbled in sourdough starters or Pilates: casually and optimistically, with very little commitment and the vague hope the universe would sort out their problems for them.
That alone made this guy stand out. Most of Augustine’s weekday customers were tourists killing time between visiting the Cutty Sark and having lunch, or locals popping in for cleansing sage because they thought they had a weird vibe in their flat which new IKEA furniture and a lick of paint on the walls hadn’t solved.
The yummy mummy crowd sometimes dropped by, too, in between baby yoga and their oat-milk cappuccinos, to stock up on scented candles and natural teething remedies.
This man was different from them. He had the air of someone who’d arrived here with a purpose, even if he was reluctant to admit it.
Augustine watched him drift back towards the crystal shelves, fingers hovering but not touching, gaze unfocused. There was something restless about him, something pent up and jumpy, so she cleared her throat gently. “Are you sure you don’t need any help? I’m right here if you do.”
He startled — actually physically startled — like he’d temporarily forgotten she was there. Then something seemed to pass through him, quick and sharp. His shoulders squared and his jaw set. Was it resolve, maybe?
He crossed the shop in a few long strides and stopped at her desk. Augustine looked up at him — what was this guy, six foot? Maybe more? — and then promptly blushed.
God, he was still so unfairly handsome.
He cleared his throat. “Actually,” he said carefully, his voice surprisingly low and soft for someone so large. “I think I do need some help.”
Augustine tilted her head, curiosity blooming. “All right,” she said, as warm as ever, trying not to look too deeply into those eyes. “How can I help you? Are you looking for a gift? Maybe some more menopause related items for a special lady in your life?”
He hesitated, just for a fraction. “No. Not a gift.”
“Oh. So, it's something for yourself then?”
He nodded slowly. “Yes. For me.”
She waited for him to expand. Waited for him to go on.
He didn’t though. He just stood there and gazed at her, steadily and patiently, and something in Augustine’s stomach shifted as their eyes met again.
Honestly, she had to stop looking into this man’s eyes.
Not only was it sparking an attraction she couldn’t explain, but there was also something definitely familiar about him.
“Do I . . . do I know you?” she asked him slowly, trying to place the atmosphere that had suddenly fallen around them.
Augustine knew the weight of omens. She was witch-born, after all.
She knew when the universe was clearing its throat; knew when the cosmos was staring down at her, and right now, it felt like both were trying to beat her over the head with a frying pan.
Threads tugged at the edge of her awareness, invisible and insistent, suggesting something was trying very hard to get her attention.
The problem was, she couldn’t read it. She couldn’t read him.
That, more than anything, unsettled her.
In her world, people were always stories.
Messy ones, loud ones, soft ones, troubled ones.
Their stories were always written all over their faces, built into their postures.
All sceptics and troublemakers gave themselves away eventually, and you didn’t need magic to see it.
This man, though, felt like a page she couldn’t turn.
Blank where there should’ve been ink. Augustine chewed on her lip, staring at him.
He shook his head. “No,” he said, a faint crease appearing between his brows. “We haven’t met before. I don’t think so, anyway.”
I don’t think so.
That little addendum snagged in her mind like a burr.
Augustine studied him openly now, manners momentarily forgotten.
If they hadn’t met, then why did it feel like she knew him?
Why did her mind hum ever so softly, the way it did when she was standing at the edge of a memory she couldn’t quite grasp?
It’s déjà vu, that’s all, she tried to reassure herself. Honestly, you see one attractive man and fall to pieces? Pick yourself up and make a sale — your bank account needs it.
“Okay,” she went on. “Well, what can I get you today then? A candle, some herbs, maybe—”
“No,” he interrupted, suddenly firm. “The help I need . . . it isn’t a thing. It’s more of a . . .” He paused, as if weighing up the words he wanted to speak. “It’s more of a service.”
Prickles ran up Augustine’s arms. The kind that raised every fine hair on her skin and sent her stomach dropping hard, like she’d missed a step on the stairs.
She straightened instinctively, smile thinning. “I don’t offer services here,” she told him, lightly enough, but with a very definite edge creeping into her voice. “Just things. Candles. Incense. Crystals. You know—” she waved her hand — “things.”
“Tarot cards?” he asked, and Augustine froze.
“I, um, sell them.”
“But do you read them?”
She opened her mouth to speak, but no reply came out. She was flustered, her heart picking up speed in her chest, and a small sweat broke out on her neck. “Well, I, uh . . .” Words deserted her.
“I’d like you to read the cards for me. I understand you do that.”
She shook her head quickly. “No. I, um — no, I don’t do that. I mean, I can, I just . . . I don’t. Not any more.”
The room fell quiet as her words settled between them. Somewhere, Augustine could hear the gentle ring of a windchime, while the sun drifting through her window caught the crystal charms hanging from her ceiling, scattering colour over the room. He seemed to think, a frown on his lips.
“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.”