Chapter Five
“Your sister is batshit crazy, you know that, right?”
Sitting in his chair by the fire, Roy sounded indignant.
“Which sister?” Augustine said absently, scrolling through her phone. It was a problem she’d had all her life. When you had three very different sisters, it was never clear which one people meant. Context mattered. Tone mattered. Occasionally, astrology mattered.
Celeste was the academic of their family, serious and passionate in equal measure, the sort who could derail a dinner conversation by casually mentioning orbital decay.
Clem was earthy and earnest to the point of madness, capable of abandoning a perfectly good life to go argue with soil on another continent.
Maddy, meanwhile, existed in a permanently kooky state of barely contained chaos, oscillating wildly between being a competent professional and a walking magical disaster.
Augustine didn’t even bother looking up at Roy as she scrolled. “You’re going to have to narrow it down.”
Roy frowned. “The one who called today. She left a voicemail. I overheard her as she was leaving it.”
At that, Augustine looked up. “On the landline?”
“No, on the carrier pigeon she sent. Of course on the landline.”
Augustine took a brief glance at the table in the hallway, where the landline sat on its little side table like a plastic time capsule, its cord wrapped twice around one of the table legs.
No one had a landline any more. Well, no one aged under sixty-five at least. It had come with the flat though, and her landlord, Steven, had apologetically explained that it was tied to the Wi-Fi contract he’d set up years previous.
“You can unplug it, if you like,” Steven had told Augustine, hands in his pockets. “But please don’t cut it out. Sorry about that. I’m too old now to learn how to have it taken out and I have a sentimental attachment to the phone itself.”
Augustine had glanced at the transparent phone, wondering how on earth anyone could be attached to such a piece of plastic crap.
She’d never bothered to remove it, though.
Oddly, she kind of liked having a landline number.
It meant when people couldn’t reach her on her mobile, they’d try her at home, and leave her messages there.
The landline however, being such a piece of plastic crap — albeit nostalgic plastic crap — invariably failed from time to time, and some of her messages fell through to the great phone network beyond.
Which felt oddly appropriate, really. She was a fraud of a psychic who couldn’t speak to the dead, yet here she was, routinely ghosted by a phone.
Augustine shrugged. “That doesn’t help,” she said bluntly. “All three of my sisters call the landline. Not that it really matters. Half the messages on that thing are just static and people breathing. You know that.”
“No, it was definitely your sister.”
“Yes, but which one?”
“The batshit crazy one,” Roy said again, frustrated. “She called today, and left this garbled message about witch hunters and rose quartz and sage circles. I mean, what the fuck is a witch hunter?”
“Nothing you need to worry about,” Augustine answered swiftly. “Did she say anything else?”
Roy raised a disbelieving eyebrow at her, letting Augustine know he hadn’t quite let go of his curiosity about witch hunters, no matter what she said.
“She also mentioned something about her anus,” he carried on, however, clearly still offended by it.
“And cleansing it with white sage. Now, I am not one to judge, and I’ve heard of some interesting colon cleanses in my life, Augustine, but that is a whole new level of wow. ”
“Her anus?” she repeated flatly. “Wait. Do you mean Uranus?”
Roy blinked. “Oh,” he said, after a beat. “Probably. Yes. That would make a lot more sense.”
She glanced back at the landline, the little red light blinking patiently, smugly, like it knew something she didn’t. “It’s Celestine,” she said, certainty settling in her chest.
Roy raised an eyebrow. “Your astrophysicist sister? The one in Scotland?”
“Yes.”
“The one who thinks planetary movements are a valid reason to reorganize your finances?”
“That’s the one.”
Roy leaned back in his chair. “You should probably call her back.”
Augustine nodded slowly. She already knew why Celestine was calling. She’d clearly heard from Maddy, and as her oldest and most sensible sister, wanted to know what she was going to do about her mysterious, speak-to-the-dead-for-me customer of the day before.
Augustine wanted to stall. Claim she was busy. Tell herself she’d call back later, when she’d had time to think. But she knew this wasn’t later kind of stuff. It was now stuff; she hated now stuff.
She exhaled, long and slow, then reached for her mobile and sank into the sofa. The springs complained softly and Bird immediately leapt up into her lap, curling himself into a warm comma, perhaps sensing her unease yet being entirely unbothered by it.
“All right,” she murmured, more to herself than anyone else, before she glanced back at Roy, still staring at her with blatant interest. “You’re not going to listen to this entire call, are you?”
Roy didn’t even pretend to look offended — just nodded once. “Absolutely I am.”
“This is a private conversation,” Augustine said, as she loaded up Celeste’s number.
“Oh, Augustine, my darling,” Roy said with a knowing look. “Nothing between us is private. Not really. You know that. Now, stop with the pointless arguing. Put that thing on speaker phone. You know you’re going to tell me all about it afterwards anyway.”
She opened her mouth to argue — a whole speech lining up in her head about boundaries and personal space — but annoyingly, she knew he was right. Still, she pulled a face at him as she set it to speaker phone and pressed call.
“Ags?” Celeste answered immediately, and there it was: the tightness in her voice, the careful calm stretched thin over worry. “Are you all right?”
“Yes. I’m fine.”
“Maddy called me.”
“I figured.”
“She told me about this . . . this customer of yours.” Celeste sounded entirely unimpressed. “Frankly, Augustine, I don’t know what you expected. I told you opening a Wicca shop was a bad idea.”
Augustine shifted on the sofa, Bird’s tail flicking against her wrist. “You tell me a lot of things. Sometimes it's hard to keep track.”
“We’re meant to be blending in,” Celeste went on, undeterred. “Living quietly. Normally. Not selling our craft to tourists and bored Londoners with disposable income.”
“I sell candles,” Augustine snapped. “And incense. Overpriced incense at that. I don’t even sell spellwork, let alone my — our — craft.”
“That’s not the point and you know it.”
“It’s my choice,” Augustine said, heat creeping into her voice. “And it’s not as if I’m a real witch anyway, is it? So what harm is it?”
There was a pause. Not a dropped-signal pause, and not Celeste-checking-her-calendar pause. No. It was a deliberate and weighted silence, and Augustine shifted nervously.
“Of course you’re a real witch, Ags,” she said at last, quietly. “Of course you are.”
Augustine said nothing.
Celeste cleared her throat. “Hey. After Maddy told me what happened, I looked to the stars.”
“Of course you did,” Augustine replied flatly. “And?”
Momentarily, Celestine fell quiet. It was a silence that Augustine knew well, the kind that usually meant she was arranging several cosmic dominos before knocking them over all at once.
“I checked the chart for yesterday,” Celestine said. “I mean, I properly checked it. Time, location, the whole thing.”
Roy made a vague circling motion with his finger by his temple. I told you, batshit crazy, he mouthed at her, but Augustine ignored him.
“And?”
“And Uranus is doing something interesting.”
Augustine closed her eyes. “Celeste.”
“I’m serious. Uranus is in retrograde,” she said patiently, “but that’s not even the main point.
It’s forming a tight opposition with Mercury, right as the veil’s thinning.
Communication, truth, secrets coming out — all of it’s heightened.
Especially around people who’ve been deliberately overlooked. ”
Augustine opened one eye. “Overlooked by whom?”
“The universe,” Celeste said simply.
Roy mouthed oh for fuck’s sake.
“It’s a disruptive placement,” Celestine continued. “Old structures are getting rattled. Things hidden in plain sight will suddenly become visible. People will be revealed for who they truly are.”
Augustine swallowed. “That’s very poetic.”
“It’s also very inconvenient,” Celestine replied. “We don’t want to be revealed for who we truly are, Ags. Not to anyone.”
Silence settled between them again, thicker this time.
“I didn’t like the chart I read,” Celeste finally finished. “I didn’t like it at all. Normally when things worry me, the stars offer reassurance. This time they didn’t.”
“So,” Augustine said carefully, “you’re saying my weird customer turning up asking me to chat with the dead is . . . what? Some form of cosmic admin?”
“I’m saying,” Celestine said, choosing her words with maddening care, “that this customer of yours might not be random. And if someone’s asking for you specifically—”
“I don’t do anything,” Augustine cut in. “I’ve never done anything. You know that.”
“I know what you think you don’t do,” Celeste replied gently.
“But you’re still one of us. Still witch born.
Ags,” Celestine said, softer now, “just be careful. Please. If he comes back, don’t brush it off.
Don’t joke it away. And don’t assume you’re irrelevant just because you’ve always felt like you were. ”
Augustine looked down at Bird, who had begun purring like this was all perfectly normal. “Great,” she said. “The stars are conspiring, my sisters are worried, and now Uranus is involved.”
“Unfortunately,” Celestine said. “I just want you to be safe, Ags. I want us all to be safe.”
Augustine sighed. “I know.”