Chapter Eight
If she’d thought him audacious before, she’d been well and truly mistaken.
Smelling like a cinnamon roll and possessing uncommonly blue eyes?
That was fine. Nothing she couldn’t handle.
Arguing with her in her own shop? Okay, borderline irritating, but still fine.
His being, in general, an infuriatingly precise manifestation of her worst romantic instincts?
Starting to grate, but not audacious. Not yet.
Telling her she’d been the one to inform him she was a divination witch, which was an outright lie? Now that was fucking audacious, and Augustine instantly sprang to her feet.
“I’m sorry, what did you just say?”
He swallowed again, clearly nervous. “You asked who told me you were a divination witch, and um, it was you.”
“Well, that’s impossible,” she immediately returned. “For one thing, it isn’t true, and even if it was, I would never advertise that fact.”
“Actually,” he began, sounding almost apologetic, “that’s also untrue.”
She watched as he withdrew one of his hands from his pocket, a small card folded into his palm. “Here,” he said, dropping it onto her desk.
She picked it up gingerly. It was a lightly embossed business card, purple in colour, with green cursive printed on the front.
Now it was Augustine’s turn to swallow, because this business card .
. . it was her business card. Well, her business card from about a year ago.
She’d changed it since then, updated the font and phone number.
Still, The Priestess Reversed was written clearly across the front, with the shop’s address and website underneath.
She kept them in her drawer to pop into customer’s bags when they purchased something.
Augustine chewed on her lip, momentarily confused.
“How did you get this?” she asked, and he shrugged.
“To be honest, I don’t know. It was in my pocket. That, and a key. But I don’t know how I got either of them.”
“You had this and a key?” She looked away from the card and up to him. “But you don’t know how you got either of them? Really? You just . . . don’t know? I mean, what does the key even unlock?”
He shrugged again, the move far too casual for how she was feeling right now. “Again, I don’t know. It was in my pocket, next to this card. That’s all I can tell you.”
She frowned. “If you have my card, then you must have been in here before?”
“No. I’d remember that.” He shook his head, before something flickered behind his eyes. “I’d remember you.”
Something fluttered inside of her. Something she pushed down almost immediately, because now was emphatically not the time to be developing a crush on a cinnamon scented stranger she’d just tested with a salt circle.
“Well, that’s the only way you could have gotten one of my cards.
Although I don’t know how, because I—” She stopped suddenly.
“Because you what?”
She shook her head though, unwilling to speak. She’d been going to say Because I would remember someone like you, too.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said, clearing her throat, before she let the card fall back onto the table. “Besides, what does it matter? Having my business card doesn’t mean I told you anything,” she added quickly. “It just means you knew where to find me.”
“You didn’t look at the back,” he replied calmly, and Augustine’s eyes flickered from his and once again to the card sitting on her countertop. She picked it up, scanning the back rapidly.
The words on the card read:
This is better than a crystal ball, right? ;)
Augustine — divination, tarot and consultations.
She pushed the card back towards him. “This proves nothing.”
“This is your card?”
“Well, yes, but—”
“And this is your handwriting?”
She shifted. “Well, yes. But look, it’s clearly a joke. There’s a winking eye emoji on there.”
“Winking eye or not, it says divination and tarot,” he insisted. “That’s witch.”
“No. That’s good business,” she retorted quickly. “I’m not a witch. I just run a shop. There’s a difference.”
“A witch’s shop,” he pointed out.
“True, but none of it’s real. Trust me. It’s mostly made in China. The only thing magical about most of this stuff is the markup that I put on it.”
He didn’t even crack a smile. Instead, he sighed. “Maybe this place isn’t real. Maybe this stuff—” he gestured around him — “isn’t real. But you are.”
“No.” She spoke bluntly. “I’m not. The only difference between me and the stuff I sell is that I wasn’t shipped over here from Yiwu.” She looked down, exhaling deeply. “You said you needed my help. What sort of trouble are you in?”
He shifted. “I’m not in trouble — or at least, I’m not any more. I’m beyond help at this point.”
That didn’t make any sense at all to her.
“But you said you needed my help?” she queried, looking up again, utterly bewildered now. “If you’re beyond help, and not in trouble, what exactly is it you need from me?”
He stepped forward, and once again, she was hit by that delicious smell. It was almost unfair just how good this man looked and smelled.
“I’m beyond help,” he said again, his voice low. “But someone else might be in trouble because of me, and I’m worried about them.”
“Who?” she asked, curious now.
He licked his lips, looking uncomfortable. “I don’t know. Not for certain.”
“You . . . don’t know,” she repeated flatly. “So, let me get this straight. You’re beyond help, but not in trouble. You have my card, but don’t know how you got it. And you’re worried about someone, but you don’t know who?”
“I know, it sounds crazy, but I’m really not,” he offered, looking at her with pleading eyes, which did something worse to her than even the cinnamon did. “If you can just help me, I promise to explain everything.”
“I can’t help you,” she said again. “I really can’t. That thing you asked me to do—”
“Speak to the dead,” he finished for her gently.
“Yes, that. I can’t do it. Even if I wanted to.”
“You can do it,” he urged her.
“No. I’m a fraud.”
“You’re not,” he assured her. “You’re not a fraud.” He raised a hand towards her, perhaps about to take her own, before apparently thinking the better of it. Augustine wasn’t sure whether the drop in her chest was relief or disappointment.
“Oh, I’m not a fraud?” She gave a brittle, airy laugh. “You truly think I can speak to the dead? That I’m some all-seeing oracle?” She stepped towards him now, lifting her chin. “Tell me something then. How can you — a man I don’t even know — be so certain of that?”
“I am certain,” he said, his words soft and steady. “I’m very certain.”
“Because . . . ?”
He drew in a breath, and for the first time since he’d walked into her shop, he looked afraid. “Because,” he said, “I’m dead.”
Silence pressed in around them, sudden and awful.
“I’m dead,” he repeated. “And here we are talking.”