Chapter Nine
His words hung in the air, like the breathless instant before a firework splits open and lights up the night sky.
Dead.
This attractive, cinnamon-scented, steady-eyed man. Dead.
No. No, no, no, no, no. It couldn’t be true.
“If this,” Augustine began tightly, clenching her fists, “is some kind of sick joke, I don’t happen to find it very funny.”
“It’s not funny, and it’s not a joke,” he replied bluntly. “It’s very much true, unfortunately for me.”
“Dead,” she said. “You’re honestly trying to tell me you’re dead?”
“Yes.”
Disbelief ran through her. He spoke like a living man.
He breathed like a living man. In his eyes and every expression ran the emotions and feelings of a living man.
He had her business card in his pocket like a living man.
He carried oversized Halloween pumpkins like a living man. He couldn’t be dead.
“I think,” Augustine said, her voice ice-cold, “that we’re back at the stage of you needing to leave again.”
Something in his expression broke. “No!” The word came too fast and altogether too raw. He reached towards her again, but this time Augustine stepped back, out of reach of his outstretched hand. “No,” he carried on desperately, “no, you don’t understand. You can’t just throw me out.”
She laughed. “Oh, I really can. Watch me.”
“No. You have to help me.”
The panic in his voice startled her more than his claim of death had. It wasn’t theatrical and it wasn’t calculated. No. It was worse than that. It was desperate.
“How?” she shot back, anger rising within her, bright and defensive. “By speaking to the dead? With all due respect, isn’t that you? If you’re really a corpse, do your own dirty work.”
He flinched like she’d struck him. “Look, when I asked if you could speak to the dead,” he began, dragging a hand through his hair, pacing now, “I was talking about me.” His composure was unravelling thread by thread.
“You think I haven’t tried talking to other people since this—” he gestured helplessly to himself — “since this happened? I have, of course I have, but they don’t see me.
” He continued hoarsely, “They don’t hear me.
I scream in their faces and they just . .
.” He stopped pacing and snapped his fingers. “They walk right through me.”
Augustine’s mouth went dry.
“But you,” he whispered. “When I came in here . . . you spoke to me. You saw me.”
Silence swallowed the room, and the cinnamon scent felt stronger now. Warmer, and much more potent.
“I’ve been alone,” he told her miserably. “I’ve been alone since this happened, completely stuck, not knowing what to do. It’s been a week of torment. You’re the first person who’s looked at me like I still exist.”
Augustine inhaled sharply. “You’re a madman,” she whispered, shaking her head. “You need to get out.”
“I’m not mad, trust me. Here, try it. Go on. Try and touch me.”
“No, I don’t—”
“Try it,” he said again. “See for yourself.”
He lifted his hand slowly, palm open towards her. The gesture was careful and almost reverent, as if he were offering her something fragile, instead of just himself.
Augustine stared at his hand, still uncertain. He couldn’t be dead. He was nothing more than a charming lunatic with steady eyes and a talent for saying impossible things so that they sounded true.
Or worse, she realized. Maybe this is magic. But if it is, it's not magic I want any part in.
She hesitated again, and he clearly saw the doubt cross her face, because he swallowed. His hand didn’t waver, but Augustine could see the strain in his jaw now, as well as a worried tightness around his mouth.
“Please,” he said simply.
It was the please that did it, so softly spoken. He sounded so polite, so utterly earnest. And Augustine, curse her foolish heart, had always been a sucker for good manners.
Slowly — as if approaching a skittish animal — she lifted her own hand.
Her pulse thudded in her ears, and she told herself she would pull away instantly at the first sign of something unnatural, or at the first spark of dark magic.
If even the slightest chill went through her body, she would stop this.
Augustine wasn’t a fool, and knew when to listen to the universe, just as she knew when to follow her instincts.
She might not have the powers of a real witch, but she had a witch’s sixth sense for trouble, and damned if she was going to ignore it now.
Even if this man was conventionally attractive and smelled the way he did.
As she moved her hand towards his, he watched her carefully, intense blue eyes trained upon her face.
Her fingers hovered inches from his palm, and she could feel warmth radiating from him.
Real and absolutely human warmth. She could still smell the cinnamon — subtle but unmistakable, threaded through the air between them.
This is ridiculous, she thought. He’s not the pope. Just touch the man, for God’s sake.
Abruptly, she closed the distance between their hands, and for one suspended, trembling heartbeat, she expected resistance. Skin. Heat. The solid press of another living body.
But there was nothing.
No resistance. No contact. Instead, her hand simply passed through his as it would through smoke or memory. As it would through air.
Augustine gasped and stumbled back, clutching her hand to her chest as if she’d burned it. Her heart hammered violently against her ribs, and he lowered his own hand slowly.
“I told you,” he said, but there was no satisfaction in his voice. No pleasure in his victory.
“You’re a ghost,” she whispered.
He nodded once. “Yes,” he said quietly, his remarkably steady eyes holding hers; eyes that she now knew were tinted blue not just by colour but also by sadness. “I’m a ghost. And you . . . well, you’re the only one who’s haunted by me.”