Chapter Thirteen
Augustine shuffled her tarot deck slowly, her hands shaky and out of practice as they moved imperfectly over the well-worn cards.
She’d checked in with the cards occasionally in the last few years, but she hadn’t done a full spread in a decade — could hardly remember how to lay them out or interpret their meaning — and her nerves weren’t helping much either.
“Trust the cards, and let the cards trust you,” her grandmother once told her. “When you read the cards, you are only a servant of the Fates. Respect them, and they will reward you with true sight and divination.”
Sitting here now with Theo, a ghost she was growing inexplicably more attracted to with every passing minute, Augustine was no longer certain she wanted any form of supernatural sight at all.
Which card do I have to draw for a mystical blindfold? She wondered, as Theo sat across the table from her, his hands clasped tightly in his lap.
“So, how does this even work?” he asked her, and she was surprised to hear a tense, almost jittery note to his voice.
“Why?” she asked him, still shuffling slowly, warming her hands and reawakening her knowledge of the cards. “Are you nervous?”
“A little,” he admitted. “I’ve never done this before. I was a statistician. I dealt in facts, not . . . not the unknown.”
“You shouldn’t be nervous.” She shrugged. “I mean, you’re already dead, right? You chased a pigeon in the park. What’s the worst that could happen now?”
He had the grace to look a little embarrassed, and she felt a tug of sympathy for him.
“You really don’t have to worry,” she said, trying to make him feel more at ease. “These are my cards. They know me, and I know them. Nothing bad will happen.”
“You talk like they’re living things,” Theo remarked, and Augustine considered that.
“I guess that’s because in my world, they kind of are. It’s hard to explain. The cards are a conduit for something bigger than me. Bigger than you. Whenever a witch is given a deck — and they must always be gifted, you can’t buy your own—”
“Says the woman who claims not to be a witch but also sells tarot cards in her shop,” Theo remarked wryly, and Augustine blushed.
“Well, I just . . . I mean, I—”
“Sorry,” Theo’s apology was almost instant, cutting off her stammered words. “I shouldn’t have said that. It’s not my place to judge you.”
Augustine’s fingers stilled on the deck, because there it was again, that careful politeness.
Theo’s inherent gentleness, so soft and so very earnest, coming out in both the measured cadence of his voice and the mesmerizing blue wells of his eyes.
He was making it difficult for her to remember that he was, technically speaking, a dead man sitting by her till.
“You don’t have to be so nice all the time, you know,” she said after a moment.
Theo blinked. “I beg your pardon?”
She sighed and placed the deck flat on the countertop, pressing her palms against the worn cards.
“You keep apologising. Being polite. Acting like you’re worried about offending me.
” She glanced up at him. “You’re a ghost, Theo, and a murdered one at that.
You’re allowed to be a little less, I don’t know . . . considerate.”
His brow furrowed slightly. “I like to be polite.”
“Well, maybe stop.” The words came out sharper than she’d intended, and for a slow moment, Theo studied her quietly, those ocean-blue eyes far too perceptive for her comfort.
“You’d prefer it if I were rude to you?”
“No,” she said quickly. “I’d prefer it if you didn’t make this harder than it already is.”
“Harder?” he echoed. “What do you mean?”
Augustine hesitated, even as the truth sprang fully-formed into her mind. I mean because you’re a ghost and I’m starting to like you. Not that she could tell Theo that. That would be too ridiculously awful for words.
Instead, she gestured vaguely between them.
“Look, you’re dead,” she said. “You’re looking for your girlfriend. And I’m supposed to be helping you find her, remember? I’m just a conduit in all this. You don’t have to be so nice to me.”
Something flickered across Theo’s expression then, something quieter and more thoughtful. “Yes,” he said softly. “I remember. But Augustine . . . you’re not just a conduit. And I would never treat you as such.”
The words hung between them, warming both the air and Augustine’s heart.
Damn it, she thought. Even when I explicitly tell him not to be nice to me, he’s still nice to me. In the nicest possible way, too.
Quickly, she cleared her throat and picked up her deck once more, shuffling quicker now, almost aggressively.
“Well,” she said briskly, avoiding his gaze, “we should get started.”