Chapter Eighteen
“I’m sorry?” Roy blinked. “What did you just say?”
“The man,” she clarified weakly. “Theo. He’s dead.”
“Dead?” Roy’s brow furrowed. “Dead how? Dead funny? Dead set against immigration reforms? Dead into anime?”
“No. He’s dead dead,” Augustine said. “As in deceased. As in not currently participating in the mortal coil. As in pushing up the daisies. He’s a ghost. I tried to touch him, and my hand went right through him. He’s there . . . but not really. He’s dead, Roy.”
For perhaps the first time since she had known him, Roy looked genuinely flabbergasted, and he removed his glasses slowly, his emerald green eyes flashing with concern. “So, he’s a literal ghost?”
“Yes.”
“The man who came into your shop?”
“Yes.” Augustine nodded blankly. “Theo. His name is Theo. I can see him, Roy. I can hear him. He sits on my furniture. He quotes murder statistics at inappropriate moments. I can’t touch him, but he’s there.”
Roy looked at her for a long moment, before sliding his glasses back on. “So, you do have the sight then. You said your grandmother did. Now you do, too.”
“Maybe,” Augustine agreed. “I thought it would be different, though. I thought it would be . . . I don’t know . . . easier somehow.”
“Easier.” Inexplicably, Roy’s expression softened. “What part of death do you think is easy, Augustine?”
She frowned. “What do you mean?”
Roy shrugged. “Well, just think about the souls who are left behind, the ones who don’t move on — why don’t they? What’s keeping them here? Death is an ending, yes. But that doesn’t mean business is always finished. It’s never easy, Augustine.”
Augustine nodded. “I know, but I guess I hoped it would be. For me. With this. My grandmother would call it a gift, but I don’t know—”
“She was right. It is a gift,” Roy replied firmly. “For these souls, it’s not just a gift, it’s hope. You represent hope to them. You could be a way for them to finish whatever it is that’s holding them here. You could be the final step on their way to moving on.”
Augustine blinked. “Like a conduit,” she whispered, and Roy nodded slowly.
“Yes. I guess that’s the word.”
“I told Theo I was a conduit, and he said . . .” Augustine swallowed. “He said I was a person, too.”
“You are a person,” Roy agreed. “But a person with a special gift.”
“You’re taking this all very calmly, you know,” Augustine remarked. “It sounds insane. It is insane. But you’re sitting here like I’ve just told you we’ve run out of milk.”
Roy shrugged. “I live with a woman who was raised a witch and maintains the aesthetic commitment of one. At a certain point, you stop ruling things out. So, if you say you’re seeing dead people, I believe it.”
“That might be the most supportive thing you’ve ever said to me.”
“Don’t get used to it.” Roy leaned forward again, interest returning. “So, this ghost then. What does he want?”
Augustine hesitated. “He thinks he was murdered.”
Roy’s eyebrows shot up. “Murdered?”
“Yes.”
“And he’s come to you — why? You’re hardly Benoit Blanc.”
Augustine shifted. “He, uh, had my card in his pocket.”
Roy frowned slightly. “Do you mean your business card?”
“Yes.”
Roy grimaced. “Well, that was convenient. I didn’t realize you were slipping your cards into corpse’s pockets these days. If you want to drum up business, Augustine, there are better places than the morgue.”
Augustine ignored that. “He wants my help with his girlfriend.” She swallowed over the last word, ignoring the knot of pain it seemed to open in her chest.
“Oh right, the girlfriend. Hot guy’s girlfriend. The girlfriend whose body you borrowed for a field trip across space and time. That girlfriend?”
She winced. “That’s the one. He thinks she might be in danger.”
“Why?”
“Because if someone murdered him . . .” Augustine trailed off.
Roy finished the thought quietly. “Ah. He’s worried they might go after her, too.”
“Exactly.”
Roy drummed his fingers lightly on the arm of his chair. “Well, during your little jaunt into her body, did you learn anything useful about her?”
Augustine hesitated, before shaking her head. “No. Not really.”
“I don’t know if I believe that — you were inside her head.”
“I was inside a moment,” Augustine corrected. “A memory. I saw them meet.”
Roy leaned forward again. “And?”
“And nothing,” Augustine said helplessly. “It was just a Halloween party. She was dressed as a cat. He caught her when she tripped out of a lift.”
Roy blinked. “That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
“You didn’t hear her name or see where she lives? Didn’t get anything useful at all?”
“Not really.” Augustine paused. “Actually, she has a sister.”
“Did you recognize her?”
She shook her head. “No. She was dressed in a costume, with a mask on her face. And the lighting in the party was low.”
“Mood lighting.” Roy nodded thoughtfully. “A necessary evil. Bad lighting has ruined better people than us. Anything else then?”
Augustine thought again. “She hates cats.”
As if on cue, Bird took the opportunity to jump into her lap, and Augustine burrowed her nose into his black fur.
“Hates cats?” Roy smirked. “She sounds like my kind of person.”
“You don’t hate cats.” Augustine scratched behind Bird’s ears.
“I really do,” Roy said, watching her stroke Bird with disdain.
“And they hate me. Bird and I just tolerate each other for your sake.” He studied her with new interest. “So, a murdered hot guy ghost has asked you to help him find his girlfriend whose name you don’t know and whose face you didn’t see. ”
“Pretty much. Add this — I googled him. Theo. And he appears to have left absolutely no trace on the internet.”
“You mean he’s a ghost?” Roy asked.
“I already told you that he was.”
“No. I mean, he’s a ghost. Someone without a digital footprint.”
“Oh. Is that what you call them?”
“Yes. A ghost. Ironic, right?”
Augustine nodded miserably. “Yep.”
“Well,” Roy said. “There’s one word to sum up your current predicament. Fucked.”
“Indeed.”
“What are you going to do now?”
Augustine looked down at her hands. Her fingers twisted together again, the movement sharp and almost painful. “I don’t know. After it happened, I ran,” she admitted quietly.
Roy’s expression softened a fraction. “You ran?”
“Panicked might be the better word,” she corrected herself quickly.
“I mean, wouldn’t you? One minute I was sitting there turning over tarot cards and the next I was inside someone else’s body at a Halloween party with cat ears sliding down my head.
When I came back I just . . .” She made a vague fleeing motion with her hand. “I left.”
Roy nodded slowly. “Okay. I guess that’s understandable. That would be a lot for anyone.”
She cleared her throat. “I also, umm, kind of locked him in.”
“So?”
“So, what if he can’t get out? What if he needs fresh air or, I don’t know, a walk or something?”
“He’s a ghost, not a designer puppy.” Roy replied easily. “I’ve seen The Sixth Sense. He can probably walk through walls. But you’re right. You can’t just leave him in limbo. The universe is doing a fine enough job of that already. You’re going to have to go back,” Roy continued. “Speak to him.”
“I don’t want to.”
Roy tilted his head. “Why not?”
Augustine opened her mouth, but nothing came out. Roy watched her, his expression softening slightly.
“Are you scared?” he asked, and after a pause, she nodded.
Roy sighed. “Augustine, this man isn’t out to hurt you.”
She looked up at him. “He’s not a man.”
“Fine, ghost. The fact still stands though. He hasn’t threatened you. He hasn’t tried to harm you.”
Augustine’s fingers knotted together once more. “He’s actually quite polite.”
Roy grinned. “And you’re a sucker for manners. So, he’s polite. That’s hardly the behaviour of a malicious spirit. And he came to you for help, right? You can’t abandon him now.”
Augustine sighed, staring at the floor for a long moment. She knew Roy was right. Theo had come to her; had trusted her with— well, not quite with his life, but with his death, and what had she done? She’d run. Abandoned him because she was scared.
But he must be scared too, Augustine suddenly thought. And not just scared: he’s alone. That must be awful.
She took a deep breath. If this was her power, the gift she’d inherited from her foremothers, she needed to use it. She’d spent her life looking for it. Spent her life feeling like the odd one out.
I need to embrace this. I need to help him.
Augustine stood slowly, her stomach still feeling a little uneasy, but at least the worst of her earlier dizziness and discomfort had passed. “I’m going to help him,” she said as she headed towards the door. Halfway there, however, she paused, still momentarily uncertain.
She reminded herself that Theo had never once made her feel unsafe.
Not when he’d first walked into the shop.
Not when he’d sat across from her at the table, and not even when she’d realized he was a ghost. As she slipped on her coat though, she chewed on her lip.
Because the truth was, she wasn’t afraid of Theo hurting her. Not at all.
No. It wasn’t that. It was something else entirely.
She was afraid of letting him get close. Afraid of seeing him again through someone else’s eyes — of feeling what his girlfriend had felt, of blurring the line between what belonged to that woman and what was starting, dangerously, to feel like it could belong to her.
Afraid of what this was waking up inside her, and the worst part — the part that made her hesitate at her door, made her stomach churn within her — she wasn’t entirely sure she wanted it to stop.