Chapter Nineteen #2
Their eyes met, and Augustine inhaled sharply.
Suddenly, she was back in the memory, with Theo’s hand around her waist and his body close to hers.
God, she could almost feel that warmth, that urgent pull of longing, all over again.
She looked away, trying to force the feeling away.
She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, and Theo stepped towards her.
“You ran,” he said, and for a heartbeat she waited for him to berate her, to lecture her for abandoning him. When he spoke again, however, his voice was warm, and full of concern. “Are you okay? What happened?”
Augustine chewed on her lip, suddenly unwilling to reply.
What could she say? Sorry about that. When I touched that last tarot card I was violently hurled into the body of your girlfriend in the past. You know, just another one of those time slip blips that sometimes — and by sometimes I mean never — happens.
She exhaled slowly, steadying herself. There was no use softening it. No use pretending it had been anything else.
“I saw something,” she said at last, her voice quieter than she intended, and Theo’s expression sharpened. “When I touched the card,” she went on. “It wasn’t just an image either, or a message. It was like I was there. Inside of it. Inside of her, living it all again.”
“In it?” he repeated. “In her? What do you mean? You mean you saw her? She’s real?” Relief seemed to run through him, his shoulders visibly sagging. “I was starting to wonder if I was crazy. If I’d imagined her, if I’d made up the whole thing.”
“She’s real,” Augustine confirmed, and Theo exhaled hard.
“Thank God. I knew there was someone. I just knew it. I knew I couldn’t feel the way I did and for there to be no one.” He met her eyes once more. “But you were . . . inside of her?”
Augustine flushed. “More like in her memory.” She glanced at the table, at the offending card, then back to him.
“I didn’t mean to be,” she added quickly.
“It just . . . happened. One moment I was here, and the next . . .” She hesitated, searching for words that didn’t sound entirely mad.
“The next I was somewhere else. Someone else. Somewhen else.”
He stepped a little closer. “What did you see?”
Augustine straightened, bracing herself. “The day you met.”
A flicker of something crossed his face. Surprise, yes, but with something softer threaded through it, something almost wary.
“It was a Halloween party,” she told him. “But you weren’t in costume. She was. She was there with her sister. She was wearing cat ears. They kept sliding down her head. You caught her when she fell out of a lift, stopped her from hitting the floor.”
“Really?”
“Yes. It felt like I was really there,” she whispered. “It was all so vivid. So real. The way you looked at me. The way your hands felt when you held me.” She paused. “I mean, umm, her.”
For half a heartbeat, neither of them spoke. Then Theo took another step towards her.
“Augustine—”
“I wasn’t there long.” Augustine turned away from the searching look in his eyes, determined to be more careful now.
“Not long enough to catch her name, or . . . anything useful, really.” She folded her arms loosely, as if to contain the rest of what she’d seen — what she’d felt — from Theo.
Once again, she remembered the warmth of that borrowed body and the startling certainty of his touch, the way his hands felt when they first brushed against her skin.
It was inexplicable and unreasonable, but she wanted to guard that memory jealously, to keep it for herself, safe within the confines of her mind.
It’s not your memory though, she chided herself, almost sharply.
You can’t be protective of something that doesn’t belong to you.
Can’t be jealous of a woman you’ve never met for a man she no longer has.
Theo’s gaze had grown intent. “There was nothing else?”
She met his eyes briefly, then shrugged, deliberately light. “She hates cats.”
The corner of his mouth twitched, whether in amusement or disbelief, Augustine couldn’t quite tell. “She hates . . . cats?”
Augustine only shrugged, like it were the least remarkable detail in the world. “Mmm. That’s what she said.”
She crossed to a nearby display cabinet before he could say anything more, pulling it open with a little more force than necessary.
The shelves inside were half-stocked — bottles out of order, bundles of herbs tied too loosely — and she set about correcting it at once, hands moving quickly and efficiently.
It gave her something to do. Something to focus on that wasn’t the weight of his attention at her back.
“She hates cats,” Theo said again, presumably thinking it over.
“Does that bother you?” she asked over her shoulder, as casually as she could manage.
There was a small pause, then the faint sound of him shifting. “I don’t think so, even though I like cats. I had one once.”
“You did?”
“Yeah,” he spoke slowly. “I found him. I was on a run in the park. Someone had dumped him by the path. He was small. So small that at first I thought he was a baby bird that had fallen from a tree. I couldn’t help it. I took the mangy thing home with me.”
Augustine couldn’t help a small smile from building across her cheeks at that, before she stilled as a thought grabbed hold of her.
She turned back to him curiously. “Why do you think it is that you can remember everything else about your life except for your girlfriend? How can you remember your childhood, your career, the tonnage of the Titanic, even the cat you once found, but not the woman you loved?”
Theo licked his lips. “I don’t know. When I try to think of her, all I have are . . . feelings. Nothing clear. Nothing concrete. It’s like there’s a fog in my mind, and when I try to reach for her through it, it just swirls thicker and thicker.”
Augustine looked at him, searching his expression, as if she might see the past flickering there behind his eyes.
“Could it be magic, do you think?” he asked her, and she sighed.
“Maybe.”
“Black magic?”
“There’s no such thing,” she replied instantly. “I’ve heard of memory spells though. Spells cast by witches to delete entire people and events from lives.”
“So it could be that?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. The Rule of Three says that whatever you cast, you get back threefold. This sort of spell . . . the cost would be enormous. A witch would have to be desperate to touch magic like that.”
“Augustine.” Theo spoke gently. “Are you a witch?”
She hesitated, a lifetime of caution and carefulness fighting against her urge to confess everything to him.
Seeing the warring emotions cross her face, Theo raised a hand. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to. You’re not obliged. I just want to know more about you.”
She swallowed. “It’s just that we have to be . . . careful. So, so careful. There are people out there who mean us harm. Real harm.”
Theo gazed at her, and the look in his eyes was true and earnest. “I don’t mean you harm, Augustine. I would never hurt you.”
She believed him. She took a deep breath, working past the knot of uncertainty that still lingered within her, years of caution and anxiety still telling her, even now, to tread carefully.
“I was born to a witch,” she said slowly.
“I was raised among witches. I was trained by a witch. Does all that make me a witch? Maybe. I never felt worthy of the name, though.” She looked up at him.
“At least, I didn’t until I met you, and learned I could do this. ”
She gestured to him, to the space between them.
Realization flickered in his eyes, a look almost like wonder crossing his face.
“I knew what you were from the moment I met you,” he told her.
“You run a witch’s shop. You can read tarot cards and talk to the dead.
You can travel into the past. I knew you were a witch.
I always knew. But I’m glad that you trusted me enough to tell me. ”
Oh God. There it was again. Attraction, in its purest and simplest form.
It was followed almost instantaneously by a wave of lust so strong Augustine was nearly knocked off her feet by it, and she felt dizzy.
In that moment, it would have been all too easy to fall into his arms. To pretend he wasn’t dead.
To pretend that somewhere — or maybe somewhen — there wasn’t a girlfriend.
But he was. And there was.
Disengage. Now.
She stepped back, away from that mesmerising look of awe still in his eyes, and cleared her throat.
“So, you have a cat?” she asked abruptly, before her stomach turned. “Oh, God, who’s feeding him? Giving him water? You’re dead . . . what if no one knew about him, what if he’s locked in wherever it is you live—”
“Augustine. Relax. My cat disappeared about a year ago. If he’s still alive, and I’m certain he is, I’m sure someone is feeding him.”
Relief mixed in with her dismay. “Your cat ran away?”
He paused, thoughtfulness in his eyes. “I guess. He was there one day, and then the next he wasn’t.” He looked confused. “It’s odd. But that memory . . . it kind of feels hazy. The same haze I have when I think about my girlfriend.”
That was odd. She leaned back against her till, staring at him.
“I have a cat,” she told him. “Bird. That’s his name.”
He looked at her sceptically. “You called your cat Bird? If there’s a secret society of cats somewhere, I’m fairly certain they’d lodge an objection.”
Augustine laughed. “Hey, it suits him.”
“I don’t doubt it.” Theo regarded her curiously. “Why did you call him that? Bird?”