Chapter Twenty-Four
When Augustine woke, she was under her coat in the corner of The Priestess Reversed, her head cushioned on a pile of healing energy blankets she’d recently ordered from India. For a long moment she was disorientated, blinking in the early morning light.
The shop looked different from this angle.
The shadows were less theatrical, the candles burned down to nothing.
The usual hum of the space had been replaced by a quiet, almost thoughtful stillness.
Dust drifted lazily through the thin bands of sunlight slipping in through the window, and just for a second, Augustine lay there in the early morning sunshine, listening to nothing.
She pushed herself upright slowly, her neck protesting as she rolled her shoulders back. Theo still hadn’t returned. She knew that for a fact, because after Maddy left she’d stayed, hadn’t she? She’d waited. All night.
But he hadn’t come back. Hadn’t appeared or materialized.
A faint crease formed between Augustine’s brows as she stretched out the kinks in her back, because she’d been so sure he would.
After everything . . . after the card, their conversation, the way he’d looked at her .
. . she’d been certain he’d return. After they’d been able to touch, her hand held warm and tight in his, she’d been certain he’d come back.
But he hadn’t. Has something happened to him? Is something stopping him from coming to me? She didn’t know how any of this worked and her mind was spiralling into deeply unhelpful speculation.
There was nothing else to do now but open the curtains and get ready for the day. She glanced at the floor, at the circle of salt that was still present; she should really sweep that up, too.
Still, even as she began to set up and found her sweeping brush and pan, her mind turned the same question over and over again: why wasn’t he here? She’d been so certain — and so damned hopeful — that he would be.
Maybe Maddy scared him off.
The thought was sudden and intrusive. It was also, she realized, a ridiculous idea, because Maddy was many things, but avenging ghostbuster wasn’t one of them.
She carried a canvas backpack, not a proton pack.
But then, magic didn’t exactly follow the rules of logic, did it?
More than that, Maddy’s reaction yesterday had been sharp and defensive.
Almost . . . territorial, in a way Augustine couldn’t quite define.
Could that kind of energy do something? Keep him away?
Augustine exhaled slowly, dragging a hand through her hair.
Why was Maddy so negative about him?
It didn’t fit. Not unless she knew something. Something she wasn’t saying. Frustrated, Augustine swept the salt and sage circle away, still mulling over the questions in her mind.
When she was finished, Augustine stretched, her arms reaching overhead until her spine gave a satisfying crack.
“God,” she muttered, wincing slightly, “I need an actual bed in this place . . .”
She froze, and slowly, very slowly, lowered her arms.
She’d recalled Maddy’s words from a few days ago when there’d been mention of a place upstairs. What place upstairs?
Maddy had lied yesterday, Augustine was nearly sure of it. Now she was beginning to think that it hadn’t been for the first time.
The place upstairs. It had seemed like just another one of Maddy’s usual offhand comments, easily lost in the noise of everything else.
But now . . . now Augustine wondered. Was it just another lie? She paused, looking around her shop again. There was an upstairs, but it belonged to the estate agent next door. She didn’t have access. She’d never had access. Or had she?
Her gaze shifted, drawn instinctively, almost magnetically, towards the back wall. Towards the bookcase.
It stood exactly where she’d shoved it the other day, still as tall and solid as ever.
Packed tight with old grimoires, second-hand paperbacks, and a few decorative spell jars that had never actually been used.
It was mostly there for aesthetic purposes, and was entirely unremarkable. Entirely innocent.
Or maybe it’s just meant to look that way.
Augustine stepped towards it, appraising it from different angles.
“If there was a way for me to get upstairs from here,” she murmured, her voice barely above a whisper now, “the access point would be behind the bookcase. But I checked. Just the other day, I checked. There’s nothing there. Just wall.”
Still, her pulse quickened as she took a step forward, then another, the floor creaking softly beneath her boots as she approached. She crouched slightly, peering behind the wood at the wall once more, tracing the seams with her gaze like she might catch them shifting if she looked hard enough.
“Okay,” she muttered, tilting her head. “So either I’m losing my mind . . . or my sister is hiding an entire floor from me.”
She straightened slowly, folding her arms. She waited and watched, urging the wall to give itself away.
“What are you staring at?”
Augustine yelped, actually yelped, like a frightened puppy. There was a full-body jolt involved — shoulders, spine, dignity, all of it — before she spun around so quickly she nearly took out a stack of ethically-sourced incense sticks with her elbow.
Theo was there. Just standing there, like he hadn’t been not there for the past, well, however many hours she’d spent sleeping badly on the floor.
“Oh my God.” Augustine pressed a hand to her chest. “Do you have to do that?”
Theo blinked at her, mildly taken aback. “Do what?”
“Appear,” she said, gesturing wildly. “Without warning. Like some kind of . . . of . . . emotionally confusing jump scare.”
“I didn’t mean to frighten you,” Theo replied earnestly. “That was never my intention.”
She held his gaze a moment longer than necessary .
. . then she moved. She’d closed the distance between them in three quick steps, something in her chest loosening all at once at the sight of him, the relief of it hitting harder than she’d expected.
She almost, almost, threw herself at him, the instinct immediate, absolute and altogether terrible.
She stopped so abruptly it was honestly impressive she didn’t sprain something. Because this was a bad idea.
He’s a ghost. And a very taken ghost.
She stood frozen a foot away from him, hands twitching slightly at her sides like they hadn’t quite received the updated memo from her brain.
You cannot throw yourself into the arms of a spectral entity, she told herself firmly. We’ve discussed this. He’s an apparition. You’d go right through him and end up on the floor. That outcome doesn’t end in romance, only concussion.
So instead, she did the only reasonable thing left and chewed on her thumbnail. She tried to look casual and composed, the very picture of calm. She wasn’t sure she was succeeding, though, as Theo just watched her, one eyebrow lifting slightly.
Augustine swallowed, dragging her hand away from her mouth and attempting something resembling normal human behaviour.
“Where have you been?” she demanded, her question sharper than she intended, and much more worried than she’d planned. Her gaze flicked over him quickly, like she was checking — what exactly? That he was still intact and whole? As if ghosts came in varying states of disrepair?
“You just disappeared,” she went on, a little breathless now. “After the card. After holding my hand. After everything. I came back, and you weren’t there.”
There was a beat of silence between them, and Theo’s eyes rested on hers intently. He was listening, Augustine realized. Waiting patiently for her to finish.
“I waited,” she added, and then immediately wondered if she shouldn’t have, because maybe it was too much.
Maybe it was too honest. She couldn’t take it back, though, and she suddenly realized she didn’t want to take it back.
“I waited all night,” she admitted, realizing how it sounded, but not really caring. “But you weren’t there.”
At that, Theo took a step towards her. Briefly, she wondered if he was going to touch her.
She knew the feel of his hands, knew the feel of his lips now, too.
Touch was something shared between them, something within the realm of possibility in this impossible situation.
Theo didn’t reach for her, though. Instead, his hands were kept steadily by his sides, a slight tension to them the only indicator that he was holding something back.
“When you touched that tarot card, I disappeared,” he told her, and Augustine was surprised to hear a hint of anger in his words. Not anger for her, but anger towards the cosmos, for separating them. “I wanted to come back. But I couldn’t.”
“Where did you go?” she asked, and his face darkened.
“Somewhere . . . wrong. It was empty. Echoing. There was just me. It felt like a trap.”
She frowned. “Had you been there before?”
He looked disturbed. “No. I don’t know how I got there. All I wanted to do was find you. But something stopped me.”
“Magic,” she whispered. “There’s always a price to pay for it. I used magic to visit her memories . . . and you paid the price.”
Something in her ached at the thought of him, in that empty place, wanting to find her. She ached at the thought of him being somewhere unknown, and entirely alone.
“I’m sorry,” she said mournfully. “I didn’t mean for that to happen.”
“It doesn’t matter. I’m here now,” he replied.
“You found me.”
Theo’s gaze steadied on hers. “Yes. I found you.”
She hesitated, just for a second, then asked, “Do you want to know what I saw? When I was in your past? In her past?”
He didn’t reply, continuing to gaze at her with eyes that were both intense and warm.
“Theo?”
He stepped closer to her. “Could you . . .” he began, his voice careful, “could you touch more of me now, do you think?”
“That’s . . . that’s not an answer to my question,” she whispered.
Theo stepped closer again. “I know. I’m asking a question of my own.”