Chapter Thirty-Four #2
Theo was beside her a second later, his touch gentler now, his hand coming to rest against her back, tentative but warm. “Hey,” he murmured. “Hey, no. Don’t do that to yourself.”
She didn’t look at him. “I should have known,” she insisted, her voice trembling. “There should have been something . . . some part of me that recognized you straight away. Not this . . . not this slow, messy figuring it out after everything was already gone.”
Theo’s hand moved slowly against her back, a steady, grounding motion. “We were under a witch’s spell, Augustine,” he said quietly. “We are under a witch’s spell. That’s not something you just push through.” His gaze held hers. “We’ll fight it together.”
Augustine let out a shaky breath. “Yeah,” she said, certainty still felt painfully out of reach.
A brief silence followed.
“You know, you could just use the cards,” Theo suggested carefully. “Keep going back. Relearn everything.” His voice softened. “You could have your memories back. Our memories.”
Augustine’s answer was immediate. “No.”
Theo blinked slightly at the force of it.
“No,” she repeated, quieter this time, but no less certain.
“Augustine—”
“I’m not doing that without you.”
“Why?”
Augustine sighed. “If we can’t have our memories back together, I don’t want them at all. Besides, the price of going back . . . it gets heavier with every journey. I won’t do that to you. Not any more.”
Theo smiled, kissing the tip of her nose. “Okay. Well, maybe, if we could find the witch, and remove their spell . . . well, we might remember everything. Properly. Together. Not just pieces.” His voice softened, something hopeful threading through it. “We might get each other back.”
Augustine shook her head almost immediately. “No,” she said, the word automatic. “No, it wouldn’t be that simple. The kind of spell we’ve been cursed with would be hugely difficult to cast, and even more difficult to undo. Whoever this witch is, she must have enormous power—”
Augustine stopped suddenly.
It would take a witch of enormous power to cast something like that.
The words came flooding back, looping in her mind like a clip from a film on repeat, and déjà vu ran through her. She’d had this conversation before, hadn’t she? Not like this — not here, not with Theo — but with someone else.
“Maddy,” she exhaled, the name barely more than a breath.
Theo went still beside her. “What?”
Augustine shook her head, but it wasn’t denial any more. It was refusal, even as the truth settled deeper and deeper, locking into place with a precision that made her feel sick to her very stomach.
“No,” she whispered again, weaker this time. “No, it’s not possible—”
But it was possible, wasn’t it? Again, Maddy’s voice echoed in Augustine’s mind, clear as anything. It would take a witch of enormous power to cast something like that.
Maddy had said that. Maddy.
Augustine’s stomach turned. “She knew,” she said, the words hollow, her gaze fixed somewhere far beyond the room. “She knew exactly what kind of magic this would take. She didn’t hesitate, didn’t even need to think about it. She just . . . she just knew.”
Theo’s hand hovered uncertainly at her back. “Augustine. What are you talking about? Maddy knew?”
“Yes, she’s a charms witch,” Augustine told him, her voice gaining a frantic edge now, thoughts tumbling too fast to stop.
“A powerful one — too powerful, at times. You should see what she can do, the spells she can cast. That’s one of the reasons I’ve kept her close, even when I shouldn’t.
Because she’s so powerful, but so . . . impulsive.
And she was there, Theo. She’s been there this whole time, helping me, guiding me, telling me what to do—” Her voice broke.
“Oh God. What if she wasn’t helping me?”
“Augustine—”
“What if she did this?” Augustine’s voice was shaking now, her eyes finally snapping to Theo’s.
“What if it was her? What if my own sister is the reason you’re—” She couldn’t finish the sentence.
Couldn’t bring herself to say dead or gone.
Her chest rose and fell too quickly now, panic creeping in at the edges of her thoughts.
“She wouldn’t, would she?” Augustine whispered, like she was trying to convince herself as much as him.
“She wouldn’t do that to me. She wouldn’t do that to us. ”
“I don’t know Maddy,” Theo replied slowly. “I’ve never met her.”
“No, you have, you must have,” Augustine argued. “I’m so close to her. She’s my baby sister. She lives nearby. She works in London. Of course you’ve met her. You just—” she took a deep breath — “you just don’t remember meeting her.”
Theo was watching her carefully. “Okay,” he finally said, his voice calm, in stark contrast to her own spiralling thoughts. “Let’s slow this down for a second.”
Augustine let out a shaky breath, but she didn’t argue.
“You think that she had the power, the knowledge. But maybe . . . maybe she had a reason we don’t understand yet.” He chose his words carefully. “But we don’t know any of that, Augustine. Not for certain.”
Augustine’s arms tightened around herself.
“She might not be the enemy here,” Theo added. “Or if she is — we don’t know why. We don’t know what she was trying to do.”
Her gaze flickered to his, uncertainty warring with the growing, horrible certainty in her chest.
“So,” Theo went on, a little more firmly now, “what do we do next?”.
Augustine didn’t answer straight away. Instead, just for a second, she sat there, her thoughts racing.
She could all too easily picture the girl she’d grown up with.
The girl she’d fought with, and then, when their mother disappeared, the girl she’d raised and protected.
The woman she called now when things went wrong, when things went right, when things were so ordinary they barely seemed worth mentioning.
Maddy, who knew her better than anyone. Maddy, who had always been on her side.
Maddy, who Augustine knew would never hurt her.
Or would she? Augustine swallowed hard, her throat tight.
No matter how she turned it over, no matter how much she wanted to dismiss it, or laugh it off, or call it an impossibility, Maddy being the witch who had cursed her and Theo was the only explanation that fit.
And that, for Augustine, was the worst part.
Not that it might be true, but that it made such perfect sense.
“I know what to do,” Augustine finally said.
Theo studied her. “What?”
She took a deep breath. “I speak to Maddy.”