Page 39 of A Ghost’s Guide to Haunting a Witch

Instead, she rested her fingers lightly on the next card in the spread. “This card is your future,” Augustine told him. “Are you ready for me to turn it over?”

Theo’s eyes darkened, and he let out a small, humourless breath. “I’m dead, Augustine. I don’t have a future, remember?”

She opened her mouth to reply, then closed it again, because there was no easy answer to that. “Okay,” she said finally. “Then don’t think of it as your future. Think of it as . . . what comes next. What you’re supposed to do now.”

Theo didn’t respond, and Augustine took his silence as permission to turn the card slowly.

“Justice,” she read. “In life, there’s supposed to be balance. Cause and effect. Actions and consequences.” She tapped the scales depicted on the card. “With you, something tipped them.”

“The High Priestess,” Theo said.

Augustine winced.

“Maybe,” she admitted. “I don’t know. But this card is telling you the same thing either way.” She met his eyes. “Find the truth about what happened to you. That’s how the scales are reset.”

Theo quietly regarded the card.

“How?” he asked at last. The emptiness had gone from his expression now. Something sharper had taken its place. Something restless. Something angry. “How do I do that?”

Augustine gestured to the next card in the spread. “This one shows the path ahead,” she said. “The direction everything is pointing.”

Theo let out a frustrated breath. “I’m dead,” he said again, more firmly this time. “I don’t have a destiny. Honestly, this is ridiculous. I just want to know who she is. I want to know she’s safe. I want to know what happened. I don’t care about a future path I can’t follow.”

Augustine felt irritation flicker through her. “Look, this is all new for me, too,” she shot back. “But this is how I was taught to read the cards. This is the system I know.” She rested her fingers on the next card. “Ready?”

Theo gave a small shrug. “Sure. Let’s hear what my grand cosmic purpose is.”

Augustine turned the card — and then froze, her fingers stilling above the countertop.

Theo frowned. “Who are they?”

Two figures stood beneath an angel, their hands reaching towards one another. Lush green spread across the garden behind them, vivid and alive, while the sky above burned with a deep, heavenly blue.

The Lovers.

Augustine swallowed as she took the card in.

The sky was almost the same shade as Theo’s eyes — that strange, bright blue that always seemed a little too vivid in the candlelight of her shop. And the green spilling across the garden floor reminded her, uncomfortably, of the hue of her own eyes.

Theo leaned closer, peering at the card.

“What does it mean?”

Augustine forced herself to breathe. “Well, the Lovers represents connection. A profound one.” Her finger hovered near the figures on the card. “Two lives tied together somehow.”

Theo tilted his head, studying the illustration.

Above the man and woman, an angel spread wide, watchful wings. Behind them stood two trees — one heavy with fruit, a serpent twisted around its trunk, the other aflame.

“It’s about relationships,” Augustine continued. “But also choices. Big ones. The kind that can change everything.”

Theo’s gaze moved between the two figures on the card.

“Is it romantic?” he asked. “This relationship?”

“Sometimes,” Augustine admitted.

He said nothing, just absorbed her with his eyes.