Page 4 of A Ghost’s Guide to Haunting a Witch

It was actually kind of cute.

“I promise I’m not going to steal anything,” he said, putting the book down. “And if I was, it wouldn’t be that.”

“Why not? Don’t you believe that women having a positive experience of menopause has a place in society? And I’d be careful how you answer here. I was raised with three sisters. Where the patriarchy is concerned, I’m remarkably well informed.”

He swallowed. “Of course I think it has a place.”

She nodded. “Okay, well then—”

He wasn’t quite finished though. “I mean, statistically, women’s health has long been underprioritized, it has to be said, and access to HRT, therefore, remains inconsistent,” he carried on. “Meanwhile, the NHS dispenses millions of prescriptions for erectile dysfunction every year like they’re giving out Halloween candy.”

Augustine’s mouth dropped open. Of all the things she’d thought he’d say, it wasn’t that.

“So, you’re saying women get the trick while men get the treat?”

He nodded. “If the treat in this case is access to healthcare, then generally speaking, yes.”

Her gaze lingered on him a second longer than necessary, before she frowned. “Why do you smell like cinnamon?”

He frowned, clearly taken aback by her abrupt change in topic. “I smell like . . . what?”

“You smell like cinnamon,” she repeated, leaning in slightly, almost double-checking. “Not in a ‘I baked something charming’ kind of way either. More in a . . . ‘I’ve just taken a bath in the wax vat of the Yankee Candle factory’ kind of way.”

He looked genuinely baffled, lifting a hand to sniff at the sleeve of his coat by means of some sort of explanation. “Okay. Uh.” His brow furrowed. “I have absolutely no explanation for that.”

The motion drew her attention to his hands first. They were broad-palmed, long-fingered, and elegant. The sort of hands people had when you knew you could trust them. From there, Augustine’s eyes trailed over the rest of him with a new and sudden focus. He was handsome, she suddenly realized, and not in an understated or debatable way either. No. This man had the sort of face that made her immediately aware of herself: of the old jumper she’d thrown on that morning, of her bare face, of the fact that she’d expected nothing more eventful before her mid-morning coffee run than wrestling with a box of tangled pumpkin fairy lights and deciding where to hang the paper bats.

He had a strong nose and a soft mouth and his hair, falling just slightly in his eyes, looked soft. Those eyes . . . His lashes were dark and so absurdly long they nearly brushed his cheeks when he blinked. As for that eye colour, it looked like someone had taken all the clouds of a winter storm and mixed them with the sky of a summer’s day.

Beneath his obvious good looks though, there was something else. A kind of heaviness which Augustine struggled to name but could see all too well in the tiredness lingering in his eyes, like sadness sat just beneath his surface — like a bruise that was only visible when the light caught it in a particular way.

“You know,” she said slowly, “cinnamon aside, you’re either the best or worst shoplifter I’ve ever met. The jury's still out.”

“Again, I’m not a shoplifter,” he replied quickly. “I was honestly just looking. I didn’t come in here with a criminal agenda, I swear . . . or a menopausal one.”

“Right,” Augustine said, before she smiled. It was a smile she’d developed in the years she’d owned The Priestess Reversed, one that told people she was approachable but wouldn’t tolerate any nonsense. She still remembered the day, just after she’d first opened the shop, when she’d smiled at three customers only to have them brand a crucifix at her and demand she recant the ways of the devil (honestly, it was so dramatic, and what was this? The Salem witch trials?). She’d had to firmly eject them, after which she closed her shop early, poured herself a glass of wine and burned some cleansing rosemary. She’d then called her sister, Maddy, and asked her to hex them — nothing cruel or dramatic, just a small spell to ensure that their socks would forever feel slightly damp in their shoes. She might own a witch’s shop, but she wasn’t a monster.

“I’m just looking,” he promised.

“Okay. That’s allowed. Looking is free. Although,” Augustine added thoughtfully, “I suppose stealing is technically a kind of free as well. Might cost you your soul, though.”

She offered him another smile, and he smiled back, holding her gaze.

There it was again, that feeling of electricity, a spark of recognition Augustine found impossible to ignore. The air between them seemed charged, like the moment before a storm, and it settled somewhere deep and unexpected within her.

“My soul,” he repeated softly, like he was tasting the word. “The thing is, I can’t afford to lose my soul right now. I really am just looking.” He continued to hold her gaze, and her breath hitched slightly.

“Right, well, um . . .” Augustine momentarily scrambled for words, and she looked away from him, grasping for the safety of something she knew how to handle. “Well, if you need any help, let me know.”

She felt, rather than saw, him continue to stare at her for another small moment, before he shifted his weight. Without meeting his eye again, Augustine offered him another friendly smile before moving back to sit on the stool behind her till.

He’s definitely not a girlfriend shopper, she decided, still watching him from the corner of her eye. Girlfriend shoppers are normally desperate for someone to tell them what to buy. This is something else . . .

She let the silence stretch again, after that, pretending to fuss with a tray of tea light candles while keeping him in her peripheral vision. The shop was quiet today. A Tuesday afternoon. No bell jingling, no footsteps from the street outside, just the low hum of the old radiator and the faint herbal sweetness that never quite left the air.

Her shop wasn’t for the real Wiccans. Instead, it catered to ordinary people who liked to dabble in spirituality the same way they dabbled in sourdough starters or Pilates: casually and optimistically, with very little commitment and the vague hope the universe would sort out their problems for them.

That alone made this guy stand out. Most of Augustine’s weekday customers were tourists killing time between visiting the Cutty Sark and having lunch, or locals popping in for cleansing sage because they thought they had a weird vibe in their flat which new IKEA furniture and a lick of paint on the walls hadn’t solved. The yummy mummy crowd sometimes dropped by, too, in between baby yoga and their oat-milk cappuccinos, to stock up on scented candles and natural teething remedies.