Page 58 of A Ghost’s Guide to Haunting a Witch

“Do you know,” he began, his voice hoarse, “how long it’s been since I’ve touched someone?”

“Well, it’s been a week since you died—”

“No.” His words were firm. “Since even before then. I don’t remember the last time I held a woman’s hand like this. Since I felt like this.”

His words were weighed with wonder, yet something that sounded almost like grief. She swallowed, still staring at their hands. She watched as his thumb moved against the palm of her hand, the strokes small and uncertain, in a way that told her he was memorizing the texture of her skin.

She didn’t answer him right away. She couldn’t, and for another heartbeat neither of them moved.

Augustine looked down at their joined hands, her mind stumbling over itself as realization struck her, sudden and bright.

“Theo, I . . .” she whispered, almost to herself. “I know this.”

Theo’s grip tightened slightly, seemingly afraid she might vanish if he let go of her for even a second. “Know what?”

She lifted her gaze to his. “Your hands. I know them. I know the feel of them.” Her words hung there, strange and intimate all at once. “I felt this before,” she carried on, her voice unsteady now. “In the memory. When you touched her—” She broke off, her throat tightening faintly. “I learned it. Somehow. How you feel.”

Theo didn’t pull away.

But then, neither did she.

“It carried over,” Augustine finished softly, almost in awe. “From there . . . from that memory. It carried to here.”

Neither of them moved, then, slowly, almost without thinking, Augustine lifted her free hand.

Theo’s eyes followed the motion, something unreadable flickering through them as her fingers hovered, just short of his face, just short of the faint shadow along his jaw, of the shape of his mouth, of the quiet stillness he’d fallen into. She hesitated only a second before reaching the last inch.

Her fingers passed straight through him.

Augustine flinched, pulling back sharply, the absence of contact as startling as the touch had been only moments before. The space where his skin should have been felt cold and empty, and so entirely wrong to her still skin-warmed hands.

“Oh,” she said, exhaling with disappointment, even as understanding settled in, slow and certain, and she glanced down at their hands again — still joined, still real — and then back up at him, her thoughts racing to catch up with what her body already seemed to understand.

“The only reason I can touch your hands . . .” she said carefully, “is because I’ve already felt them. In the memory. So if I . . . if I went back . . . if I saw more . . ” Her voice trailed off, but the conclusion hung plainly between them.

If I learn the rest, I can touch the rest.

Theo swallowed. “Augustine—”

“I should go back,” Augustine said, the words coming quicker now, before she could second-guess them. “Into her memories. Through the cards. I’ll find out what happened. Find out what you’ve forgotten.”

She almost expected Theo to seize on her idea immediately, to agree without a second thought. It was what he wanted, wasn’t it? What he’d asked for. To know what happened. To learn who his girlfriend was, and if she was okay.

But he didn’t. He didn’t say anything at all, in fact. His gaze was still fixed on their hands, his expression gone distant in a way she hadn’t seen before — not blank, but caught somewhere deeper, somewhere she couldn’t follow, and Augustine’s breath slowed, her certainty faltering just slightly as the silence stretched.

“Theo?” Augustine watched him, a small, uncertain knot forming low in her chest. “Theo. You need to choose a card. Choose a card, and I can go back. Find her again.”

With her free hand, she nudged the deck towards him, but he didn’t move.

Then, with the hallmark of someone surfacing from somewhere far away, Theo blinked and drew in a quiet breath. His focus shifted — first to her face, and then, almost reluctantly, back to their hands. “Why . . .” he started, his voice rougher now, less certain. He swallowed. “Why do your hands feel so familiar to me?”

Augustine hesitated. “I don’t know,” she admitted, and for once there was no cleverness in it, no attempt to soften the truth. “I wish I did.”

Theo studied her for a second longer, like he might find the answer written somewhere in her expression. Whatever he was looking for, he didn’t seem to find it.

“Choose a card,” Augustine told him again. “I can go back . . . see more. Learn more.”

Theo didn’t reach for the deck. “You’re talking like what you’re about to do is nothing.”