By the time I hauled my tired bones back up the stairs to the apartment; Agatha had reappeared and was prowling around the hallway like a jaguar. She swiveled to glare at me as soon as I closed the apartment door. “Well, did you get any information from those old cows?”

“Information?” I burst through the bedroom door. I really needed some food. And a shower. No, I thought, a bath. I needed a long, hot bath.

The old woman stamped her ghostly feet in irritation. “Information about my murder. Did they do it? Well, not Dorothy, she doesn’t have a bad bone in her roly-poly body, but Bianca? Ha, she’d put a knife in her own mother’s back to make a quick buck.”

“Oh, come on, Agatha. She’d not that bad,” I said, Bianca’s warning about the old lady’s will slithering in the back of my mind. I screwed my face up. “Anyway, it’s all irrelevant.” I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket and flicked through the articles about Agatha’s death for the second time that morning before flashing the screen at her face. “You choked on a grape, sorry. Murder solved, no witchcraft necessary.” I raised my hands in a pleading gesture. “Now, could you please leave the room so I can get out of these filthy clothes and have a bath?”

“But it’s not true.” Agatha plonked herself down on the large bed and wrapped a weightless hand around the bars of the wrought iron frame. I slid my cell back into my pocket, taken aback by the ghost’s sudden deflation. I unzipped my bags and pulled out a robe, a bath towel, and some fresh clothes and underwear. I hid the royal blue lacy lingerie set under my towel to prevent Agatha from ranting about young people and their tiny underwear, but the old woman didn’t even glance in my direction as I shimmied out of my clothes and slipped into my robe. The tabby cat sat beside Agatha on the bed and grinned at me as I walked across the room, but the ginger cat hid his head under the comforter. The black cat appeared to have disappeared entirely. If getting undressed was all I had to do to make the cats vamoose, I decided I would happily take up naturalism. I was just about to close the door to the bathroom when the ghost spoke again. “I didn’t just choke on a grape. That couldn’t have been how it all ended. I wasn’t done with life. I wasn’t finished.”

Despite myself, I softened, unable to ignore the depth of sadness in her voice. Sadness, or perhaps, regret. I pressed my palm against the doorframe. “You don’t remember how you died?”

Like breaking a spell, the old woman was back to her usual, exasperated self. “Of course, I don’t remember how I died, you nincompoop. Who the hell remembers their own death? That’s why I need you, to work the memory spell and to avenge my murder.”

I snapped the en-suite bathroom door shut in Agatha’s face, but the old woman walked through it with a smug grin. Muttering under my breath, I twisted the taps and a flood of blessedly warm water gurgled from the spout and splashed into the huge porcelain tub. The bathtub’s clawed feet were beautiful, as were the ceramic tiled floor and the handcrafted wall unit, but I suspected the oversized room would be draughty and cold once winter came again. I made a mental note to figure out how to work the heat in the building, grateful for whoever had ensured there was warm water for my bath. My head was full of the buzz of tiredness and a creeping awareness that talking to a ghost felt more natural than I wanted to admit. “Listen, Agatha, I’m not a witch. I’m a normal, suburban woman. There’s nothing witchy or special about me; sorry to disappoint.”

“What coven do you belong to?” Agatha narrowed her eyes. “Has somebody told you something about me? They’ve told you not to work with me.”

“What? No,” I said. “This is ridiculous. More ridiculous than the darn cats. I don’t know how many times I need to tell you this, lady, but I’m not a witch.”

Agatha waved her hand dismissively. “Of course you are, you scented your letter of application with lavender oil.”

I rooted through the vanity and drawers, casting a glare over my shoulder. “I like essential oils. That doesn’t make me a witch.”

“I worked an overseer spell and I saw you drinking your green potions. I saw you trying to give one to that buffoon you were besotted with, too.” Agatha crossed her arms and raised one eyebrow. “Spelled love never ends well, any witch worth her salt knows that much.”

I snatched a bottle of bubble bath from a drawer and emptied it into the water. “Vegan smoothies.” I snapped the drawer closed. “Not potions, smoothies. Because I’m a businesswoman, not a witch.”

“Oh, for goodness sake, enough with this charade already. You think I don’t recognize a witch when I see one?” Agatha threw her hands in the air. “Fiddlesticks and pork pies, next you’ll be trying to tell me that boyfriend of yours doesn’t have a teeny-tiny piece of equipment.”

The tabby cat poked his head through the cat flap in the bathroom door and his whiskers twitched as he glanced from me to his ghostly owner.

“Ex-boyfriend,” I snapped, instinctively, narrowing my eyes. “And how would you know about my ex-boyfriend’s… anything? Were you spying on him with your spell, too?”

“Absolutely not.” Agatha held a hand to her chest as if the accusation offended her. “But if you insist on sniveling over your cell-phone thingy at night and flicking through pictures of him with his pathetic little—”

“Stop!” I clapped my hands over my ears and glared at the door. “Stop, stop, stop. Let me have my bath in peace, please.” I tipped my head at the tabby cat perched lazily on the side of the bath. “And take that hairball with you.”

Agatha tutted. “Don’t call him a hairball, Pussy is a beautiful cat.”

“Pussy?” I almost choked on the name. “You called a male cat Pussy?”

“Don’t have such a filthy mind, child,” Agatha drawled, but I could tell from the gleam in her eye and the twist of her lips that the humor wasn’t lost on her.

The tabby cat arched his back and stretched his paws before pouncing onto the floor with a toss of his head. “Don’t be like that, sweetheart. You’re just feeling a little tense. Maybe a little time with a man who’s packing more than a shrimp-sized—”

I grabbed the empty bottle of bubble bath and flung it as hard as I could. It sailed through Agatha’s stomach and smacked off the wall above Pussy’s head. “Get out, you psychopaths. Please.” Agatha opened her mouth, but I cut her off. “No! Get out, get out, get out!”

With a roll of her eyes, Agatha vanished, leaving me alone with the smarmiest looking cat on the face of the earth. I waved a hairbrush threateningly and glared at him. Pussy stretched once more before he sauntered away. He looked over his shoulder as he approached the cat flap and blinked with one eye. “Have a nice bath, sweetheart. If you discover you have an…itch you want licked—“

The hairbrush bounced off the door as his tail disappeared.