Adelie

Adelie pushed open the door to Perfect Darkness and stepped inside. The scents hit her immediately. The shop had been cozy and inviting when she'd first visited in the tail end of winter. Now it was smothering, the dim lighting wrapping around her like a blanket that the day was much too hot for.

The witch who managed the shop was behind the counter, only her head, shoulders and enormous hat high enough to be seen. Adelie hesitated. She'd felt confident entering, but that had been on the assumption that it would be the sorcerer, Rondell, on duty. She'd spoken to him a few times when he'd delivered the monthly supplies of Soot's allergy treatments, and while he was undeniably powerful, he was a known quantity.

The witch was something else altogether. Adelie took a deep breath and walked forwards, between the rows of densely-stacked jars on the shelves. As she approached, she saw the night-black shape of the witch's cat stretched out along the ancient, varnished timber. It sensed her, rolling over and fixing her with eyes that were altogether too flatly yellow to belong to an ordinary biological feline.

Behind the counter, the hat lifted as its owner climbed onto some sort of stool. She said, "Hey, I remember you. The dragon vet, right?"

"Mm." Adelie nodded, tearing her attention away from the not-cat.

"How's he doing, your dragon? Flying well?"

"He's doing good." Adelie paused, then pressed on. Better not to try to guess whether the witch knew which dragon Adelie had charge of. "He's been fine since we started the treatments you suggested, thank you."

"You're here for something else, then." The witch smiled warmly, but the cat stood and flowed up onto her shoulders, around the back of her neck.

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"Yeah, uh, I wasn't sure where to go for help." Now that Adelie was here, it was difficult to admit the problem. She didn't really know what it was in the farmhouse.

Witch and feline blinked at her in perfect sync. "I can probably help with that."

When it became clear she was going to wait Adelie out, Adelie took a long breath and managed, "I think we have a ghost at our- at this house we use."

"Yeah, there's definitely stuff we can do about that." The brim of the enormous hat bobbed up and down as the witch nodded. "What's your ghost doing?"

"Well, um, it's nothing major, but I think it's getting more… um, like it's doing more stuff than it was."

"How did it start?"

How had the haunting started? "First I just heard noises and stuff around the house. Then it started messing with, um, electronics? I think it was resetting our router and messing around on my laptop and stuff."

"Resetting your router?" The witch gave her a look exactly like the face tech support people pull when they're about to tell you to turn something off and on again.

Adelie felt her speech speeding up. "Um, well, then someone left a notepad and pen behind at the house and, um, when I came back there was writing in it. And then- and then I tried putting out a notepad deliberately and I saw the pen lift up and write by itself!"

"Okay, alright, calm down." The witch's face softened, her voice level. "What did it write? Threats?"

"No, no it was like, well, the first thing was 'I mean you no harm'. It wrote a bunch of stuff, actually. The time I saw it myself, all it wrote was 'Hi'."

"Did you say anything back?"

Adelie's throat closed up. She managed to squeak, "Um, no. I panicked."

The not-cat's not-eyes rolled, and it exchanged A Look with the witch. Slowly, and clearly still trying to be gentle, the witch said, "This doesn't sound like a very scary ghost."

"No but what if-" Adelie said, voice high and whistling.

"I think the worst thing you have to worry about is if they get sick of you running away." Then the witch smiled. "Look, you clearly don't have anything to worry about right now. We're busy at the moment with solstice orders and stuff, but let's book in a date for a few weeks and I'll come and have a look."