Ritual of the Broken (Haunted Hearts)

Chapter 1

Chapter

One

T he crystal pyramids and bloodstone spheres clicked and clattered in the glass case, and the necklaces swayed where they hung as if moved by an ill wind. She stood perfectly still with her hands folded in front of her several feet away, next to a rack of essential oils and taper candles in various colors.

Ollie Hartley had a ghost.

A bloodstone sphere rolled onto the floor.

An annoying ghost.

He gave her a stern frown of warning and dropped the box of Rider-Waite Tarot decks to be restocked on the floor. He walked over to the display to retrieve the stone and held it up in front of the ghost haunting him.

“Would you please stop? You break something in my store…” He didn’t finish his thought.

There was no response, no sign she even heard him, same as always. His lips pressed tight, he put the bloodstone back on its stand and went back to restocking the shelves.

She had shown up two years ago, on the same day Ollie’s mother was found dead. Seeing her was a constant reminder of the day he learned that he was now alone in the world—the last of his family line. The last Hartley. Of course, he’d tried to speak with her. He sought out a spell for it and gathered the components, but nothing came of it. She’d been too long dead, most likely. It would take a lot more than some graveyard dirt to get her to speak.

The ghost stared with a cold and stony expression at nothing in particular, the same grim, unchanging mouth and flinty eyes. She had mouse-brown hair pulled back into a tight bun, and her clothes came from another time, the late Georgian era, or perhaps Regency. Around her neck, she wore a large silver pendant with what appeared to be an infinity symbol overlapped with a third loop. Inside the third loop, there were three arcane sigils, which marked her as a fellow mage.

Ollie sighed at her. “If you’re going to take up space in my shop, the least you could do is dust the goddess statues,” he said to her.

He turned to peer down the aisles leading to the back of his shop. People might think he was talking to himself. But nobody else was in the store. His only other employee was Mary Ann, and she was in the storeroom backstocking the other products from the latest shipment.

Rowan perhaps the man knew the stone he purchased was from a meteor, and that was the extent of his interest. Or it was a gift for a girlfriend. That seemed most likely. At any rate, Dr. Clarence Montebaum’s purchase would help keep the lights on.

He saw the good doctor to the door and clicked the lock after he said his goodbye, thank you, and come again. As the man walked away, Ollie peered out the front window glass after him, almost like he expected him to hang around. Not that he wanted him to. By this point, the thrill was gone. The only date he had tonight was with the accounting app on his laptop.

When he turned, the ghost was standing inches from him.

Ollie flinched back into the door. “Whoa! You could blow a cold wind or something, you know, instead of sneaking up on me,” he said, and he stalked past her.

The ghost did something she’d never done before. She screamed.

And Ollie’s vision changed. A dizziness overcame him, and he stumbled. He was no longer in his own shop.

Instead of the usual crystals and tarot cards, he saw a man walking out of a bar...