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Ritual of the Broken (Haunted Hearts) Chapter 11 32%
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Chapter 11

Chapter

Eleven

I t was afternoon when the chime of the door announced their exit from Magnificent Munch. Ollie held the door open for Adrian, eyebrows quirked in a teasing manner. The scent of grilled lamb meat and onions was replaced with the city—car exhaust, the distant hint of the river, and the overlying bouquet of hundreds of passersby. The stink of the city was a relief after coming from a place where all he could smell was the burnt ozone of magic. Rain also carried on the air from somewhere.

“I thought you were going to lose it back there,” Ollie said as they maneuvered through the crowds of people. His tone was lighter than Adrian expected, all things considered. Almost teasing.

Adrian rolled his eyes, though the corner of his mouth twitched in amusement. “Says the guy who acted like he wanted his ex to get hit by a bus. I think I was pretty tame compared to you.”

Ollie blushed and stared forward as they walked.

“I hope that wasn’t too painful,” Adrian said after a while.

Ollie shrugged, his face a mix of charming and embarrassed. “Well, it wasn’t fun, but it was worth it. Hopefully, Emmerich comes through. If anyone can figure out that sigil, it’s him.”

“That didn’t look like it was easy for you to say.”

Ollie shrugged. “Yeah, well, I don’t like the guy, but he knows his shit.”

“Seems to me he knows other things as well,” Adrian said. He hesitated. “Did you really cause a guy to explode?”

Ollie’s expression fell, his shoulders sagging. “I didn’t cause him to explode,” he said in a quiet voice. “It was a mishap. I was trying to... Never mind. It was an accident. An unfortunate consequence of my magic. It’s not something I’m proud of. But I’ve learned a lot since then.”

Adrian felt bad bringing it up. The guilt on Ollie’s face tugged at something in Adrian. He placed a hand on Ollie’s shoulder and gave a light squeeze. “Hey, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked that. I was just surprised, is all.”

Ollie shook his head. “No, it’s okay. I understand. It’s not every day you find out you’re working with a magical killer. Well, not actually a killer, but...”

Adrian gave Ollie’s shoulder another gentle squeeze. “If it makes you feel any better, I put a woman in the hospital when I first changed,” he said. “I don’t really like to think about it either.”

Ollie turned to face him. “What happened?”

They continued walking but at a slower pace.

Adrian took a deep breath, letting it out slowly as he collected his thoughts. “I was young, in middle school still. It was summer, and me and some friends were out riding bikes. We stayed out late, and that’s when it happened. I knew it was coming. I knew I was probably going to change, but still. It’s not an exact time. It’s like when you get hair on your balls. There’s no controlling when it’s going to happen. It just does.”

Ollie smiled a little at that, and it encouraged Adrian to keep going.

“Anyway, I was a dumb kid, and it was all new. I thought I was dying. But the craving was intense. I wanted nothing more than to get somewhere to run. I wanted to hunt. Only I didn’t make it, not even close. I changed in the alleyway behind my house and attacked my neighbor. She was just taking out her trash. I remember her screaming, but I didn’t stop. If my mom hadn’t sensed my change and reached out, I might have killed her.”

As they walked, the distant hum of the city surrounded them, but in their immediate vicinity, the world felt quieter, as if pausing for their conversation.

Ollie’s steps slowed, his brow furrowing as his gaze met Adrian’s. “Reached out?”

Adrian didn’t like talking about this, about his family, about being a werewolf, especially since he learned they kept shelves on his kind in their big library. And he wasn’t the type to share his history to many people. But, after everything that happened down in the library, he felt as if he owed it to Ollie. “Familial bond. A parental instinct. She was able to calm me down enough that I regained what little of my senses I could. I ran for the forests, drawn by the scent of it. I stayed hidden until my parents found me, and we hunted.”

The growl of a delivery truck and a string of rideshare drivers passed nearby, punctuating his words. At first, Adrian thought the way Ollie looked at him was somehow judgmental, but the scent he picked up from him was far from it. He seemed more pensive or pleased that Adrian told him a bit of his story. His scent spoke of camaraderie more than anything. Nearly killing somebody because of what they were meant they shared membership in the same club.

Raindrops spotted Ollie’s shoulders. “What happened to the woman?”

“She survived. Got a long scar from it.” He traced a line down his forearm, imagining the mark. “Every time I saw her, she’d show it to me and tease. She never let me live it down.”

Ollie’s mouth opened slightly in surprise. “Wait. She knew you did it?”

A low rumble of thunder in the distance echoed Adrian’s next words. “I told you we live in small communities. She was married to one of our pack. Her husband was none too happy with me, but he never did anything about it.”

Ollie gestured toward an overhang in front of a store entrance so they could get out of the rain. As they settled, he asked, “How does that work, anyway?”

Adrian cocked an eyebrow. “What?”

Ollie leaned forward, his interest evident. “The pack thing. Are you part of a pack now?”

Adrian frowned. The words of his screaming dad back to him. His jaw tingled where he’d been hit after he mentioned to a non-wolf cousin, the product of a marriage to an outsider, about their pack. This was long steps outside his comfort zone. But he found Ollie easy to talk to. Which was the biggest surprise of them all. A mage, and here he found himself opening up to give him history he hadn’t spoken about to anyone outside of Elizabethtown. But the guy was kind of like smoke, finding his way into cracks and seeping in. Still, there was a lot he wasn’t willing to discuss, especially the specifics of his father and the rest of his immediate family. “It’s complicated.”

Ollie’s eyes narrowed. “Complicated how?”

A long exhale, and Adrian peered out from beneath the canopy to the rain to try to gauge how much more it was going to rain. A glint of sunlight struck off the tall buildings surrounding them. “My family won’t let me go, but I refused to stay.”

“So, you ran away from home.” Ollie smirked .

Adrian smirked back, albeit a bit bitterly. “Pretty much.”

Ollie gave Adrian an assessing kind of look. “That’s not complicated at all,” he said. “Pretty simply put, actually.”

Adrian let a grin form on his face. “Well, it gets complicated when I run into other werewolves. The tension, the unsaid challenges. I’m not exactly welcome in the places claimed by other packs.”

“Who claims Chicago?”

Adrian chuckled, a dry sound. “A place this big? No one, really. It’s hard to be what we are in places like this.”

“So, wait, are you the only werewolf in Chicago?”

“Of course not. There are quite a few of us lurking in the shadows. This is a big city, and werewolves come and go at times. Most of them are like me, living on the fringes of the packs they left behind. Others are just lone wolves who never had a pack to begin with and somehow managed to survive. Chicago, in many ways, is a refuge for the lost and wandering.”

A breeze ruffled Adrian’s hair, and he brushed it back with a hand. Ollie’s gaze followed the movement, lingering for a second too long. Clearing his throat, he said, “You know, for a werewolf, you have surprisingly good hair. What’s your secret?”

“You think this is natural?” Adrian smirked. “Please. It’s all about that full-moon hair serum. Side effects include random howling and the occasional urge to chase cars. ”

Ollie turned his head with a lopsided grin. “Figures. And here I thought it was some mysterious werewolf gene.”

Adrian grinned back to the point he became self-conscious about it. He glanced back out into the street at the rain falling. “I think it’s letting up.”

They continued their trek. As they reached a quieter part of the street, Adrian took a moment to truly look at Ollie. The sunlight breaking through the clouds caught the gold flecks in his hazel eyes, and for a moment, everything else faded.

“You have...” Adrian started, searching for the right words, “a way of drawing people in. It’s not just your mage abilities, but something innate. It’s... refreshing.”

Ollie’s gaze softened. He laughed. “This morning, you wanted to chew my face off.”

Adrian shrugged. “I’ve had coffee since then.”

They looked at one another for a long moment, long enough that Adrian’s palms started to sweat so that he had to rub them on his thighs. Ollie opened his mouth to speak.

“So,” he said, “can I ask you something?”

“Sure.” Adrian’s throat worked.

“Why do you hate mages?”

The question caught Adrian off guard. He wasn’t sure what he expected, but it wasn’t that.

The blaring of car horns and the distant hum of Chicago’s streets rattled Adrian’s thoughts.

Ollie felt bad about accidentally killing someone. If he knew everything Adrian had done, every river of blood flowing through the streets that was caused by him, they probably wouldn’t be having much more of a conversation.

Adrian ran a hand through his hair and let out a shuddered breath. “I can’t talk about that.”

He felt a hand on his shoulder that made him flinch. When he turned, Ollie held up both his hands.

“It’s okay,” Ollie said. “We don’t have to talk about it.”

Seeing Ollie left him conflicted. On the one hand, he was starting to like Ollie. On the other, the pain of everything people like him caused was… it was a lot. “I’m sorry,” Adrian said, and he started walking.

Ollie fell in beside him. “Don’t apologize. Believe me, I get it. Trauma happens, and we have to wait until the time is right to be able to deal with it.”

He wanted to shout that there was no way he could understand. But he stopped himself. After all, he’s the one who broached the subject of Ollie’s past and made him talk about something obviously painful. He couldn’t fault Ollie for wanting to do the same thing.

Adrian forced some of the tension out with a breath. “So, what’d you see in that Emmerich guy anyway?” Adrian asked.

Ollie smiled again. “As he deftly changes the subject…”

Adrian couldn’t help a smile of his own. “Seriously. He seemed more like one-night stand material to me.”

“And you’re an expert on one-night stands?”

Caught . Adrian brushed at his nose with a knuckle and looked forward as they walked. “My job keeps me from making many long-term connections.”

“Ah, an app guy, huh?” Ollie gave Adrian a look.

“No. Not the apps.” Adrian’s face felt hot. He wasn’t one to talk about his personal life. But, he guessed he did open the salvo by asking about Ollie’s ex. “I prefer to meet people. You know, talk to them face-to-face.”

“To smell them,” Ollie said.

“Hey, you have your way of figuring people out with your magic woo-woo crap. I use what works for me.”

“I’m not judging,” Ollie said with a grin. “I just never figured you for the love-em-and-leave-em type.”

Adrian quirked an eyebrow in Ollie’s direction. “Oh, what did you figure me for?”

“Well, initially, I thought you’d have a pretty little wife and a dozen kids or something. You give off that kind of alpha male energy.” A look crossed Ollie’s face, one that hinted at a mix of sheepish and sly. “But now that I know you’re a big ol’ queer like me, I was thinking you might be the type to have some cute guy with glasses. Maybe a professor type on lock in an apartment in Lakeview.”

Adrian scoffed. “What? Whatever gave you that impression.” He glanced at Ollie—who, he realized, was a cute professor-type with glasses. Adrian’s face was definitely getting hot now. Only one day with this guy, and, okay, maybe Adrian was entertaining some thoughts—some thoughts he never would have considered with a mage. But there. He admitted it to himself at least. He was giving the thought some play in his head. “I—well … I?— ”

A man walked between Adrian and Ollie, shoulder-checking Ollie as he passed.

“Hey!” Ollie turned to yell at the guy, who kept walking.

A smell hit his nose, that same stench of magic. He turned and thought about grabbing the guy by his jacket and forcing him to turn around.

“You see her, right?” Ollie said beside him.

Adrian first turned to Ollie, then he followed where Ollie’s gaze was directed. About ten feet in front of them was the ghost, the same one he’d seen at the crime scene that morning. It made him forget about the man.

“Who is she?” Adrian asked.

“She’s my ghost,” Ollie said.

“Your gho?—”

Before Adrian could say anything else, the spirit opened its mouth wider than a human should and hurtled itself forward. The ghost slammed into—and through—Ollie.

Ollie staggered from the seemingly powerful force of the ghost, then he fell backward, and Adrian leapt to catch him.

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