Ritual of the Broken (Haunted Hearts)

Chapter 34

Chapter

Thirty-Four

I n the days following, the world went on as it always did. No apocalypse meant Ollie had to go to work on Monday. He took a long weekend, of course. Nearly dying at the hands of a creature summoned from another realm was a good enough reason to take a couple vacation days and leave the store to his employees.

They went to Adrian’s apartment. It seemed the safest place, even though Ollie didn’t think he was a target anymore. The ritual was completed, the first part of it anyway. His apartment was probably safe. But he didn’t want to go home to his place just in case.

Besides, he liked taking a shower in Adrian’s bathroom, he liked using his soap so that he smelled like him, and he liked wearing one of Adrian’s t-shirts along with a pair of his sweatpants for those few days he gave himself to recover after the ritual. And, most of all, he liked climbing into Adrian’s bed and laying down next to the big werewolf with his arms wrapped around him. Maybe that’s the real reason he thought staying at Adrian’s was a good idea.

And they remained locked up in Adrian’s apartment until Monday. Adrian handled his lieutenant while Ollie stayed behind to pore over books. Before they left the Tribune Tower, Ollie entered the workshop he’d seen when they led him to the ritual space. There, he gathered up as many books as he and Adrian could carry, along with anything that looked important. Some of the books were more of Preston’s journals. Others likely belonged to Enoch Roscorla. There was even one with handwriting Ollie recognized as the same in his family’s grimoire. It was Isabell’s journal. They took them all. Nobody was there to stop them. They all must have been upstairs during the ritual and got caught up in the blast of Ollie’s magic, so he and Adrian were able to grab everything they needed—anything that might tell them more about what’s to come.

Then, Ollie went to work on Monday. After, he went to see Mary Ann.

She answered the door with no make-up, wearing a black t-shirt with a hole on the shoulder. Her hair was left unbrushed, and there was none of the usual glint in her eye that made her seem as if she was judging the world from a position of detached amusement. Now, she was all too serious, and she appeared more sickly and pale than when she intentionally lightened her skin and drew on thick black eyeliner. But she let him into her apartment. That was something, at least.

“How are you?” Ollie asked, still standing by the front door just in case she changed her mind and ordered him out again.

Mary Ann’s eyes were haunted. She stood for a long moment without answering. “I’m... I don’t know,” she said, finally. She moved in to sit down in an arm chair.

Ollie took that to mean he could stay, so he sat down on the couch across from her. The usually vibrant and snarky Mary Ann seemed like a shell of her former self. He searched for the right words, unsure how to bridge the gap between them.

The gap he caused.

“I brought you some tea,” he said, pulling out a small package from his bag. “It’s that weird blend you like.” He looked at the colorful striped can in his hand. “I still don’t know how people can make a tea taste like cotton candy. Seems like it should defy the natural world.”

Mary Ann reached out and took the can. A flicker of a smile crossed her lips. “Thanks,” she murmured.

They sat in silence for a while. It felt like sitting in a hospital room with someone on hospice, heavy and uncertain. Ollie fidgeted, wanting to say more but unsure how to start. Mary Ann watched a spot in the corner of her apartment.

“I never wanted you to get hurt,” Ollie said. It sounded stupid. It was the kind of thing someone said that only made things worse .

She sat still in the chair not looking at him. Her gaze fell again to the spot in the corner. “Sometimes I think I can still see it.”

Ollie followed to where she stared in the corner. He called up his power to allow himself to see, to search for any resonance of an evil being. But there was nothing. He reached over and put a hand on Mary Ann’s. “It’s not here,” he said.

Mary Ann straightened. She shook her head. “No, I know. I haven’t lost it. I’m keeping it together. But that thing… it knew me. It told me things about myself that I never told anyone before.”

“That’s what it does. They don’t really know, but they have a way of reading a person and figuring it out. Demons have had since the beginning of time to perfect their craft.”

“It was all real.” The way she continued to stare toward that corner of the room, toward nothing in particular made Ollie nervous. “Everything that happened... the magic, the demon... it was real.”

“Yeah, it was real.” Ollie folded his hands. He bowed his head. “I’m sorry, Mary Ann. I’m sorry for bringing that box into your apartment and doing what I did.”

It took Mary Ann a long moment to respond, but she finally nodded her head. “I know you’re sorry. I know your intentions weren’t to bring me into it.”

“But I did.”

“You did. And, it happened. There’s nothing I can do about that now. ”

“I don’t want this to change you,” Ollie said. “It can’t.”

“A bit late for that,” she said.

Ollie moved forward on the couch. “It can’t. I mean, I don’t want you to lose your…” He was failing at this. There weren’t any words he could think of to make it right. “I don’t know,” he said, finally.

At least now, she stared down at her fingertips, not at a demon that was there only in her head. “I always knew there was more out there, you know?” she said. “But I never imagined that it would be so in your face...” She trailed off, lost in thought.

“I can help you,” Ollie said. “It’s a lot to take in, but?—”

Unexpectedly, she looked up at Ollie with something that Ollie thought might be a spark of curiosity. “What else is out there? Are there other things that haunt the night?”

Ollie hesitated, surprised by the question. It was the first sign that the old Mary Ann might still be in there somewhere. “There’s a lot more,” he admitted. “Werewolves and mages, of course. Vampires, fae... the world is full of hidden dangers.” And the other things they didn’t even know about yet. Something came through after the ritual. It just wasn’t showing itself yet.

Mary Ann leaned forward. “Tell me more,” she said, a hint of her old enthusiasm creeping into her voice.

Ollie searched her face for any sign she was losing it, that seeing a glimpse of the real darkness in the world had somehow made her obsessed with something she couldn’t handle. But, to his surprise, there was none of that. In fact, there was that gleam he’d come to expect from her. She wasn’t obsessed; she was hungry to know about the world—about the real world.

“If you think you can handle it,” Ollie said.

Her shoulders dropped, and her mouth twisted. “When have I not been able to handle it?” A shadow crossed her face though like she thought of something, probably back to that night and the demon. But Ollie let himself breathe. Somewhere in there was the Mary Ann he’d come to know. And now she was going to experience the world with her eyes open.

After talking with Mary Ann, Ollie found Adrian waiting for him at Adrian’s apartment. Adrian had all the books and everything else loaded up in his car.

“You got the key?” Adrian asked him.

Ollie patted his pocket. “I’m ready when you are.”

They got into Adrian’s car and drove to the University of Chicago. There, Adrian led Ollie to the building that housed Preston’s laboratory. Adrian stopped at what appeared to be a wall at first, but then revealed itself to be a door. One of those things that, once he saw it, he couldn’t stop unseeing it now. The key tingled between his fingers when he unlocked it, and the magic of the wards tingled over his skin.

Ollie stepped inside. It looked to him like the kind of place a mage on the run for three hundred years might like to hide. The shelves were covered in dust, and stacked with books, artifacts, and devices he couldn’t put a name to.

“You’re the one who’s been here before,” Ollie said. “Care to show me where to get started?”

Adrian gave him an incredulous look. He moved his arm to indicate the entire room. “You start there,” he said.

“Some help you are.”

“I’m just moral support,” Adrian said as he moved to one of the tables with an ornate wooden box on it about the size of a sheet of paper.

As he moved deeper into the lab, a bookshelf behind what would probably be a teacher’s desk if this was an actual classroom caught his eye. There were books. No surprise there, but these particular books shared something in common with one he’d seen and studied before.

“Holy shit,” Ollie said.

“What?”

Ollie moved closer to the shelf and pulled one of the heavy books to put it on a nearby desk. He flipped open the front cover. Inside was the familiar crest. “These are the Hartley grimoires. All of them.” Centuries of magical knowledge. Spells, rituals, family histories... everything he and his mother thought was lost.

Adrian moved in behind him. “So those are grimoires? Big surprise. They’re just more books.”

Ollie rolled his eyes and shot Adrian a glance. Adrian shrugged with that half smile that made Ollie’ s heart flutter. “Nine of them.” He ran a hand through his hair. “This is going to take a minute to read through.”

But Ollie returned the grimoire to its shelf, and he turned to see what else he could find. Preston said he wrote it all down. But what did he write down? And where?

Adrian stood near the ornate box he’d noticed earlier, his fingers tracing the intricate carvings on its surface, a pensive expression on his face.

“What’s that?” Ollie asked, going over to him.

Adrian hesitated, his hand pausing mid-motion. He glanced at Ollie, then back at the box, seeming to weigh something in his mind.

“Preston gave it to me,” Adrian finally said, his voice low. “Before we, you know, stormed the castle.”

Ollie raised an eyebrow. “Oh? What is it?”

Adrian shrugged, but the gesture seemed forced. “He said it might come in handy.”

“Okay…”

There was something in Adrian’s posture, a hint of reluctance that made Ollie suspect there was more to the story. He studied Adrian’s face, noting the slight tension in his jaw, the way his eyes didn’t quite meet Ollie’s.

For a moment, Ollie considered pressing for more information. The box clearly held some significance, and given everything they’d been through, he felt he should know about it, especially if it could help them. That’s what they were there at the laboratory for in the first place. But he also recognized the guarded look in Adrian’ s eyes, the same one he’d seen when Adrian first told him about his past.

Ollie decided not to push. They’d been through enough already, and if Adrian wasn’t ready to share, he wouldn’t force the issue. Instead, he nodded and turned back to the grimoire, giving Adrian space to process whatever was going on in his head.

“Okay,” Ollie said, taking in the rest of the cluttered space. “Preston said it’s up to me to stop whatever is coming.”

Adrian moved in behind him. He put a hand over Ollie’s shoulders. “Well then, I guess we better get started.”