Page 3 of Hopelessly Teavoted

Now

Robbie had picked the worst possible day to dump her.

Not that there was ever a particularly good time to be dumped, but she had convinced herself that it would work out and she would become effortlessly cool and composed. This was supposed to be the only exception to her string of romantic bad luck.

He was her second serious, long-term relationship.

Even though she had jumped from dating Natalie to that unfortunate incident of hope and then heartache, and then right into Robbie, she had told herself it would work out.

It was normal for him to be gone for long stretches of time.

Dating Robbie gave her space. She knew she should be heartbroken, but good goddess, she couldn’t care enough to pay attention to his dumping.

Maybe there was such a thing as too much space?

He was still talking, head hanging out of the side of that ridiculous convertible that compensated for things she was all too familiar with, the top up to keep the hot July wind from messing with the blond hair she had watched him blow-dry to perfection that morning, increasingly irritated at the way he rummaged through her hair products without asking.

“… two ships passing in the night, and sticking around and letting you get more and more clingy will honestly only hurt you in the end, Vicks.”

Clingy. She had gone days without talking to him sometimes, but he still used the same word Natalie had so many years earlier, and it glinted off his professionally whitened teeth.

From far away, he looked like an album cover, but up close, he was the kind of unnaturally tanned that would leave him leathery in a decade or two.

She should have known something was off when he packed up silently.

Robbie was never quiet when there was an opportunity to talk about himself.

The prick.

He’d played along with the trip back to Hallowcross, even played house with her in her childhood bedroom, fucking her with wild abandon last night against poofy pink throw pillows, which was awfully unbecoming now that she knew he had intended to break up with her from the rolled-down window of his absurd sports car.

“Fuck you, Robbie,” she bit out.

“Hey. Don’t be like that, Vicky Vale.” The nickname, once a cute symbol of their new love, was now a slap in the face.

“Wasn’t it nice that we had a final week together?

” He was giving her that lopsided grin that made his fans go wild.

“Babe, we went out on a high note of you screaming my name. Like the good times, before you got all serious.” That million-watt smile was a death wish now.

Murderous intention clear on her face, she stalked toward the car, ready to smack the gloating look off his face. She wouldn’t actually kill him, but she was going to hit this smug motherfucker as hard as she possibly could.

Robbie’s face dropped at her scowl, and he sped off into the sunlight, hair ruffling as he rolled up his window. She was left seething in a cloud of dust and fumes with nothing to do but keep her appointments.

Under the heat at Blade Runner, the upscale spa in downtown Hallowcross, she unpacked her feelings, half expecting to be shattered.

But all she felt was tired and relieved.

Things with Robbie had been over for a long time before that morning.

She emerged blonder, peppier, and smoother than the version of herself who had just been dumped.

An hour later, that veneer was a much-needed armor against the world of Amelie and Maximillian Starnberger.

She sat on a white sofa in the middle of an absurdly plush taupe shag carpet in her parents’ sterile home.

She fiddled with her manicure, which matched her yellow top, and gingerly poked at the unfamiliar shape of her glossy, voluminous hair.

She knew her parents, though. The effort to polish herself for their world would persuade them.

Even if it meant she had to set things on fire, literally, she was willing to do it.

What had happened to the Harts was a fucking tragedy, and she couldn’t stand by while a big chain company bought up the shop.

Not when she had dipped in and out of school for twice the recommended amount of time and reluctantly earned three-quarters of an MBA after a bachelor’s degree in business at her parents’ insistence while nursing a hankering for a quirky business of her own.

She was going to convince her parents to buy Hopelessly Teavoted. Vickie knew that the Harts had both been witches. But not even magic could protect them from a virus that had preyed on magical and mundane folks alike.

The universe had done wrong to take a couple so enamored with each other.

Not to mention how terrible it must have been for Priscilla.

And for Azrael, who she hadn’t spoken to since the incident.

A little twist of that old rejection wrung out in her chest when she thought of him.

She pushed it out of her mind in favor of the fonder earlier memories.

The friendship she’d sworn never to blemish with romantic complications, though a lot of good that vow had done.

The little boy who had danced with her in their childhood bedrooms to Fleetwood Mac and Frank Ocean.

Sure, she missed him, and she had considered texting, or even calling when his parents died, but he had made his feelings clear all those years ago.

He was better off without her. No need to cling to the memory of a relationship that was never going to work out.

She’d kept in touch with Priscilla and spoken to the younger Hart sibling when her parents first died, so she knew the restrictions on air travel were enough that Azrael couldn’t leave California.

Prissy had mentioned the magical council she worked for halting interdimensional portal travel to stop viral transmission, but that bit had gone over Vickie’s head.

She grasped the concept of craft magic, but she didn’t know it the way she knew her own gift.

Or, as her parents called it, her curse. She despised that word. Ghosts were less of a curse than a frigid family.

“Victoria Elaine.” Her mother’s voice pierced the air with the confidence only socialites and sociopaths could pull off.

Vickie wilted. This never got easier. Around her parents, Vickie felt every one of her imperfections like a thousand tiny paper cuts to her soul.

And her parents were always so indifferent toward her.

Until they needed a favor.

“Your father requires some important information from Mr. George.”

Vickie sighed. There was no way Kyle George, a man with two first names, was going to be an interesting ghost. Her father’s business associates were never friendly.

She suspected that there were sinister aspects to the Starnberger empire, though she wasn’t privy to the details.

Maximillian Starnberger strode in, aware of his commanding presence in any room he entered.

Her mother smiled, and he swept down to kiss her cheek.

“Amelie, my darling.” The greeting was transactional and cold. It suited them.

Maximillian held up a pair of gold cuff links with a suspicious red splatter about their edges. Vickie hoped it was tomato sauce as he set them on the ornate end table next to her.

It was not tomato sauce.

“Poor fellow was killed in a car crash. I managed to take these off the corpse; told his wife that they were a company gift and that they meant the world to me to remember him by.”

“That’s nice, at least,” Vickie offered. Her father was never sentimental, and who was she to question it? “I guess you can’t take all the wealth or fancy cuff links with you, huh, Dad?”

Maximillian shook his head, frowning at her informality. “He loved them because they were a gift from his mistress. Kyle loved few things, but she was one of them. She has these—”

Vickie held her hand up, cutting him off. This made more sense, but she was still unwilling to hear what the dead man’s mistress had.

“Go on, then,” Maximillian said. “We will speak more after you’re done. I need the passcode for his platinum clients.”

She rolled her shoulders back, ignoring the creeping wave of guilt over using her gift for profit.

She had a vague understanding that they owed something to someone in exchange for her powers, but she didn’t know the details.

Once she had turned twenty-one, they’d contacted her once or twice a year to deal with clients of the unalive sort.

Best to get it over with and then convince them of what she’d come here for.

It wasn’t enough that the Starnbergers owned half the town.

It wasn’t enough that they had both reached a pinnacle of success that could have kept them living like royalty for ten lifetimes over.

No, they had to go and arrange for Vickie to talk to ghosts.

The catch, of course, was that she could only do it with an object the deceased had loved with their whole heart.

And spirits, like time, were fleeting. Gone forever once the objects they loved burst into flames.

Coming back here and asking her parents for the money was big enough to barter with them in the only trade they valued.

She closed her eyes and picked up the cuff links, hoping that the deceased had loved the objects enough.

From the way the gold grew hot in her hands—a flame springing up, but not burning her—she knew he had. Once objects heated, there was no stopping the fire.

Within seconds, the silver shimmer coalesced into a semitranslucent form, and a moment later, a short man in a sharp-looking suit with a wispy, regrettable mustache stood in front of her.

“That truck came out of nowhere. I swear I only had a single bump, not enough to put me at fault.”

“Mr. George,” she said flatly. Realizing that she wasn’t any sort of authority, he heaved a breath of relief. Except nothing came out. He noticed, holding his hands up and startling.