The Creaking Clock of Millhaven

The stagecoach shudders to a halt in the fog-choked town of Millhaven, where cobblestones slick with condensation gleam beneath an ancient clock tower that has not struck the same hour twice in living memory. Within days of taking a job that smelled of rust and oatcakes, a body is discovered in the shadow of that clock, and a ghost-voice whispers a name the locals refuse to hear. Aldric Pfenning arrived in Millhaven chasing coin, not ghosts, but when Sergeant Hollis pins the murder on the first convenient stranger, Aldric finds himself unwillingly drawn into an investigation the town has spent decades burying. His only allies are Daphne, the reclusive herbalist with a tongue sharp enough to cut glass, her sharp-eyed niece Thistle, and Wren Sable, whose unsettling knowledge of the town's oldest secrets borders on the supernatural. Each of them knows something about the night the clock first faltered. Each is hiding more than they will say. And Odo Vane, the former keeper whose restless spirit lingers in the tower's gears, will not rest until someone finally listens. As the fog rolls thicker and another body is found beneath the tower's shadow, Aldric must untangle a conspiracy older than the clock itself before it strikes an hour Millhaven cannot survive. The truth will cost him more than the fee he came to collect. It may cost him his sanity, or his life, and the dead are no longer willing to wait.