Présentation de l'éditeur
In this novel in the #1 New York Times bestselling urban fantasy series, war-plagued Atlanta has never been so deadly...Good thing Kate Daniels is on the job.
Kate Daniels may have quit the Order of Knights of Merciful Aid, but she’s still knee-deep in paranormal problems. Or she would be if she could get someone to hire her. Starting her own business has been more challenging than she thought it would be—now that the Order is disparaging her good name. Plus, many potential clients are afraid of getting on the bad side of the Beast Lord, who just happens to be Kate’s mate.
So when Atlanta’s premier Master of the Dead calls to ask for help with a vampire on the loose, Kate leaps at the chance of some paying work. But it turns out that this is not an isolated incident, and Kate needs to get to the bottom of it—fast, or the city and everyone dear to her may pay the ultimate price...
Extrait
Prologue
The ringing of the phone jerked me from my sleep. I clawed my eyes open and rolled off my bed. For some reason, someone had moved the floor several feet lower than I had expected, and I fell and crashed with a thud.
Ow.
A blond head popped over the side of the bed and a familiar male voice asked, "Are you okay down there?"
Curran. The Beast Lord was in my bed. No, wait a minute, I didn't have a bed, because my insane aunt had destroyed my apartment. I was mated to the Beast Lord, which meant I was in the Keep, in Curran's rooms and in his bed. Our bed. Which was four feet high. Right.
"Kate?"
"I'm fine."
"Would you like me to install one of those child playground slides for you?"
I flipped him off and picked up the phone. "Yes?"
"Good morning, Consort," a female voice said.
Consort? That was new. Usually the shapeshifters called me Alpha or Lady, and occasionally Mate. Being called Mate ranked somewhere between drinking sour milk and getting a root canal on my list of Things I Hated, so most people had learned to avoid that one.
"I have Assistant Principal Parker on the line. He says it's urgent."
Julie. "I'll take it."
Julie was my ward. Nine months ago she "hired" me to find her missing mother. We found her mother's body instead, being eaten by Celtic sea demons who had decided to pop up in the middle of Atlanta and resurrect a wannabe god. It didn't go well for the demons. It didn't go well for Julie either, and I took her in, the way Greg, my now deceased guardian, had taken me in years ago, when my father passed away.
People around me died, usually in horrible and bloody ways, so I'd sent Julie to the best boarding school I could find. Trouble was, Julie hated the school with the fiery passion of a thousand suns. She'd run away three times in the past six months. The last time Assistant Principal Parker called, a girl in the school's locker room had accused Julie of being a whore during the two years she'd spent on the street. My kid took exception to that and decided to communicate that by applying a chair to the offending party's head. I'd told her to go for the gut next time—it left less evidence.
If Parker was calling, Julie was in trouble again, and since he was calling at six o'clock in the morning, that trouble had a capital T attached to it. Julie rarely did anything halfway.
Around me the room lay steeped in gloom. We were on the top floor of the Keep. To my left a window offered a view of the Pack land: an endless dark sky, still untouched by dawn, and below it dark woods rolling into the night. In the distance the half-ruined city stained the horizon. The magic was in full swing—we were lucky it hadn't taken out the phone lines—and the distant industrial-strength feylanterns glowed like tiny blue stars among the crumbling buildings. A ward shielded the window, and when the moonlight hit it just right, the entire scene shimmered with pale silver, as if hidden behind a translucent gauzy curtain.
The female voice came back online. "Consort?"
"Yes?"
"He put me on hold."
"So he calls because i
