Being a private investigator wasn’t supposed to be complicated. I expected cheating spouses and missing pets like BonBon, a kidnapped ‘pure-bred Schnoodle’ with a ruby-studded collar. What I didn’t expect was a desperate elf on my doorstep, begging for help to find her missing parents. Nor did I think that my search would drag me back into the magical world I’d tried so hard to leave behind.

Kit McCafferty's life is quiet, unremarkable, and filled with cat hair. In the magical city of Coldstream, located on the border between Scotland and England, Kit is viewed as little more than mildly eccentric and mostly harmless. She passes her days caring for her family of five cats, feeding the local feral moggies, and maintaining relatively good relations with her neighbors. All that changes, however, when a teenage werewolf shows up at her door in the desperate hope of renting out a nearby vacant flat.

When a body is found pulverised beyond recognition, I’m called to investigate. As Chester’s only magical Detective Inspector, it’s my job to handle the cases the Common police can’t. This one has all the hallmarks of the Other Realm—especially when I find a talking bird caged at the scene.

A deadly assassin. A desperate witch. A past that won’t stay buried. I’m Amber DeLea—ambitious witch, potion mistress extraordinaire, and daughter to a woman slipping further away each day. My life is a constant battle, whether it’s cursed runes, treacherous coven politics, or dark forces closing in. But nothing haunts me more than my mother’s unravelling mind, and I’m running out of time to find a cure. The last thing I need is Bastion—the deadly griffin assassin who shattered my world—being ordered to protect me.

Someone paid the vampire king’s creepy son to turn me into one of the bitey undead. I’m not hanging about to find out who or why. The vampires want me to stay with them for one hundred years of indentured servitude but I have this thing about following orders so I ran from the streets of London to the wilds of Alaska. I have an eidetic memory and a can-do attitude. I can-do anything to get away from the vampire king. So when the Sheriff of Portlock, a hidden paranormal town, invites me to be his assistant, I say sure thing. It beats servitude hands down.