Showing results by author "Auburn Tempest" in All Categories

When a back-alley brawl leaves me marked with a bizarre Celtic crest on my back, I become a beacon for all things whacked and weird. My dad is obviously freaked when he sees the tat, but he won't discuss it. So, I do what any stubborn redheaded lass would - I ignore all advice and fly to the Emerald Isle to get answers. And yeah...you know that saying about hindsight being 20/20? True story.

My outlook on life isn't complicated - any day that passes when nobody tries to kill me or someone I love gets put into the "good day" column. Simple, right? Lately, good days have been hard to come by. Since I totally ignored Da's warning three months ago and flew to Ireland to embrace our super-secret heritage, I've seen the world in a different light - a mythical and magical light. I am a Druid.

I knew three things about my life before adoption: I was a baby rescued from a blazing house fire, I was found in the arms of a dead man, and no one ever came to claim me. No one. Not ever. Now, as a Montreal detective, I'm dedicated to hunting truths for a living. Unheard voices. Cold cases. Unsolved mysteries. Unearthing secrets hidden in the shadows is my jam. Until the fae veil falls . . . When the world learns magic is real, everything changes. Montreal begins seething with prana energy, dormant genes activate, and seemingly normal humans experience magical awakenings.

On a good day, wearing the Fianna mark tosses me into topsy-turvy trials. It's a scramble but I manage to hold it together with the help of amazing family and friends: mythical, magical, and mortal. But despite best-laid plans, collateral damage occurs.

Meet Fionna mac Cumhaill, an urban druid coming into her powers and trying to master them. She has a family she didn't know about, a magical heritage laying its claim, and a mystery she apparently needs to solve.

Since being marked as the heir apparent, I've been stabbed, kidnapped, black-listed, tortured, targeted, and accused of being the cause of pretty much every magical mishap that's hit the streets of Toronto. To some, I'm a nuisance, to others a curiosity, and others still - a problem to be eliminated. Whatevs, haters gotta hate.

In the past two years, I leveled up as a kick-ass urban druid and became the leader of the Fianna Warriors my ancestor Fionn mac Cumhaill needed me to be. The thing is—four months ago everything changed. The veil between realms came down. With dormant genes waking, the dominant races jockeying for their place in the hierarchy, and the world around us pulsing out of control with power, my position as the Fae Liaison of Toronto has gotten off to a chaotic start.

I have family I didn't know about, a magical heritage laying its claim, and a mystery I apparently need to solve. But when a back-alley brawl leaves me marked with a bizarre Celtic crest on my back, I become a beacon for all things whacked and weird.

When the magical energy of New Orleans redlines, Team Trouble responds. Caught between three hostile factions of empowered citizens—witches, wolves, and vampires—we scramble to figure out who's leaving bodies littered around the French Quarter. Navigating the crypts, catacombs, and a cagey council doesn't go our way. Big Easy my ass. Secrets, vendettas, and undead armies make solving this one dangerous not only for us, but for the empowered sects that don't want our help. Whatevs. When the world gets mean, we tighten our ranks.

As we settle into our role as Guild Enforcers and the Quebec Quint, my siblings and I find our rhythm. Our training is paying off, our circle of allies is growing, and the chaos of being thrown into the deep end of the lava pool eases off. Things are better on the boyfriend front too-Hi, my name is Jules, and I'm dating a demon.

Revived after months of being cursed and comatose, I'm thrown straight into Christmas and a chaotic case of carnivals, cannibals, and country cops. Seriously, I can't make this stuff up. Team Trouble continues to bust our butts to smooth out the rough edges between the empowered and ordinary communities. The problem is . . . the wacked and weird isn't slowing down. It's been a year, and something has got to give-Sloan's worried it will be me.

Life is a balance—at least that's what I'm told by people smarter than me. Try as I might to spend quality time with Sloan, family, friends, and companion animals, my magnet of mayhem often has other ideas. Adulting is hard. So when I move an adolescent dragon into my backyard, why don't I anticipate the craziness that will ensue? Maybe Sloan's right and I am ridiculous. I like to think I'm an optimist. Either way, it takes a group effort to figure out the mess we find ourselves in and what to do about it.

The world is about to tilt on its axis. Good versus Evil. Light versus Dark. There's a balance to the world's alignment and every thousand years the Earth Realm, the Fae Realm, and the Spirit Realm collide, igniting a period of rebalancing. And while the empowered sects battle for a stronger foothold and fight to find ways to strengthen their forces, the humans go on living blissfully unaware. Which is good. Blissful ignorance is exactly where we want them to be . . . Well, some of us, anyway. As the volatility rises, the aggressive races protest.

The moment you let your guard down and think you've got a handle on life—you jinx it. I bust my butt on the daily, smoothing the rough edges after moving in with the boyfriend, making amends to angry empowered ones, and patching things up with hostile in-laws. Things are good on the home front with my job, family, and friends. I've got this, right? Wrong. Cue the centrifuge of life spinning me around while the gods point and laugh. Or, in this case, the goddess. Hecate, Goddess of Witchcraft and Magic, deity of night and ghosts, supreme tormentor of friends.

With the magical veil between our world and the fae realm down, the life we live has gotten weirder by the day. Imagine cloud shape bawdiness, venomous invaders sneaking through tears in the fabric between worlds, and waking up to realize San Francisco isn't where it was the night before. Yeah, lost a city? Call 1-800-Team-Trouble. Handling the whacked and weird of the world is my wheelhouse.

Life's pleasures used to be so simple: a fast ride on my motorcycle, a backyard barbeque with my siblings, and taking down criminals to safeguard Montreal's citizens. Sadly, those days ended the moment my fiery side emerged. I'm a fire elemental. Mind blown. The deadly Poreskoro family wants to feed on my fae essence. Rude. And if they succeed, they'll gain the strength to rebuild their army of evil. Terrifying. Demons, drug lords, and deception I can handle, but when a dark storm of danger falls over my family, things have gone too far.

A wedding on an enchanted island of magic. A guest list of gods, immortals, shifters, dragons, and druids. And a sentient city waking after centuries . . . What could go wrong? When Fiona's magnet for mayhem weighs in on her special day, there's no escaping the fallout . . . or the island. With Dark invaders, realm refugees, a feral vampire, and the mystery of the Light Weavers' disappearance to solve, Fi and her friends are fighting on multiple fronts. Thank the goddess there's cake.

It is the Time of the Colliding Realms—the Keening—the Culling. Everything that happened over the past eighteen months has led to this moment. The good and the bad. The triumphs and the tragedies. Now my family by blood, by choice, and by circumstance face the battle to balance our world's alignment.

In life, you start off and get what you get—that's fate. Then you grab the reins and steer your path—that's free will. Fate versus free will . . . it's mind bendy. But what if you want to change your stars? When a gathering of reapers descends on Toronto, and a mass-death is pending, Clan Cumhaill fights through kidnappings, betrayal, and death to discover what will cause the disaster. Is it a vampire war, the theft of a powerful artifact, or an empowered icon gone rogue? There's no way to know until the danger unfolds.

Set to protect the surviving elementals, my siblings and I spread the word through the network of empowered guilds that we're leaving our lives in the Human Realm behind. With Sasobek on the loose and the hostile opposition to Briar fulfilling his destiny as the true king of Litaui, our new beginnings will be hard-won. But hey, what else is new?