Laura Blackston, Washington D.C. Fey Guild public relations
manager, is a
woman of many talents -- and disguises. With the use of a
three-carat
emerald, she expertly creates and maintains a skin deep
glamour as three
separate people. In addition to her persona as Celtic fey
Laura, she also works
undercover as Druid police agent Janice Crawford, and
International Global
Security Agency terrorist expert Mariel Tate. She leads a
busy life juggling
three lives that no one else must know about.
While assisting the police SWAT team on a meth drug raid as
Janice, her
partner is killed and she is also attacked. With her
magical skill this could
never have happened unless someone else with powerful magic
was involved.
Janice's investigation into what went wrong leads her to
connections to her
other personas. Someone has made a connection between the
three women
she portrays and wants her dead. Now all three characters
and their carefully
constructed worlds are about to collide.
Laura is a unique, well-developed character, and her magic
abilities and "split
personalities" make this book an interesting read. The
author takes great care
to provide details of how magic is constructed and used.
For example: "A
masking spell created the illusion of a wall, tactilely and
visually. The spell
was keyed to her body signature, and it tingled over her
body like cobwebs."
These kinds of details throughout allow the reader to
suspend disbelief and
enjoy the story.
Another thing the author does well is to explain the
relationships between the
various magical entities. For example: Two Fey factions,
the Celtics ruled by
High Queen Maeve of Ireland, and the Teutonic fey ruled by
Donor Elfenkonig
of Germany, are hostile toward each other. There's also
infighting among
many of the other magical creatures, and the fact that they
live in the human
realm creates lots of extra drama. Of course there's plenty
of action to keep
the pages turning.
Packed with fairies, brownies, elves, dwarves and other
classic fantasy
creatures, this action-packed novel introduces a great new
urban fantasy
series. The story content has layers of texture that should
keep its reader
engaged till the final page.
A THRILLING NEW URBAN FANTASY SERIES FROM THE AUTHOR OF
UNFALLEN DEAD AND UNQUIET
DREAMS.
Being an undercover agent
has its occupational hazards, but Laura Blackstone makes it
look easy. As a spy for a fey intelligence agency, she uses
her magical abilities to create disguises that are skin-deep
glamours that must never be compromised. But when
Laura’s worlds collide she’ll have more to worry about than
retiring an identity; she may just lose her life.
Excerpt
As she leaned back in her seat, the van’s motion vibrated
against the base of Laura Blackstone’s skull. She rocked her
head, hoping it would soothe her tense muscles.
It didn’t. Odors tickled her nose—the scent of hot
electronics, clean gun oil, and leather
uniforms. If someone blindfolded her and spun her around,
she’d still know immediately
that she was inside a SWAT-team van.
She couldn’t see outside the van, but she didn’t need to
sightsee in Anacostia. With years of law enforcement under
her belt, she knew all of Washington, D.C.’s
neighborhoods well. The historic Anacostia had its share of
crime and urban blight mixed
in with bland strip malls and expensive homes.
This time, the neighborhood had a drug lab that the local
SWAT team wanted
taken down. Nothing unusual about that—it was what SWAT
teams did. And since
Captain Aaron Foyle needed specialized backup, he called
someone he could rely on:
Laura Blackstone. Actually, he called “Janice Crawford.”
That’s the persona Laura used
when she worked with the local D.C. SWAT team.
Laura looked at the men in the van and, not for the first
time, wondered what
humans thought of her, really thought of her. Did they see
the person behind the ability?
Or was she always perceived as this fey being who
manipulated essence, some inhuman
thing with the power to perform what they believed was magic?
After over a century of coexistence with humans, the fey
were still feared and
misunderstood. Laura wasn’t technically from Faerie like
most fey—she had been born
and raised in the United States, an American citizen. That
helped smooth the way in most
social situations since she didn’t have the same cultural
baggage as the Old Ones—the
fey originally from Faerie. Laura and the other hereborn fey
fit into today’s world, and
what’s more, they wanted to fit in. They could pass.
And Laura passed as human better than most fey. Druids
didn’t look different.
They didn’t have long, pointed ears like Teutonic elves or
strange-colored skin like the
solitary fey. They didn’t fly like the Celtic fairy clans.
They didn’t have wings at all. The
difference between druids and humans—between Laura and
humans—was that she
manipulated essence, and they didn’t. Couldn’t.
Tapping into the inherent energy around them, the fey used
essence to fly or to
fight or simply to turn on the lights. What was as natural
to Laura as breathing, humans
called magic. She couldn’t understand their fear.
As they neared their target, the tension built in the van.
Laura pulled at her flak
jacket, trying to adjust it so it fit more comfortably.
Again. They weren’t made for
women. Conversations muted or faded away as the other team
members readied for the
assault. Everyone dealt with those last few minutes
differently. Laura was glad no one in
the group was a talker. The less small talk she made, the
fewer details she had to commit
to memory for the Janice Crawford persona. Instead, she
spent her time mentally
reviewing her agenda for the next day’s meeting at the
Guildhouse.
When the public saw Laura Blackstone—the actual Laura
Blackstone—it only
ever saw a public-relations director for the Fey Guild. Her
role was to put a good face on
fey activities. Some people thought that meant making
excuses for whatever trouble the
fairies and elves and other fey got into. Laura liked to
think it was a matter of
perspective.
Sometime in the early part of the twentieth century, the
realm of Faerie merged
with modern reality. No one knew what happened to cause what
came to be known as
Convergence, although it was clear it was something that
occurred in Faerie. Over the
next hundred years, the fey moved out into the greater world
and became part of the
social and political landscape. In order to gain human
allies and assure people that the fey
meant no harm, the Seelie Court established the Guild to
respond to concerns raised by
both humans and the fey.
The Guild played many different roles. It served as the
diplomatic embassy for
High Queen Maeve of the Seelie Court at Tara, the fairy
queen who rarely ventured
outside her mist-shrouded home in Ireland. The Guild also
worked as a policing force on
the local level for magic-related crimes committed by the fey.
But for criminal activity on the international level, the
Seelie Court, along with
the governments of other nations, provided law-enforcement
staff to the International
Global Security Agency—InterSec—to investigate and resolve
criminal activities
wherever needed. And Laura Blackstone was one of InterSec’s
best operatives.
By day, Laura sent out press releases. But by night, she had
another life as an
agent with InterSec, which no one at the Guild knew about.
Only a few outside InterSec
knew Laura Blackstone worked undercover. She had spent years
keeping it that way.
The SWAT team’s intelligence had uncovered information that
the drug lab had
two brownies as security. Brownies were low-powered Celtic
fey. From an essence point
of view, they had enormous stamina, great organizational
skills, and other rudimentary
essence abilities. They were useful as security guards
dealing with humans, but for
someone with druidic training, brownies weren’t much to
worry about.
Laura overheard enough of Captain Foyle’s radio conversation
to know they were
close to the mission target. Foyle rose from his seat as the
van slowed and stopped.
“Arrived.”
The tactical team stood, guns ready, black helmet visors
down. They hopped out
on silent-soled shoes, adjusting gas masks into place as
they moved into formation. Foyle
grabbed Laura’s arm at the door. “Where’s your gun, Crawford?”
Laura turned her visored face to him. She knew the staff
file Foyle had reviewed,
one of several different résumés she maintained for
different personas. It didn’t tell her
whole story. Foyle didn’t need to know Laura was an expert
marksman—which wasn’t
part of her Janice bio. That’s not why she worked with SWAT
teams. As far as Foyle was
concerned, all Laura—Janice—did was work essence. As a
druid, she had a long list of
skills that came with her heritage. She could pull energy
out of organic material—even
people if circumstances were dire—and channel it into bolts
of burning essence. Or she
could use that same energy force to create a barrier of
hardened essence to protect herself
and others. If Foyle needed someone to shoot a gun, she
wasn’t going to waste her time
doing it for him. Plenty of humans were expert marksmen. “I
don’t use one.”
To his credit, Foyle didn’t show any anger. “You have enough
essence ability to
overcome interference from metal. Take the Uzi pistol, at
least.”
Metal, particularly iron, complicated using essence. Unless,
as Foyle said,
someone had enough ability to overcome its effects, metal
warped the aim of an essencebolt
or caused a spell to fail. Laura had no problem with metal
at all. The Janice persona
profile gave her enough ability to be competent against it.
Laura didn’t change the tone of
her voice. “If you saw my file, you also saw I’ve never shot
anyone. I don’t intend to start
tonight. We do our job right, I won’t need a gun.”
It was an equivocation on her part. Janice had never shot
anyone. Laura had,
though. She wasn’t keen to do it again. They stared at each
other. Foyle released her arm.
“Okay. Stay where I can see you.”
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