Paige Cortez-Winterbourne can see their new client is going to be trouble, especially when the beautiful young vixen demands to speak only to Paige's husband Lucas about the case. They take the case anyway and investigate the death of the girl's brother, which took place after her participation in a supernatural fight club.

Infiltrating the fight club, with Savannah as the fighter, was the easy part. The hard part will be for Paige to see what the real game here is, and whether or not she will come out of it with Lucas.

Kelley Armstrong has created such a rich and wonderful fantasy world with her Otherworld series. The story in the novella COUNTERFEIT MAGIC takes place before the story in the novel Waking the Witch. Here we once again spend time with the witches and warlocks of her world (there are demons too), seeing the struggle Paige deals with being the wife of a Cabal member (Lucas) while trying to keep a balanced relationship with her ward Savannah and be more of a big sister than foster mom (her mother is still around, in a sense). Paige faces issues in her relationships with those around her that many see in the real world (just without the magic and mayhem).

Being a novella, this is short and sweet, but it can leave the reader a little empty toward the end. The story flows well but I got a sense that it was cut short at the end. It could simply be that I can never get enough of Armstrong's world and wanted more.