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Finally! I’ve finished work on Daemon Blood, the third book in the Daemon World series. The novel will go on sale March 8, 2022. Meanwhile, check out Daemon Blood‘s sensational cover, designed by Damonza.com. I think the image captures fully the tension and eerie atmosphere of this story about a looming daemon war. I hope you’ll read Daemon Blood when it becomes available, and let me know if you agree.

 

Our war will not unfold in your imaginary heaven. We will fight on Earth with human beings as pawns and weapons.

Lu Darlington is a seer, bound to the daemon Talion through ritual and blood. It’s not a role she enjoys, but she has little choice: daemons take what they want and destroy whoever stands in their way.

So Lu’s surprised when Talion doesn’t punish her for her newfound ability to keep him from possessing her whenever he likes. In fact he’s pleased. The stronger she is, he explains, the more powerful he becomes.

And he needs that power, because a war is brewing in the daemon world, a war that will be fought by—and through—humans.

Lu’s friend Lisa Duncan can’t see daemons but she’s seen what they can do and so has stayed far away from Lu for years. After a bizarre attack on Lisa leaves half a dozen people dead and she learns it’s just the first skirmish in the daemon war, Lisa realizes the safest place to be is with Lu.

Then Talion sends Lu away to teach her skills to another seer and Lisa must stay behind to look after Lu’s son Solly, conceived through a daemon ceremony with Talion. At four years old Solly’s seer abilities are already so strong Lisa is sometimes more afraid of Solly than for him.

As Talion’s enemies grow bolder, Lisa and Lu face attacks from every direction. There seems little hope any of them will survive—until Talion and his allies devise a plan.

The only problem is how much it will cost.

“With Daemon Blood, Mary Maddox has crafted a timeless tale of good against evil. With compelling characters and a keen sense of the darkness that lurks within us all, Daemon Blood will stay with you long after you turn the final thrilling page.”

— David Sodergren, Author of The Forgotten Island

 

If you aren’t familiar with the other two books in the Daemon World series, you can learn more about them by clicking the cover images below.

urban fantasy, horror, dark fantasy

Daemon Seer by Mary Maddox

 

Both the unnamed tortoise and I need your help. That’s why I’m holding a name-the-tortoise contest to find the cleverest, most apt name for Lu’s pet. You can find out more about the newest addition to Lu’s world when Daemon Blood comes out March 8, 2022. So, here are the contest details. If I’ve omitted something important or you have any questions, write to me at .

When and where should submissions for the name-the-tortoise contest be sent?

I’m accepting names throughout August 2021. Please send them to .

How many names may be submitted?

Please send up to five possible names for Lu’s tortoise. If you send more, I’ll accept only the first five names you listed.

Are there any other requirements?

Just one: sign up for my newsletter. Click the link or use the form at the top of the sidebar to sign up. You’ll receive an email asking you to confirm that you agree to receive emails from me. You can read my privacy policy here. And of course you may unsubscribe at any time.

What prize does the winner receive?

The person who submits the winning tortoise name will receive a $100 Amazon gift card. Everyone else who enters will be entered in a drawing, and three winners chosen at random will each receive a paperback copy of Daemon Blood, the new Daemon World book, to be released March 8, 2022. Whether you send one name or five, you’ll be entered just once in the drawing.

What happens if more than one person submits the same name?

The prize goes to whoever submits the winning name received first.

When will the winners of the name-the-tortoise contest be announced?

The first week of September 2021, I’ll choose a name in consultation with the tortoise. The winner will be notified and asked to confirm their email address. If I receive no confirmation within 72 hours, we’ll select another name. I’ll hold the drawing at the same time, using Random Picker. Again, the winners must confirm their email addresses within 72 hours of being notified. On or before September 15 I’ll announce the winners on my website, in my newsletter, and on my Facebook page.

Watch this site for more news about my new novel Daemon Blood. Meanwhile, check out Chapter 1: Born Victim. The chapter has undergone a bit of revision since I shared the first draft with you a while ago.

My thanks to Corey Keppel for an amazing photograph of a desert tortoise. You can see more of Corey’s photographs and videos on Instagram.

I wrote this review of Karen Marie Moning’s Shadowfever a few years back and rediscovered it a couple of months ago when I downloaded material from an inactive blog of mine before it went offline. The Shadow series holds a special significance to me. While reading the books I fell in love with urban fantasy. And the series influenced me when I set out to write Daemon Seer.

I spent all day reading an urban fantasy called Shadowfever, the fifth in a series of novels by Karen Marie Moning. The book is over 600 pages long. I’m starting to think readers perceive length differently with an ebook. They don’t feel the volume weighting their hands or the thickness of the pages yet to be turned. They see a number giving the percentage of the book they’ve read so far, but it lacks physical reality. Easy to glide through a novel as though sailing over a vast lake, glimpsing land on the horizon without a sense of its distance. I read and read for hours and hours and awoke the next morning with a migraine. Now that I’ve finished the story and know the outcome, now that the headache is fading, I can’t help reflecting on why I subjected myself to such a grueling read-a-thon.

The Shadow series tells the story of MacKayla Lane, a girl from a small town in Georgia whose sister is brutally murdered while studying in Ireland. Mac spends her time painting her nails, hanging out by the pool, and listening to tunes on her iPod. Then the death of her sister spurs her to travel to Dublin and ensure the killer is caught and brought to justice. There she discovers she’s a sidhe-seer, one of an ancient order of women who can see the Fae. To ordinary people the Fae appear human, but Mac sees the monsters hidden beneath their glamour. She becomes involved with a sinister and sexually magnetic man who—it becomes increasingly clear—isn’t human either and is searching for a mystical book that will prevent the Fae from destroying the world.

Mac makes one unsettling discovery after another about her sister and herself. Illusion, misdirection, and deception pervade the five novels. Repeatedly, she believes she understands what’s going on, only to have her reality shattered by some new revelation. What begins as a search for her sister’s murderer grows into a struggle to save the world and a quest to discover the truth about her origins.

Moning is skilled at springing surprises and ratcheting up suspense. The first four novels end in cliffhangers that compel the reader to reach for the next in the series. Here I should mention that the first one was a free Kindle download. Publishers occasionally bait the hook with a freebie. It sure worked with me. Though Mac is occasionally annoying, her character grows more complex and interesting from one book to the next. The fantastic worlds she explores are richly imagined.

The books have some great sex scenes—passionate and occasionally funny, and on one occasion harrowing as Mac is gang raped by Fae princes and left in a state of mindless, constant, sexual hunger. And, of course, there’s plenty of violence.

These attractions are counter balanced by writing that occasionally makes me wince. Grating, clichéd phrases (“to die for,” “getting on my last nerve”). Commentary or exposition that repeats almost word-for-word passages from earlier in the story, as if the writer had copied and pasted material. Some of this fits the first-person narration; people do use clichés and repeat themselves. Still, I’ve seen more artful techniques for creating a convincing narrative voice. And there are the overused dialogue tags. Even the inhuman characters do a whole lot of sighing and shrugging.

I finished Shadowfever feeling sated, as though I’d snarfed a whole box of delicious chocolates. (Hey, chocolates are rich in antioxidants!) Instead of a bellyache I had a headache from those frozen hours staring at the Kindle screen. Yet I’m not sorry. I’ve been gorging on novels since childhood, and without that pleasure I would never have come to love reading fiction. No way am I going on a diet now.

Look for  Daemon Blood, the third volume of the Daemon World series, on March 8, 2022. 

The first novel in the series, Talion, recounts how the serial killer Rad Sanders stalks and kidnaps fifteen-year-olds Lu Jakes and Lisa Duncan. Lu must turn to the daemon Talion for help. But he has a price. Ten years later, in Daemon Seer, he comes to collect payment. Lu must undergo a harrowing ceremony and bear a child who will eventually replace her as his servant. Helpless against the daemon’s power and determined to save Lisa from a new sadist’s grip, Lu surrenders to Talion. She submits to the ceremony and with his help rescues Lisa. Daemon Blood picks up their story five years later. 

In the first chapter, “Born Victim,” Lisa finds herself unwillingly drawn back into the daemons’ world.

1: Born Victim

Panic wells up in Lisa as the drugstore’s automatic door slides open and winter air balloons against her face. The idea of stepping outside suddenly terrifies her. Post-traumatic stress, says her therapist, Sandi—as if naming a thing steals its power. A bearded guy in a camo jacket is close behind her. She has to move. Clutching her plastic bag of antidepressants and tampons like a talisman, she hurries through the door.

A semi rumbles past on the two-lane highway beyond the drugstore’s narrow parking lot. Its diesel fumes trigger the usual nausea. The clouds unveil the sun. She imagines getting in her beat-up Honda Civic, driving until it runs out of gas, and then walking until her legs buckle. Wherever she ends up will be fine with her.

“Hey Lisa!” A gaunt man pops out of his SUV and trots across the parking lot. His glossy parka, unzipped despite the subfreezing day, bounces against his fashionably threadbare jeans.

He’s no one she knows or wants to know. She plunges her hand into her purse as she runs for her car. Where are the stupid keys? She’s still groping for them when she reaches the Civic.

A hand seizes her shoulder and spins her around. The man in the parka presses her against the car, his groin against hers, and pokes her in the ribs with something hard. She looks down at a pistol with a short barrel, almost toylike. His open parka conceals the gun from anyone watching. Not that anyone is. Halfway across the lot, the bearded guy is climbing into a truck jacked up on monster tires. She doubts he noticed her at all. “Sorry, Lisa,” the gunman says. “I know what you’ve been through and I hate—really hate—doing this. But we need to talk.”

Panic muffles everything but her thumping heart. She wrenches her gaze from the gun to his face and opens her mouth to scream, but his eyes silence her. Colorless irises encircle the bottomless wells of his pupils. Her scream drowns in their depths, but she manages to whisper. “Who are you?”

“Willard Steeples.” His grin displays a mouthful of capped teeth edged with black along the gum line. “Author of Professor of Death.”

Evil parasite, feeding on people’s suffering. On her suffering. When she was fifteen, a psychopath tortured and disfigured her, and Steeples’ book made her into a freak show.

“You’re angry,” he says. “I get that. But your story doesn’t end with the Professor. There’s Grifford Riley, the bent cop from Chicago.”

She finally manages to speak. “What do you want?”

“This isn’t about what I want. My readers cry out for the truth.”

In the five years since fleeing to Utah to escape Riley, Lisa has managed to recover a fraction of her life. She overcame an opioid addiction. She fought the posttraumatic stress of having been raped and tortured, and she began to dream of a life not defined by the violence done to her. Now this ghoul wants to suck her back into the nightmare.

“Please. Leave me alone.”

“Sorry. No can do. My publisher’s gonna cut me loose if I don’t deliver another book on you by the end of the month. She said it’s my last chance.”

His publisher. Like she cares.

He prods her with the gun, a reminder. Even years after the surgeries, her face still aches in the icy wind. A frozen mask of pain, worse when she’s afraid. Steeples can have the story—some of it, anyway—but the dread lurking in her gut tells her that he wants more. A lot more.

“Okay, I’ll talk to you. There’s a coffee house on the Square.”

“No. Not after this.” He glances apologetically at the pistol. “I knew you wouldn’t talk to me unless I forced you to.”

Another semi crawls past, picking up speed after the stoplight. If the driver looks their way, he won’t see any gun—only a man and woman beside a car, close enough to be lovers. Despair chokes her. “My mother—expects me home.”

“I’ll have you back in an hour.” He grabs Lisa by the elbow, jabs the gun in her back, and hustles her to his SUV, a gray Ford Edge. Scream, she thinks as he yanks open the passenger door. Last chance. But no one is close enough to hear, or to stop him if he shoots her and drives away. He shoves her onto the seat. The label of a car rental company decorates the dash. It reassures her a tiny bit. Someone at the rental office will be able to identify him, assuming he cares about getting caught.

The other times she was kidnapped, she fought hard. This time, as Steeples gets into the Edge, she wonders if her life is still worth the trouble. Then she hears her therapist’s voice reminding her how much she’s endured. She’s lived through experiences that would’ve broken a lot of people. She clasps her hands to stop them from shaking. She can survive Willard Steeples.

As he peels out of the parking lot, she glimpses a ponderous figure near the pharmacy entrance. Mrs. Arlow, overweight and asthmatic, squints at the departing Edge. She lives down the street from Lisa’s parents. She might notice Lisa driving away with a stranger and call her mother. But Mrs. Arlow wouldn’t have a reason to remember any important details—the nondescript gray of the SUV, the make or license number—that could help the cops find Steeples.

He drives west, steering lefthanded so he can keep the gun pointed at Lisa. They pass the Seville Veterinary Clinic, Charlie’s Soft Serve Ice Cream, Morris Chiropractic, the Chevy dealership with its lineup of gleaming pickups beneath colorful plastic pennants, and the First Christian Church with its sign asking, will your eternal home be smoking or nonsmoking. It’s late November, and Christmas wreaths decorate the telephone poles along the highway. Cardboard signs nailed to the poles honor the military service of local young people. Lisa recognizes a few names from junior high. She missed high school because of the surgeries. She got her GED six years ago, back when she dreamed of studying at the Art Institute in Chicago.

“Where are we going?”

Steeples’ eyes flick toward her then back to the highway. “There’s a few cabins on the lake. No one uses them this time of year.”

“You’re from around here?”

“Nope. I just do my research.”

A mile or so after they leave Seville behind, Steeples turns onto a county road that cuts a straight line through fields stubbled with the remains of corn stalks. The tires bump over rough spots in the pavement, but the SUV’s suspension softens the ride. At least she’s riding to possible death in relative comfort.

A mile or so after they leave Seville behind, Steeples turns onto a county road that cuts a straight line through fields stubbled with the remains of corn stalks. The tires bump over rough spots in the pavement, but the SUV’s suspension softens the ride. At least she’s riding in relative comfort toward her possible death.

Regardless of what Steeples says about wanting her story, the vacancy in his eyes scares her. And an interview conducted at gunpoint? The whole situation radiates the weirdness of the daemon world. Lisa is wired into that world because of Lu, her closest friend. A friend she cut out of her life. Lu is a daemon seer. She possesses the talent to anchor daemons to the physical world, and five years ago she swore an oath to serve the daemon Talion. Lisa watched in numb horror as her friend knelt. She owes Lu and Talion for saving her life, and she’s grateful. But she just wants to forget about daemons.

For the past two years, she’s ignored Lu’s telepathic calls. Several months ago, Lu stopped trying and Lisa was relieved. Until now.
Lu! I need help!

No answer. Maybe the connection between them has withered, thanks to her.

Lu! I’m with Steeples, he kidnapped me.

Steeples turns onto a narrower road. The flat fields give way to rolling meadows and stands of leafless trees, their branches clawing at the iron-gray sky, bird nests bulging from them like tumors. The SUV rolls across a rusted bridge that looks a hundred years old.

“You do keep getting kidnapped. This is—what—the third time?” Steeples flashes a wolfish grin, showing off those corroded capped teeth. “Only this time Lu isn’t here to save you.”

She tells herself it’s a coincidence, that he isn’t tuning in on her thoughts. “What do you really want?”

“I told you. Your story. Your whole story. And you’ll give it to me before we’re done.”

The road widens into a clearing and ends at a low metal gate with a sign: closed until spring. Steeples stops the Edge. “Don’t move.” He slides out and circles to the passenger side, keeping the gun trained on Lisa. “Now get out.”

She gets out.

“Give me your phone.”

“I didn’t bring it.”

He uses his left hand to pat down her pockets and then pluck the canvas purse from her shoulder. He dumps the contents on the ground.
Lisa squats and picks up her wallet and a ballpoint pen. She leaves an almost empty pack of Kleenex, a couple of receipts, a shopping list, and a cough drop covered with fuzz. Steeples returns the purse. She drops the wallet and pen into it and stands. “I told you.”

“Pick up those receipts and the paper with your writing on it.”

She gathers the muddy slips of paper and stuffs them in her pocket. “Now you can shoot me or whatever.”

Willard Steeples giggles. “Leave your purse in the car. I’m not going to kill you, scout’s honor.”

She imagines him as a scrawny Boy Scout that the others picked on. She doubts he has any honor.

“Go around the gate post,” he says.

She squeezes between the post and the thorny branches of a bush. Steeples follows. She hopes the thorns will catch on his parka, but he carefully avoids them. They make a turn and Lake Seville spreads in front of them, lapping the pebbly shoreline and reflecting the gloomy sky. The wind blows harder and colder over the water. Ahead of them, a green prefab cabin sits on a slope overlooking a boat ramp.

“Is that where we’re going?”

He waves her forward. “Stay in front of me.”

As they walk along the shoreline, she concentrates on bridging the thousand miles between her and Lu with a strong and simple message. Help me help me help me. She half-heartedly thinks of running for the trees. Who knows, he might be a crappy shot. She keeps plodding toward the cabin.

Every nerve in her body screams for Vicodin. She stopped using almost three years ago and—with the exception of one slip—she’s stayed clean. She feels okay most of the time. But now, with the gun nudging her spine, time falls away and she’s raw again.

“I have codeine,” Steeples says. “You can have some when we get to the cabin.”

From behind her he can’t see whatever pain her face might be betraying. She reaches out to him with her thoughts. What’s the deal? Can you read my mind? Nothing comes back, but she senses an empty tunnel like the one where she and Lu used to communicate.

Beyond the lake the distant treeline clings like gray lint to the water’s edge. No sign of human life. “What are you on?” she says. “Not just codeine.”

“What do you think I’m on?”

“You look like a tweaker. Or maybe coke.”

“Would you like some?”

“No. And I don’t want your fucking pills either.”

He chuckles. “You might change your mind.”

Her stomach drops.

They climb a dirt path to the cabin. The window beside the door is broken, the glass removed from its frame. Steeples must have scouted the location and busted in. He opens the unlocked door. “After you, Sugar Pie.”

She enters the dim, musty space. Freezing wind from the lake howls through the broken window. The cabin is one room. A bed sags beneath a ratty quilt. A couch and two chairs huddle around a blackened fireplace. Steeples prods her toward the couch with the gun barrel.

“I’m cold,” she says. “Can I get that quilt?”

“Have a seat. I’ll bring it to you.”

The odor of mold wafts up from the cushion where she sits. He wedges the gun into the waistband of his jeans, raising Lisa’s hopes. With luck he’ll shoot his dick off. He fetches the quilt and covers her from the neck down, tucking its edges beneath her thighs, pinning her arms.

“There. Nice and toasty.” The damp quilt leaches the warmth from her. She pulls it loose.

Steeples plops into a wooden rocking chair. He scoops his phone from his pocket and stabs his finger several times at the screen. The chair creaks as he leans forward and places the phone on the low table between them. “Okay, let’s start with Grifford Riley. Tell me about him.”
Lisa will never forget the psychopathic cop who almost killed her, but she keeps her face blank.

“You know, I wanted an ‘after’ picture of you for Professor of Death,” he says. “Your bitch mother wouldn’t give me one, but now I can take one for this book. The main focus is Riley, but I’ll revisit your ordeal at the hands of Rad Sanders, too. People love that shit. I mean the parallels are dramatic. Twice you’re kidnapped and horribly assaulted. Twice you’re rescued by Lu, a mousy little girl in glasses. We’re talking best-seller, guaranteed.”

When Rad was finished with Lisa, her face had resembled raw meat. Steeples, the piece of shit, wanted to display that ugliness to the world. Anything to make money.

“So, what’s the title gonna be?”

“I was thinking Born Victim: The Unfortunate Life of Lisa Duncan. But my editor isn’t crazy about it.”
“Me neither.”

“Back to Riley. I need the whole truth, the untold story. He followed you to Park City and then grabbed you and drove to a motel outside Laramie. That’s where things get mysterious. Lu rescued you. How’d she manage that?”

“He went for cigarettes.”

“Bullshit. Only one place near the motel was open. A gas station. The clerk doesn’t remember Riley, but he remembers Lu buying snacks and bottled water.”

“That was later, after she got me out of there.”

“It doesn’t make sense, her stopping a couple miles from the motel when she knew Riley would be coming after you both.”

“Ask her.”

“She won’t talk to me.” He shoots her a reproachful look as though Lu’s silence is her fault. “Let’s talk about the stolen Ferrari you abandoned in Park City. At least that’s your story. How come no one saw it there and the cops never found it? Doesn’t sound like the kind of car you overlook.” Steeples grins as if he hears her nerves shrieking. “Sure you don’t want a Vicodin?”

She has no name for the wrongness in him, a hunger that brushes past her on its hunt for the food it really wants. “I can’t tell you anything you don’t already know. Please. Take me back into town.”

Lu ambushed Riley while he was on top of Lisa, shoved him into the narrow space between bed and wall, and stabbed him over and over with a sharp piece of metal. The hulking police detective broke Lu’s arm, but she blinded him and pulverized his testicles. Lisa’s breath snags as she remembers the viciousness of the attack. Lu was possessed by Black Claw, a daemon. But still.

All at once he leers. “What’s she up to?”

“Lu? I don’t know, we don’t talk.”

“You’re telling me they broke the connection?”

“Who’s they?” Her heartbeat speeds, pumping up her panic, and her head feels large and insubstantial, a membrane about to disintegrate. “What connection?”

He stares at Lisa as though deciphering her secrets. “Don’t tell me the bitch let Talion cut you loose.” He breaks into a stuttering laugh—heh-heh-heh-heh-heh—a crowing voice that no longer belongs to him. A daemonic voice. “You’re dead,” the daemon says in a childish singsong. It stands and draws the pistol.

Her heart trips ahead of the frozen moment. She springs from the couch and darts sideways, holding up the moldy quilt like a shield. The daemon fires the gun and the world goes silent. The quilt is burning. She drops it and runs blindly. A bullet splinters the doorframe as she yanks the door open. On the porch a woman knocks her aside with the shotgun she’s gripping in both hands. Lisa stumbles a few steps before falling. Her arm and shoulder hit the frozen dirt with a jolt that snaps her teeth together. More gunfire erupts inside the cabin. The muffled pops seem miles away to Lisa’s stunned ears. She crawls down the path until shock overtakes her and she lies still on the lakeshore, tasting blood from her bitten tongue. The world blurs.

Someone grabs her arm and pulls her over and up onto her butt. Stand, the woman with the shotgun orders her. Lisa struggles to her feet. The woman wears maroon yoga pants and an orange hunting jacket. Her face, puffy and creased, reddened by the cold, looks vaguely familiar—someone glimpsed in the supermarket or the thrift store on the Square. Her eyes gleam like dark ice, inhuman. Why did you go with the journalist? Even the Flame is not reckless enough to kill you in a public place. Half-deaf from the gun blasts, Lisa realizes the woman is speaking in her mind. Not the woman but the daemon inside her.

Who’s the Flame?

The daemon heads back toward the cabin, its stride hampered by the woman’s stubby legs. It wears her body like ill-fitting clothes. Lisa hurries to catch up. What’s happening? Is Lu in trouble?

The seer makes her own trouble.

Inside the cabin, Steeples’ body sprawls behind the overturned rocking chair, the face and chest like raw chuck. The stink hits her and sourness floods her mouth.

“Do not vomit.” Speaking aloud now, the daemon stoops and picks up Steeples’ gun. “Tell me what you touched.”

“Just that quilt.”

“Bring it. And the phone.”
Lisa grabs the phone from the table and checks the screen. “It’s recording us.”

“I will destroy it.”

“The recording could’ve been uploaded to the Cloud.”

The daemon gives her a razor-thin smile. “Perhaps you’re not altogether useless.”

“Thanks. I guess.” She hands over the phone. “Why did you save me?”

“Talion commanded it. I would have preferred the Flame destroy you.”

Careful not to look again at Steeples’ body, Lisa follows the daemon out of the cabin and down the dirt path. She clutches the phone in one hand and drags the singed quilt with the other. The daemon points to the boat ramp. “Go to the end and toss the quilt and phone in the lake.”

“The lake’s too shallow there,” Lisa says. “The cops will find the phone. And the quilt’s probably gonna wash ashore.”

“It makes no difference.” The daemon stands on the path, hands on hips and elbows spread wide. “The water will destroy any trace of you.”

The cops might still find a hair or fingerprint in the cabin or rental car. “Why don’t you just burn down the cabin?”

“A fire draws too much attention. Do as I say.”

Lisa tosses the evidence in the water and returns to the path. “Now what?”

“I will drive you to your car.”

They hike along the lake, backtracking to the road where Steeples left his rented SUV. Water laps at the shore and their shoes crunch against the pebbles. Icy wind whistles in Lisa’s ears and makes them ache. At least her hearing has come back. She wonders if Lu received her telepathic call for help and asked Talion to send this daemon, or if Talion was watching from the start. “Why was the daemon inside Steeples after me?”

“The reasons do not concern you.” Her rescuer’s harsh speech sounds strange coming from the rural Midwestern woman cradling a shotgun. She looks like a nice lady who probably goes to church on Sunday and spoils her grandchildren with cookies.

“What’s gonna happen to the woman you’re possessing? Will she remember any of this?”

The daemon fixes its empty eyes on Lisa. “You are a parasite. Were it not for the seer’s pleas on your behalf, you would have been destroyed.”

Lisa feels herself contract like a turtle withdrawing into its shell. Only she has no shell. She’s at the mercy of this monster. She wipes her nose with her sleeve and trembles as they trudge along the lakeshore.

The daemon opens the door of a battered blue Toyota pickup parked beside the Ford Edge.

“My stuff,” Lisa says. “It’s in Steeple’s car.”

“Get in the truck.” The daemon batters the Edge’s window with the shotgun stock until it punches through the safety glass. It reaches through the hole to unlock the door and then retrieves Lisa’s purse and the bag holding her drugstore purchases.

According to the clock on the dash, Lisa has been gone three hours. Way too long for a run to the pharmacy. She needs an excuse—a flat tire, an old friend who asked her for coffee, a spur-of-the-moment drive along country roads. The drive, she decides. Mom will yell at her for making them worry, but the other bogus excuses could be too easily checked.

When they enter Seville, she crouches out of sight and digs for her keys. Of course she finds them with no problem now that she’s not in desperate peril. The daemon stops in the drugstore parking lot and waits, silent.

“Goodbye,” Lisa says. “And thanks.”

“Get out.”

By the time she reaches her old Civic, the daemon is pulling onto the highway, headed back toward the lake. The possessed woman probably lives somewhere out that way. Lisa hopes she’ll be okay.

She clutches the wheel for several minutes, drawing slow, deliberate breaths the way the biofeedback guy in rehab taught her. The odor of mold clings to her like guilt.

Other books in the Daemon World series are Talion and Daemon Seer.

The protagonist of Helen Harper’s urban fantasy Gifted Thief lives the first eleven years of her life without a name. An orphan among the Highland Sidhe, she’s so despised that no one bothers giving her one. She lives in a castle, the ward of a nobleman, ignored or bullied until she escapes to the world of human beings. There she makes a life for herself with the help of a newfound human friend, Taylor. She names herself Integrity.

Taylor is a thief, so Integrity enters that profession.

Years later, she’s working with him and a team of magical characters, each with specialized skills. They look for high value targets, so when Taylor hears about a rare sapphire kept in a bank vault, he dispatches the team to acquire it. Integrity and her friends scale the building and break into the vault — only to find the sapphire isn’t there! Worse, Taylor has been lured into the debt of dangerous people. He needs money fast.

Then the trap closes. The debt and the elusive jewel are part of a Sidhe plot to force Integrity back to their lands. But why? For years they haven’t bothered coming after her.

Except in the prologue, the story is narrated by Integrity, and one of the novel’s attractions is her voice. She’s a funny, insightful, and self-deprecating narrator — the most likable protagonist I’ve encountered in a while. The band of thieves are endearing in their kindness and loyalty to one another. And then there’s the comical genie trapped in the letter opener.

Overall, the story is a bit too sweet for my tastes until the Sidhe show up. They come off as arrogant, vain, and treacherous — an entrenched aristocracy interested only in wealth and power.

With one or two possible exceptions.

Byron, the handsome son of a clan leader, may be hiding goodness beneath his jaded playboy exterior. He’s attracted to Integrity and offers to help her. Although she’s attracted to him, she refuses to give him her trust. He’s a Sidhe and she despises them all. Worse, he’s one of the Sidhe who made her childhood miserable. The romance between the two follows a predictable course of miscues and misunderstanding.

But once she returns to Sidhe lands, Integrity needs his help. She can’t be choosy about her allies as it becomes clear that the clan leaders mean to kill her once they have no more use for her.

Despite the danger, her return finally gives her an opportunity to find out about her parents and who she truly is. The search for identity is a central theme in literature, and Integrity’s quest adds weight to a story that occasionally seems frivolous.

I began Gifted Thief thinking it was pleasant fluff. But Integrity changed my mind. She likes to crack silly jokes, but she’s serious about defending herself and protecting her friends. By the end I loved her and hoped for her eventual triumph.

Gifted Thief is the first book of Harper’s Highland Magic series. The next one, Honour Bound, will be released on February 29.

I’m always on the lookout for a good urban fantasy. I found a great one in R.L. King’s The Threshold, the third book in a series chronicling the adventures of mage Alistair Stone. Alistair is a white mage; he doesn’t power his spells by siphoning the life force of other human beings.  In The Threshold, Alistair and his companions, Verity Thayer and her brother, Jason, are battling an extra-dimensional enemy called the Evil that feed on human emotions and seek world domination. The trio must find and destroy the portals through which the Evil are invading this world.

As incorporeal beings the Evil can possess the bodies of most humans, but not the bodies of mages, although a few black mages allow themselves to be possessed  in exchange for the power the Evil  gives them. A mysterious group known as the Forgotten are also immune to possession. The special abilities of the Forgotten come with a downside: — they suffer from various mental disorders that make it difficult for them to function in society. Most of the Forgotten are homeless.

The story moves briskly without sacrificing the descriptive detail so necessary to this genre. The author weaves the magic seamlessly into a very concrete everyday reality. The extra-dimensional portal in the basement of an Indian restaurant, aptly named A Passage to India, seems as real and believable as a broom closet.

Alistair and his companions are altogether sympathetic. I prefer antiheroes, so this threesome is a bit too white magic for me. But their quirks and passions keep them from being bland. Englishman Alistair comes across as a typical college professor, unconventional and sometimes acerbic. His mysterious past makes him intriguing. Teenager Verity is both Forgotten and a mage. Apprenticed to Alistair, she is discovering her abilities as she wrestles with the problems of adolescence. Jason’s only gift is the ability to power Alistair’s spells without depleting himself, a kind of magical battery, but his fierce love for his sister makes him stand out.

Secondary characters are well-drawn, even those who make only a brief appearance. Eleanor Pearsall, the white mage in the opening chapter, is so sweet that it hurts when she’s ambushed by the Evil. And gray mage Trevor Harrison is so compelling that I wish he had a larger role in the story.

Later books in a series are tricky. Often the beginning gets bogged down by exposition or the story cannot stand on its own. King avoids both these pitfalls. She gives just enough information so readers can understand what’s going on. At times the Evil seems like an abstract menace, though, and the trio’s history with the Forgotten feels thin. After finishing The Threshold I backed up and read The Forgotten, which filled in everything that was missing — and more. The first book, Stone and a Hard Place, tells a separate story featuring Alistair Stone.

If you enjoy urban fantasy, you don’t want to miss this series. You can read The Threshold first, like I did, but for the optimal experience, start with The Forgotten. Or better yet, Stone and a Hard Place. Once you enter the world of Alistair Stone, you won’t want to leave. And you won’t have to. The Source: Book Four of the Alistair Stone Chronicles, is coming soon.

 

 

The Threshold Cover