For twenty-four years, Ali Redgrave has thrived in the Wyrdlands, the strange and sometimes deadly boundary between the Kingdom of Faery and the sleepy foothills of California’s Sierra Nevada mountains.
With the help of her fae cat Capalu and Rosie, a feisty winged sylphid no bigger than her palm, Ali runs the most popular shop in the last human town in the Wyrdlands. A charmingly rustic village, Fantastic attracts plenty of tourists, but residents are a rare breed. Here in the shadow of Faery, nothing electrical works. It takes a certain leathery toughness of spirit to live year-round without modern conveniences like cars, the internet, and Walmart, never mind dealing with faeries and their ever-present rules.
But Ali’s idyllic existence is about to be upended. Murder is rare enough in Fantastic, but this victim shouldn’t even be here. Nefarious magic is prohibited in town. So how did a thrumpin, a deadly goblin assassin, with dagger-like claws and cursed armor, end up bloody and stiff in the blacksmith’s flower bed? And now the evil little corpse is stuffed into an iron box in Ali’s basement, awaiting the arrival of the humorless and manifestly terrifying High Marshal, who is undoubtedly on his way to investigate on behalf of the Kingdom.
The last thing Ali needs is to face the Marshal’s penetrating elfin gaze. His perception is all too keen, and Ali has more than a few secrets to protect…
