Meghan Ciana Doidge

If you’d asked me a week ago, I would have told you that the best cupcakes were dark chocolate with chocolate cream cheese icing, that dancing in a crowd of magic wielders—the Adept—was better than sex, and that my life was peaceful and uneventful. Just the way I liked it....

The day I turned 19, I expected to gain what little freedom I could within the restrictions of my bank account and the hallucinations that had haunted me for the last six years. I'd seen terrible, fantastical, and utterly impossible things...but not love. Not until I saw him....

Three months ago, I lost my foster sister, Sienna, to the darkness. As in blood magic, chaos and, general mayhem. No one saw it until it was too late, but I should have. Now, I have a wounded heart and soul that I can’t even reveal to anyone around me, because I’m supposed to hate Sienna....

Three months ago, I nearly lost my best friend while retrieving the first instrument of assassination. I also inadvertently released a rival who was definitely unhinged....

I had new cupcakes to bake, a new treasure to hunt, and a new dragon in town—literally. Who wouldn’t be ecstatic filling their days with chocolate, trinket collecting, and martial arts training? Yeah…me....

I’d led a deadly squad of genetically enhanced, uber-powerful magic wielders through life-threatening missions multiple times in the first 21 years of my life....

We had chosen our place, etching our lives into a new land. Then, we had defended that land when called upon to do so. And we’d won. We’d maintained our freedom. But magic attracts magic. As they say....

We had run. We had adapted. And when our magic came back, we changed course again. Hiding instead of running, knowing that we needed to remain hidden from the Collective. Knowing that our lives, our freedom, depended on it. Then the sorcerer showed up, drained and disoriented....

They called me an amplifier. And they had bred me, raised me, and trained me to be a killer. I was capable of taking, holding, and transferring power that wasn’t my own with a simple touch. Along with four others of my generation, I could infiltrate any magical organization....

Here be an oracle. Despair all ye who seek her. Magic will have its cake and eat it, too. Okay, well. So I was mixing metaphors. I was new to the gig. But as far as I could tell, there were three kinds of people....

Over a year and a half had passed since Jade Godfrey - aka the dowser - fixed my mom’s necklace. Since I’d thwarted the vision of the death of love. Since I’d made a deal with a devil and acquired a demigod for a mentor. I still didn’t understand or control my power or magic....

I knew that opening the letter from the sorcerer Azar would have deadly consequences. So we had prepared. We’d planned. We knew we might have to defend ourselves, our freedom....

I hadn’t set foot in the human world for more than a few hours in over three and a half months. Sure, I was stronger and faster than I’d ever been before, and I had a shiny new sword, but I was seriously chocolate deprived....

I had everything I’d ever wanted — a successful business with a second bakery in the works, a sexy fiance who I adored, and good friends who loved to laugh almost as much as I did. So of course it couldn’t possibly last....

I wasn’t even remotely interested in collecting the third instrument of assassination. It was far better for everyone involved—and for Warner, specifically—if I just let it be. And since I was the only one who could retrieve the artifacts, I figured it was my call to make....

The Collective was already done. I’d destroyed them more than eight years ago. But apparently, some of those who’d survived now needed a reminder of their demise. When it was done, I would walk away with everything that was mine to have and to hold....

Concerned that we hadn’t heard from her in more than a year, Fish had dragged me all the way into the middle of Russia to follow up a lead on the whereabouts of our telepathic team member, Amanda, a.k.a. Bee....

For 12 years, I had managed to separate my personal life from my professional life, becoming one of the best reconstructionists in the world - and proving to myself that I could do so on my own merits. Then I’d been forced into contact with my family....

I preferred it when life came in tidy packages. When it didn’t — when something went awry — I was exceedingly skilled at packaging it back up. It was my job to do so after all. I was a reconstructionist....

Three days. That was all the reprieve we got before one of the five showed up, injured and on the run. The snowstorm that had encased the property, as well as stifled the town, hadn’t even melted away. That wounded prey led our newest adversary directly to me. To Christopher....