Showing results by author "R.L. King" in All Categories

Magical Los Angeles is a ticking time bomb. The normally cooperative crime families are at each other’s throats, an unseen force manipulating them from behind the scenes like a sinister chess master. Nick Morgan and Bron Broome are the only ones who know what’s going on, and they've got a tough job: convince the crime lords a demon’s playing them like chumps before the whole town goes up like a powder keg.

After five years in Los Angeles, Bron has come to terms with living as a mundane. Following a horrific ritual accident that cost the life of her mentor, she wants nothing to do with magic ever again. That’s becoming a lot harder now that her new best friend Nick is the grandson of LA’s biggest magical crime lord. And harder still when her mentor’s daughter shows up and drops a bombshell on her: The ritual accident might not have been her fault at all. Worst of all, somebody’s stirring up the magical crime families from behind the scenes, trying to set them against each other.

It was meant to be a simple few days away: Verity heading off for a much-needed girls’ weekend in New York City. But then comes her desperate call to Alastair Stone: A terrifying disaster has occurred, killing dozens of people - including a dear friend. When Stone joins her to investigate, they quickly discover that magic is behind the catastrophe. Even worse, it’s magic that isn’t even supposed to exist. As a long-simmering disagreement explodes into a rift between Stone and a grief-stricken Verity, Stone learns that things are even worse than he feared.

Alastair Stone needs a vacation. He’s literally stepping through the portal to his home in England, when an old friend calls with a horrific tale of a grisly multiple murders committed by teenagers just back from a school camping trip. It doesn’t take long to convince Stone that the supernatural is involved. Goodbye peaceful vacation, hello magical investigation.

Nick Morgan knows there’s no magic in the world, no matter how much he wants to believe. Magic is for suckers, but fortunately, for his job as a sham fortune teller to Hollywood’s fading stars, there are plenty of those around. When somebody starts peddling a new miracle beauty potion to the town’s never-ending supply of wannabe actors, Nick’s suspicious. But his suspicion becomes terror when it turns the niece of his best client horrifically ugly and kills her right in front of his eyes.

For Alastair Stone, problems rarely come one at a time. He’s busy helping an old friend with a case of blackmail, when he’s contacted about a mysterious wave of minor crimes in the Oakland area - one that might involve magic. He asks Verity to look into it. When tragedy strikes, and the petty crime spree leads to a friend's disastrous near-death, Stone hurries home to investigate the situation himself. What he finds suggests terrifying new connections to a problem he thought he’d already dealt with.

Alastair Stone had long thought the ability to interfere with arcane energy to be the holy grail of magical study. Until a piece of an item capable of doing just that turns up in a collection of mundane occult art, and someone nearly kills one of his colleagues while trying to steal it.

When Trevor Harrison founded New Argana, he envisioned it as a place magical and nonmagical people could call home without fear of the powerful and sadistic Talented. An arcane shield protected them from the deadly magic of the Calanarian Wastes and allowed them to live in peace.