by Brian Keith Dye
Janessa Miro has one rule: keep the wards intact and the drinks flowing.
As The Spot’s resident wardwright and bartender, she keeps Chicago’s most notorious cross-dimensional speakeasy stitched together with duct tape, sarcasm, and sigilcraft. But when a ley line flickers and a Whisperbind blooms through the anchor wards, it isn’t sabotage—it’s personal. Someone has forged her magical style, infected the bar’s foundation, and tied the corruption to her blood.
Now the Magus Arcanum is circling. The Faerie Courts are listening. And former mentor turned heretic Marlowe Finch is orchestrating something beneath the city in a cathedral called the Hollow Chord.
As ancient runes begin surfacing across Chicago, Janessa discovers the attack against The Spot is only the first fracture in something far older than the Arcanum wants to admit. The magic inside her isn’t behaving like a curse.
It’s remembering.
With fellow wardwright Callum Shaw, Grimalkin thief Lysandra Vex, and dimension-folding barkeep Eddie Ramirez at her side, Janessa races to stop the Seal beneath The Spot from unraveling before Chicago becomes the center of a supernatural collapse.
Because every lock has a cost. Every curse leaves a mark.
And some curses don’t bind you—they build you.
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