The mark of shadows

Paris. Twelve murders in thirty days. Each victim: a member of the occult elite, killed by a knife in a ritual circle, marked with the same silver spiral.

Inspector Éliane Moreau of the Magical Criminal Brigade has seen enough crime scenes to recognize structure. What she doesn't recognize yet is herself - or why the mark appearing on each corpse is identical to the medallion she has worn since she was eleven. The one her adoptive father Lucien gave her. The one he said belonged to her mother.

Damien Ashford has been hunting the Brotherhood for five years. He knows the Pact of Asmodai. He knows the ninety-five-soul cycles, the Samhain rituals, the list of two hundred names. He has been watching Éliane from rooftops since September - not because she is the lead investigator on his case, but because she is the second target of an unfinished ceremony. The one that killed his wife.

When the Mark appears on both their wrists on the same night - a directional pulse, a mutual presence signal, a binding neither of them asked for - they have to make a choice: work separately, or work together. Against a man Éliane has called Father for seventeen years. Against a ritual scheduled for the autumn equinox with one hundred and eleven children as its quota. Against eleven months of breakfast, inheritance, and perfectly calibrated love.

*The Mark of Shadows: The Bond* is a dark fantasy thriller set in a Paris of underground cathedrals and magical crime files, surveillance markers and rooftop descents, letters written two days before death and silver rings left on a stone floor. It is a book about who holds the knife, and who chose to give it.