More by Devon Monk: Allie Beckstrom series: * Magic to the Bone * Magic In the Blood * Magic in the Shadows * Magic on the Storm * Magic at the Gate * Magic on the Line * Magic Without Mercy * Magic for a Price The Age of Steam: Cedar Hunt: * Dead Iron * Tin Swift

People have filled Allie in on the parts of her life that she no longer remembers, so she knows what should be there, but that isn't always comforting. Like Zayvion Jones. That she, a loner who trusts no one, should suddenly fall in love with a stranger and then stake her life and magic for him--so much to send herself into a coma is unbelievable, except it happened; well, the coma part did, she knows. And now Zay is back on the fringes of her life, and something in her just responds to him – something she can't help but want to trust. But when the ghost of her father accosts her in her darkened apartment, she freaks. She doesn’t see ghosts.

After her field trip on the bus, she does her stint at the police station, but is then introduced to Det. Stotts, and MERC. MERC is a department that handles magic and magic users - a mysterious department that no one knows about – or talks about – and lives for very long. But then Allie discovers that other Hounds know about MERC, and know about each other. There seems to be an entire world in her city that she never knew about, and is only just discovering, and she's having a tough time handling it. But when she decides to head to her comfort zone, Get Mugged, a local coffee shop, she encounters more signs of her dead father's magic and more ghosts. But these ghosts are determined to take her and her magic from the city she loves before she can put all the pieces into place.