Blood & Ash

"This giddy, sexy series launch is a delight.” - Publishers Weekly (starred review)Missing teens. Long-lost magic. And the sexy nemesis who might drive her to murder.Detective for hire, Ashira Cohen is having a no-good, very bad day.When Ash was thirteen, her con artist father disappeared, leaving her with emotional scars and a limp she can't hide. But she toughened up, determined never to be played again. Is history repeating itself?First, she’s hit on the head during a stakeout, revealing a mysterious tattoo on the back of her skull.Even worse? It’s a now-broken ward unleashing dangerous magic that as a Mundane, she shouldn’t possess.And the icing on this crap cake? Her unruly powers nearly kill her long-time nemesis, Levi, the uptight leader of the magic community. One word from him revealing her forbidden abilities, and everything she’s built will be taken from her… by force.The only bright spot is that Levi requires her supernatural skills to solve a spree of abductions. After years of being underestimated by him, it’s Ash’s chance at payback and she’s going to enjoy bringing him to his knees—or stuffing him in a body bag.If you like headstrong heroines, clever mysteries, and a dash of red-hot romance, you’ll burn through this wickedly funny series.~There was nothing like sitting in a crappy car with a broken heater covertly filming a teenager for cash to make me question my life choices.My target, Charlotte Rose Scott, had taffy blonde hair, big blue eyes, and a manic enthusiasm that made me want to slip her an Ambien.Not that I’d waste one on a child.Her can-do spirit was currently being applied to a bit of breaking and entering. The sixteen-year-old had tried every point of entry on the ground floor of this weathered Craftsman house that was thirty-two blocks and worlds away from her own home. She’d graduated from tugging on the windows’ security bars to wobbling her way up a bare trellis to the second-story balcony.Good to know all those gymnastics and dance classes of hers had a practical application. It was so hard to make it in the arts, but crime was always a growth industry.I slapped another memory card into my Handycam, absently rubbing my right thigh. I’d been sitting out here in the damp cold for too long, exacerbating the dull ache from the rods holding my femur together, so I grabbed the Costco-sized bottle of Tylenol that I’d tossed on the passenger seat and dry-swallowed a couple of pills.She wrenched on the sliding door handle and I winced. Leave a few more fingerprints, why don’t you? If it wouldn’t completely compromise my case, I’d show her how to break in myself and put us both out of our misery.I zoomed in, ready to capture C.R. living her best truth. Or better yet, get some answers. Come on, you little adolescent fiend. Why the uncharacteristic foray into robbery? You’d even blown off piano lessons for this and you thrived in your overscheduled teenage existence.What was I missing?Denied entry, she shimmied back down the trellis to run at the solid back door. When she bounced off it with a yelp, only one of us was surprised.Spare me from amateurs.Charlotte Rose rubbed her elbow, red from where she’d smacked into the door, and bit her lip, eyes watery.Grumbling, I turned off the camera and got out of Moriarty, also known as my car, using both hands to swing my poor stiff leg onto the concrete. Tucking my fingers into the armpits of my battered leather jacket, my breath misting the air, I limped over to the tiny backyard of the crime spree in progress.“Yo, Cat Burglar Barbie,” I called out. “The jig is up!”She froze for a second and then vanished into thin air.~Join the investigation now.