Heir of Afallon: Stranger Magics, Book Eleven

It’s not every assignment that ends in a quest… For Kitty Connolly, family is a complicated subject. Her father died when she was a child. Her mother, a powerful but disgraced magus, wants nothing to do with her. Her baby sister, Beth, hardly knows her but hates her all the same.

But Kitty has found her own sort of family along the way. Maria, her best friend, is more like a sister. Her colleagues on the Arcanum’s Away Team respect her, even though she’s barely a witch. And then there’s Marcus, her…well, that’s complicated.

When her boss announces yet another of his grail quests, Kitty goes along with her work family, no matter how hopeless the mission. Though the Away Team has uncovered moldering books of magic, long-lost wands and other artifacts, and even an ensorcelled faerie lord in the field, everyone knows that the hunt for the grail is a fool’s errand.

Stumbling onto an ancient secret, however, sets Kitty on a quest of her own-one that will change her family forever. Of course, no quest was ever easily won, and Kitty’s journey takes her deep into the Gray Lands, a place where her paltry talent for magic is useless…and whose queen, having once been humiliated, is eager for revenge. For Kitty to succeed, she’ll need more than a little help from her friends, if not a miracle.

And for the Arcanum to survive the coming storm, she’ll need to uncover an extraordinary sort of magic.