Long is the winter. And long is the hunt. And long is the night in Carcosa.
These are the words that Abby Henderson finds at the site of a massacre, etched into the very concrete by crystals of un-melting ice. They are a message from the dark heart of Faerie, and a warning that magic of a much older and wilder sort has come to Vancouver.
Something has been stolen from the King-Among-the-Holly, oldest of faeries and the god of death and winter. One of his sacred hunting hounds is missing somewhere in Vancouver, and he’s prepared to raze the city to get it back. But he’s also prepared to make Abby a deal: either she finds the thieves and returns his hound, or else he’ll bury her home beneath an eternal blizzard. To make matters worse, she’s drawn the ire of a black ops outfit that doesn’t want her meddling in the uncanny, and the spectre of her dead mother just will not leave her alone.
It’s the perfect storm, and Abby Normal is right in its path.
It starts like it always does, with a young child, a nightmare, and a cry for help that no one hears. In the sleepy Okanagan town of Delapore, 10-year-old Will Brady has been having bad dreams about a haunted house. It’s a nightmare that seems a little too real, but nobody will listen to him.
Nobody but Abby Henderson, that is. Because she’s been having the exact same dream…
A public suicide, a series of grisly murders, and a house with a dark and tragic past. It’s up to Abby and her friends to find the connection between these things and stop the evil that is poisoning the town of Delapore. But they better do it quick, because that evil wants them very dead.
Abby Henderson has lived her whole life under a dark cloud. When she was born, a demon called the Deacon claimed her family as his property. When she turned 13, she was traumatized by an ominous psychic vision. When she turned 14, her dad had a psychotic breakdown and tried to kill her.
She’s just turned 25, and now people are dying all around her.
This is all according to the Deacon’s plan. He believes that Abby is the key to a ritual that will unleash an ancient evil on the world, and he will stop at nothing to make sure that ritual succeeds.
Now, Abby is in the fight of her life against an enemy that defies all reason. Together with her pious girlfriend, her magic-slinging ex-teacher, and a hotheaded Amazon with a machete, Abby will have to use every trick in the book to outlast the Deacon. Because if she can’t, her next birthday is going to be Hell.