I looked down. I was standing on a metal beam about eighteen inches wide. Below me, the remains of the Georgian Terrace Hotel sagged sadly onto the ruined street. Magic hadn’t been kind to the once-proud building. Its eighteen floors had collapsed in stages, creating a maze of passageways, sheer drops, and crumbling walls. The whole mess threatened to bite the dust any second, and I was on the very top of this heap of rubble. If I slipped, I would fall about a hundred feet to the pavement below. My imagination painted my head cracking like an egg dropped onto the sidewalk. Just what I needed. Because balancing on the iced-over beam wasn’t hard enough.

“I said don’t look down,” Ascanio said helpfully. “Also, be careful, the ice is slippery.”

“Thank you, Captain Obvious.”

Below me, the graveyard of Atlanta’s Downtown stretched into the distance. The massive buildings had toppled over decades ago, some shattering into gravel, some almost whole, sprawling on the ground with their beam work exposed, like rotting beached whales with their bones on display. Heaps of rubble choked the streets. Strange orange plants grew among the debris, each a thin stalk terminating in a single triangular leaf. In summer, sewage and rain overflow spilled into the open, but the harsh winter froze it, sheathing the ground with black ice.

The magic of Unicorn Lane swirled around me, dangerous and twisted. Magic flooded our world in waves, here one minute, gone the next, but Unicorn Lane, the lovely place that it was, retained its power even when the tech was at its strongest. It was the place where you came when life’s troubles became too much for you. Things with glowing eyes bred here among fallen skyscrapers, and if you lingered in these ruins, one of them was guaranteed to cure all that ailed you.

Anyone with half a brain avoided Unicorn Lane, especially after dark. But when your business is floundering, you have to take whatever job comes along, especially if it starts with the chief editor of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution crying in your office chair because her rare and expensive pet has gone missing. Since the magic killed the Internet and crippled TV, newspapers had once again become the primary source of news, and an endorsement from the largest newspaper in the region was worth its weight in gold. Also, she cried in my office. I took the job.

Being a Consort, I didn’t have to work for my living. The Pack took care of the necessities, but I wanted Cutting Edge to succeed and I would do whatever it took to make it stand on its own two feet. Even if it involved tracking down escaped pets.