Ivar got up and offered the boy his hand. “Would you like to see my smithy?”

Roderick nodded. The two of them walked off the porch together, hand in hand.

The three of us sat on the porch, watched the river, and drank the iced tea.

“What about Aurellia?” I asked.

“She’s still married to the DA’s brother-in-law,” Curran said. “A woman told me it would be a bad idea to do anything about that.”

“I wouldn’t worry about Aurellia,” Doolittle said, watching Ivar and Roderick by the smithy. “I have a feeling she’ll get what’s coming to her.”

EPILOGUE

Atlanta Avery hospital reported an extremely troubling case: a local woman, Aurellia Sunny, has aged forty years overnight. The medmage professionals theorize that accelerated aging occurred due to a gold ring that arrived in the mail and was left on Mrs. Sunny’s front porch. The ring has since dissolved into her skin and is impossible to remove. The aging process is continuing and the family has been advised to make the proper arrangements. PAD Detective Tsoi, the lead investigator on the case, had the following advice for residents: “Don’t accept gifts from anonymous parties. If you don’t know who the package is from, don’t open it.”

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Excerpt from Magic Shifts

Read on for an exciting excerpt from the latest Kate Daniels novel

MAGIC SHIFTS

Available now from Ace Books

“Ilona Andrews’s books are guaranteed good reads.”

—Patricia Briggs, #1 New York Times bestselling author

“Magic Shifts is a perfectly balanced mixture of action, adventure, mystery, humor, and a delicious romance. Ilona Andrews only continues to excel in this wonderfully complex and magical series that revolves around a woman, her sword, and her battle to save her small piece of the world.”

—Heroes and Heartbreakers

I rode through the night-drenched streets of Atlanta on a mammoth donkey. The donkey’s name was Cuddles. She was ten feet tall, including the ears, and her black-and-white hide suggested she might have held up a Holstein cow in some dark alley and was now wearing her clothes. My own blood-spattered outfit suggested I’d had an interesting night. Most horses would’ve been nervous about letting a woman covered with that much blood on their back, but Cuddles didn’t seem to mind. Either it didn’t bother her or she was a pragmatist who knew where her carrots were coming from.