When New York City jewelry designer Garet James stumbles into a strange antiques shop in her neighborhood, her life is about to be turned upside down. John Dee, the enigmatic shopkeeper, commissions her to open a vintage silver box for a generous sum of money. Oddly, the symbol of a swan on the box exactly matches the ring given to her by her deceased mother. Garet can't believe her luck and this eerie coincidence until she opens the box and otherworldly things start happening. . . . That evening, the precious silver box is stolen. When Garet begins to investigate, she learns that she has been pulled into a prophecy that is hundreds of years old, and opening the box has unleashed an evil force onto the streets of Manhattan and the world at large. Gradually, Garet pieces together her true identity―one that her deceased mother desperately tried to protect her from. Generations of women in Garet's family, including her beloved mother, suffered and died at the hands of this prevailing evil. Does Garet possess the power to reclaim the box and defeat this devastating force? On her journey, she will meet the fey folk who walk unnoticed among humans and a sexy vampire who also happens to be a hedge fund manager that she can't stop thinking about. But the fairies reveal a desire to overpower mere humans and the seductive vampire has the power to steal the life from her body. Whom can Garet trust to guide her? Using her newfound powers and sharp wit, Garet will muster everything she's got to shut down the evil taking over her friends, family, New York City, and the world. “Writing under the pseudonym Lee Carroll, Carol Goodman ( Arcadia Falls; The Night Villa ) and her husband, poet Lee Slonimsky, launch an urban fantasy series with an unusual heroine. Fans of Charles deLint and Mercedes Lackey should enjoy this vibrant addition to the urban fantasy genre.” ― Library Journal on Black Swan Rising “In Black Swan Rising Lee Carroll creates an unsuspected Manhattan touched by magic, and reinvents the epic quest in a startling contemporary way. It's Pandora's Box turned cybernetic!” ― Eric Ormsby “Clever and assured, with an authentic NYC setting.” ― Kirkus Reviews on Black Swan Rising LEE CARROLL is a collaboration between Hammett Award winning mystery novelist Carol Goodman and her poet and hedge fund manager husband, Lee Slonimsky. Their books include The Watchtower , Black Swan Rising , and The Shape Stealer . Carol and Lee live in Great Neck, New York. Black Swan Rising By Lee Carroll Tom Doherty Associates Copyright © 2010 Carol Goodman and Lee Slonimsky All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-0-7653-2597-6 Contents Title, Copyright, Dedication, Acknowledgments, The Silver Box, A Snowy Field in France, Shadowmen, Air & Mist, Tea and Scones, Jaws, Saint Lion, The Watchtower, The Manticore, It Is the Lark, King of Moonshine, Prince of Dreams, Gone to Earth, King of Shadows, A Wandering Eye, Night Flight, The Train to Tarascon, The Diamond Dairy, Angel of the Waters, The Source, Deliquesce, The Red Shoes, The Exchequer, The Assessor, The Lover's Eye, The Wrong Way, The Transmigration of Atoms, The High Tower, The Amber Room, The Summer Country, CHAPTER 1 The Silver Box I'd never been in the antiques store before. That was the first strange circumstance. I knew the Village like the back of my hand. I grew up in a town house in the West Village, which I'd just learned was so heavily mortgaged that even if my father and I sold it we would still be under a mountain of debt. It was that news — along with a litany of dire economic circumstances — that had left me so shocked and disoriented that I'd walked back from the lawyer's office in lower Manhattan in a daze. I hadn't even noticed the light rain that had begun to fall or the fog rolling in from the Hudson River. Only when a sudden violent deluge forced me to duck into a doorway did I realize I was lost. Looking out through a curtain of rain, I saw I was on a narrow cobblestone street. I was too far from either corner to see a street sign through the heavy mist. Somewhere in the West Village or Tribeca, maybe? Had I crossed Canal Street? This part of town had changed so much, become so much trendier, in recent years that it all looked different. I must be near the river, though. The wind was blowing from the south carrying with it the smell of the Hudson and, from beyond the bay, the deep Atlantic. On chill autumn days like this, with low-lying clouds obscuring the tops of buildings and fog softening the edges of brick and granite, I liked to imagine myself in an older Manhattan — a Dutch seaport where traders and merchants came from the Old World to make their fortunes — not the hub of the financial world on the edge of economic collapse. I shivered — I was soaked to the skin — and turned toward the door to see if I could find an address. I found, instead, a tall, wild-eyed woman staring back at me, her