Magic is sexy! Magic is hot! If someone took your magic away you'd want it back. Saskia Challoner, the Lutist, desperately wants to regain hers. Now there's a chance. Saskia has inherited something ancient and supernatural. Once a closely guarded secret in a world of mysteries; now something that malevolent agencies want to take from her; Saskia must choose, between the dark magic of a Compliance of Thorns, and the protection of a beautiful young Sorceress, and the pledge of a mortal covenant. Not such an easy choice, when you have a dark side like Saskia Challoner's. Saskia sees ghosts; a six-foot eleven-inch smirking ghost on his way to becoming an entity; a murdered girl, who still goes to meet her killer; lonely spirits in dark places; Moochers in graveyards, and much worse. Because in Saskia's world, you are never more than fifty feet from something supernatural. quote: 'Even if denied as by Saskia Challoner's fetter, magic never fully went away; part of it found a way out, a winding secret path through the corridors of the psyche and the personality; it came out through the hot gates of the soul, to manifest in other ways; in Saskia it existed in her eyes.' quote: "This was a feral cat, she thought, defending what belonged to it. The realization shocked her. Saskia spoke softly. 'I am so not interested; I've too many plans for her tonight.' Saskia leaned towards him, almost conspiratorially. 'A little boy like you would only get in the way.'"