Magician First Class

Bev looked at me. "Charlie? You in some sort of trouble?"

I laughed.

I couldn't help it. I was in so many sorts of trouble that the question seemed ridiculous. For a moment, I thought about laying it all out for her. Bev Thornton had solved problems like this for decades before I was born. She could probably take care of a mauvais wizard without disturbing her stiff grey curls, stopping halfway through for a cigarette break.

What would she do if I said, "Well, Bev, I got this job under false pretenses, swore a binding oath to our boss, discovered a human supremacist group is creating a monstrosity in the lot next door, got accidentally entangled with a part-incubus who can't control his powers, and barely survived a run-in with an Eighth Class wizard who has a master he's scared of. I don't know-would you say that's some sort of trouble?"

I slapped my hands over my mouth, as if I could cram the laughter back in.

Thirteenth Avenue, New York's newest neighborhood, is a special place. When the Cataclysm brought magic roaring back to the world in the late 1960s, one of the more benign results was this strip of land heaving out of the Hudson River. Real estate developers rushed in where fully armed Hunter squads feared to tread, and now, in the post-Faerie Accords era, the magical and mundane inhabitants of Thirteenth Avenue live, work, and play there in perfect harmony.

More or less. Hey, it's still New York.

Charlie Cross, recent history graduate and not-very-good-magician, isn't sure about applying for a job at the Thirteenth Avenue Community Recreation Center. After all, non-profits are notoriously unstable. But there's a recession on, and if she doesn't find something soon she'll have to stay with her mom in the suburbs.

One ill-advised promise to a fae later, and Charlie's in, wrangling the booking calendar around a werewolf's 8th birthday party, taking sign-ups for a succubus's burlesque classes, and flirting with the adorable half-demon mechanic down the block.

But amid the usual chaos of balancing budgets, juggling community needs, and pleasing demanding benefactors, more sinister forces are at work. Not everyone is happy about the peaceful coexistence of the magical and the mundane, and they threaten Charlie, her new friends, and Thirteenth Avenue itself.

Charlie, inexperienced and underpowered as she is, might just be the key to preventing disaster. But she definitely can't do it alone.