The books have never balanced. No one noticed because no one looked.
A cozy paranormal mystery for readers who loved Legends & Lattes and want someone to investigate a theft.
I left Portland because the fraud I kept finding kept getting negotiated into nothing.
Six weeks into a short-term contract in Lunaria, Oregon, I've found a few things I wasn't expecting.
The charming artisan community tucked into the Coast Range foothills is a magical enclave of 3,200 practitioners. The thing they trade in? Moonlight. Compressed into portable jars, with quarterly accounting and a twice-yearly market. A very real economy-with a very real theft embedded in its contracts. Three years. Systematic. So precise that nobody with access to the records was looking.
And then there's Ledger.
Very large. Very old. Very grey. The Lunar Guild's resident cat positions himself in front of specific inventory shelves and watches them with the focused attention of something that can see exactly what isn't there.
I've been calling what I do professional instinct for ten years. In Lunaria, I'm starting to wonder if that was ever the right name for it.
The annual Moonmarket is three weeks away. The shortfall goes public the moment I file my report. The twenty-six-year-old who inherited this Guild three months ago didn't cause any of this-and she's the one who'll face the community reckoning.
Someone embedded a theft in their own contracts. I'm going to find them.
Enter the Guild Investigator.
Methodical. Skeptical of outside contractors. Always knows exactly when it's about to rain-a minor gift he finds mildly annoying. We haven't decided what to do about each other yet.
The Case of the Missing Moonlight is a cozy paranormal mystery set in a hidden magical community in the Oregon Coast Range-warm, wry, and grounded in the fine print. A forensic accountant who doesn't know she's a practitioner yet. A cat who perceives absence. A slow-burn romance with no spice.
Book 1 of The Logistics of Lost Spells.
