Kate Daniels 03 - Magic Strikes

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    MAGIC STRIKES
     
    An Ace Book / published by arrangement with the authors
     
    PRINTING HISTORY
Ace mass-market edition / April 2009
     
Copyright © 2009 by Andrew Gordon and Ilona Gordon.
     
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    eISBN : 978-1-101-02879-7
     
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To Anastasia and Helen

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
    Telling this story wouldn’t have been possible without my editor, Anne Sowards. Thank you, as always, for your advice, guidance, and endless patience. I’m very fortunate to work with you, and I deeply appreciate your help and your friendship.
    Thank you to my wonderful agent, Nancy Yost, for being a zealous advocate of my work and for having the patience of a saint and rescuing me time and time again.
    Thank you to Cam Dufty, Ace’s editorial assistant, for fielding numerous, and sometimes unreasonable, requests for help.
    A huge thank you to Michelle Kasper, the production editor, and Andromeda Macri, the assistant production editor, who made sure the manuscript became a book. Thank you to cover designer Annette Fiore DeFex and artist Chad Michael Ward for the spectacular cover.
    Several people have read this book and were kind enough to offer an opinion on it. They are Bianca Bradley, Brian Kell, Brooke Nelissen, Elizabeth Hull, Heather Fagan, Jeaniene Frost (who threatened me with a posse), Jennifer Lampe and Jill Myles, Leslie Schlotman, Melissa Rian, Melissa Sawmiller , Meljean Brook, Reece Notley, Shannon Crowley, Stacy Cooper, and Vernieda Vergara (who wasn’t mad about Dali). Thank you so much, guys! You’ve made the book better.
    Finally, thank you to the readers! You make it all worthwhile.

CHAPTER 1

    SOME DAYS MY JOB WAS HARDER THAN OTHERS.
    I tapped the ladder with my hand. “See? It’s very sturdy, Mrs. McSweeney. You can come down now.”
    Mrs. McSweeney looked at me from the top of the telephone pole, having obvious doubts about the ladder’s and my reliability. Thin, bird-boned, she had to be past seventy. The wind stirred the nimbus of fine white hair around her head and blew open her nightgown, presenting me with sights better left unseen.
    “Mrs. McSweeney, I wish you would come down.”
    She arched her back and sucked in a deep breath. Not again. I sat on the ground and clamped my hands over my ears.
    The wail cut through the stillness of the night, sharp like a knife. It hammered the windows of the apartment buildings, wringing a high-pitched hum from the glass. Down the street,