The wind whipped through the willow trees, and I cursed. It was dark and wet outside, the damp of the forest darkening my vision even further than the dimness of the night had already. I’d known it would be a risk taking my staff out and meeting a client at this time of night, but didn’t think it would be this bad!

Another branch snapped above me, and I ducked. A sudden snapping sound from the underbrush beside the road called my attention, a quick tap on my flashlight showing the source: a cat. Only a cat. Of course.

I sighed, and kept walking forward.

My name’s Felicia Dotts, and I’m a wizard. Not a very pleasant one, I’ll admit, but I am a wizard.

My specialty is in magical law-dealing with demons, gadding with ghosts, vanishing vampires, et cetera.

My prices are low-only a few thousand for each banishment.

My employment? Minimal. As it turns out, even busy cities like New Yorkshire don’t have much use for magical contract law-mundane lawyers do just fine, and anything a normal lawyer can’t deal with gets an exterminator called instead. Dawn and dusk, I hate faeries.

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But as rarely as I was hired, as unusual my being called to action, as absolutely unimaginable the thought of my getting a business call, it had happened. Some vampire out in Mireland had called in with a complaint, some beancounter had gone to check it out and never come back, and badda bing badda boom-before you know it, big bad Felicia the “demon lawyer” gets called out to go deal with it.

I don’t like my coworkers very much.

But nevertheless, here I was-marching halfway through an ancient and probably haunted forest, carrying only a bedamned staff for self defense, and with no way to know who my client was and what’s going on until I get there.

I love my job.

What I don’t like, however, is the fact that there’s a werewolf behind me.

I spin, and my brain registers-big, brown, tall, no loincloth, scary- and before I know it I’ve conked him over the head with my staff and started running.

I hear a call from behind me- a Hey, wait! that my mind recognises, but does not acknowledge. I’m already running.

And sure enough, I find myself stopping a half-hour later as my other shoe comes off, my ankle twists against a tree root, and I realise I am lost as my shin bangs against some bark that is most decidedly not the soft sweetwood of the trees I’d been seeing in the forest.

Uh oh.

I’m lost.