House Advantage

Las Vegas runs on luck. Kayla Diaz makes her living containing what luck leaves behind.

She's a wizard-for-hire working the margins of the Strip - wards, curse removal, the kind of "special circumstances" work Metro PD calls in when the paperwork doesn't have a box for what they found. Her magic doesn't blast or burn. It binds. It contains. And every time she uses it, it takes a piece of her with it.

When a body turns up in the desert outside the city, ringed by a scorched binding-circle burned deep into the sand, Kayla recognizes the technique instantly - it's her mentor's. The same mentor who was exiled and disgraced by Nevada's magical governing body eight years ago, accused of rigging the ancient luck-magic humming beneath every casino on the Strip. The same mentor Kayla has spent nearly a decade defending, certain the accusations were wrong.

She's about to find out how wrong she was.

The trail leads through forgotten maintenance tunnels beneath the neon, into a scheme bigger and hungrier than one ruined reputation - and into a truth her mentor buried to protect someone else. With her crow, Clyde, riding her shoulder and her reserves running out fast, Kayla has one shot to contain something that was never supposed to get this strong, before it takes more than her mentor ever lost.

The house always has the advantage. Kayla's about to find out just how far she's willing to go to change the odds.

The first novel in a gritty new urban fantasy series - perfect for fans of hard-won magic, morally complicated mentors, and cities that hide more than they show.