These books are part of the multi-author Carnival of Mysteries series. Each book stands alone but includes at least one visit to Errante Ame’s Carnival of Mysteries, a magical, multiverse traveling show full of unusual acts, games, and rides. The Carnival changes to suit the world it’s on, so each visit is unique and special.
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Night-blooming Hearts Phoenix sacrificed everything to become one of the greatest necromancers in nightwalker history—including his beauty, though that was by accident rather than design. As beauty is everything to vampires, he has been a pariah ever since, disowned, discarded, and largely forgotten by everyone he once called family and friend. Nowadays, he lends his skills to sorcerer Jackie Black and the notorious Clan Mordred. If he still feels lonely and isolated, and rejected by the man he’d been stupid enough to think returned his interest, that’s his own problem, no one else’s. He’s used to rejection anyway. Then his brother shows up on his doorstep begging for help with a blackmail problem—and offering the one thing Phoenix cannot refuse as payment. But if there’s one thing he’s learned about nightwalkers, it’s that nothing is ever as it seems, and problems always get worse before they get better… |
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The Wrong Familiar Ninos has been training all his life to be a sylvan mage. Trees, plants, herbs, flowers, fruits, berries, nuts—he knows them all, and he intends to use that knowledge for the good of his home, a village he has not seen in more than a decade. The final step to becoming a full-fledged mage is the conjuring and binding of a familiar, a faithful companion and guide who will supplement his power and remain at his side the rest of his life. Instead of a sylvan familiar, like a unicorn or stag, however, something goes horribly awry and Ninos finds himself bound instead to Sinn, a raven familiar meant for dark magics. Neither is happy about it. Ninos wants a familiar who can help him with life, with growing and restoring a place destroyed by fire and plague. Sinn should be helping to raise the dead or cast blood workings. They were never meant to meet, let alone be bound. Bindings are permanent, however, and cannot be broken. Their only chance at setting this wrong to rights is to locate the dark mage that Sinn was meant for, hope they in turn have Ninos’ true familiar, and perform a rare but not impossible switch… |