This was another exciting adventure for Merit. She is still grieving the loss of Ethan Sullivan. But she doesn't have time to really grieve. The House had been put into the charge of a receiver who is testing their fitness. He is not an admirable character which does, at least, distract the vampires from their grief. He is delighting in setting up petty rules just to have the vampires break them. He undoubtedly has a hidden agenda and a special desire to see Merit fail. This provides tension within the House.There is also major political fallout in Chicago since the previous mayor who had supported the vampires was found to also be a drug dealer and genuine bad guy. The new mayor is looking to run for president and thinks a campaign against supernaturals will aide her. She disbands the Ombudsman's office and legislates a system which would require supernaturals to register and have permission to travel. She is managing to blame the vampires especially for everything that goes wrong in Chicago. This provides a lot of tension outside the House.Unfortunately, lots is going wrong in Chicago. Some sort of magic is loose. The lake and rivers turn black and stop flowing, the sky turns red and has constant lightning flashes, earthquakes erupt in downtown. Merit along with Jonah who is a guard at Grey House and her recruiter for the Red Guard are investigating the problem. Their goal is to find out the cause and prove that the vampires had nothing to do with it. Along the way Merit has to meet with the former mayor, the Siren of the lake, and the queen of the fairies. All those meetings put her in danger and are very frustrating because she gets more questions instead of answers.Meanwhile, Merit is having nightmares that may be prophetic dreams about Ethan. Her best friend Mallory is pulling away from her because she is so involved in becoming a sorcerer. Merit feels that all her support system in being pulled away. Ethan's gone; Mallory is distant. And she is facing harassment from inside the House. Through it all Merit is determined to solve the problem and protect the House.The story is filled with tension and is a true puzzler both for Merit and the reader. I found that I had to keep reading to see if Merit would ever figure out what was going on. I was very satisfied with the ending of the story because a number of the threads were resolved. I do very much look forward to the next story to see what happens with the threads that were not resolved in this story.
