The Good, The Bad and The Undead has Rachel Morgan gunning for that slippery Trent Kalamack again. Someone is butchering ley line witches all over town. The FIB (the human led agency dealing with X-Files) want her to go undercover as a ley line student to spy on a professor. Morgan isn’t having any of it, convinced Trent is behind it as his secretary’s witch boyfriend disappeared. In typical fashion, the FIB boss warns her off that line of questioning. He saddles her with his a new by the book agent to keep her with the college clue. It helps that he’s paying her as she’s officially has her own independent firm, cleverly named Vampiric Charms. Hilariously, they receive crank calls as the phone book listed as an escort service by mistake.
Rachel enlists the help of her love interest from the last book, a human named Nick. He knows about magic from and flirts with the dark arts, even though he doesn’t have the genetic talent. Things between are going well until a spell goes awry and binds him to Rachel. On top of that, an evil demon who pretends to help them, but more likely wants to take their souls. Rachel finds her in dangerous dilemma by the time she tracks down the serial killer.
I sped through this second entry as we delved deeper into the supernatural world of Cincinnati. The vampires have an odd power structure with an undead vamp pizza owner named Piscary at the top of the food chain. Ivy as a living vampire has a precarious relationship with him as he’s her Godfather. Harrison is deft in building the delicate politics of a world where supernaturals exist in public. This book also has more a procedural aspect as the main goal for Rachel is to discover the killer. Nevertheless, adequate time is given to characterization, which helps the reader root for this new firm. Even if they continue to make it up each day as it goes.
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