Shattered World

Viv just wants work—any work. Well, not quite any work. But she's desperate enough to accept a job offer as personal assistant to Jasper Renner—the rich and mysterious owner of the Renner Tea House—even though odd things happen whenever he's around. She expects to deal with rich, entitled Melbournians and a full business schedule. Instead, Viv finds herself following Jasper into a strange new world where a murderous madman has been incarcerated in a secret floor at the old Kew Asylum that may or may not exist in the human world as she knows it.

The world isn't the same as it was yesterday. In fact, Viv is no longer sure that she is the same as she was yesterday. She can do something she never knew was possible—and Luca tried to kill her, just like Jasper said he would if she let him get too close. At the teahouse, it's business as usual, however: tentacles in the top floor, an invasion of not-quite-real-but-nevertheless-terrifying spiders . . . and a new murderer to catch, of course. Someone is trying to make sure a Greek-Australian couple never makes it to the altar, and it's not just perfume they're sneaking into the bride's room.

Viv has been living alongside behindkind and fae in the Historic Renner Tea House in Melbourne for nearly a month now. In that time, she's been almost killed by friends and enemies alike, discovered that the human world is not the only world on the edges of her reality, and become a glorified babysitter for Luca, an unstable assassin of otherworldly creatures who has nightmares that are a bit too...real.

Viv thought that her life was gaining some sort of equilibrium. Yeah, there's something dodgy in her family tree, and yeah, she's living in a magic Tea House in Melbourne that has fae residents and feathered-and-or-tentacled visitors; but at least she's starting to get the hang of it. She's been...