**SPOILERS AHEAD**

Have you read eighty million books in the last eight months? Or maybe you have a goldfish brain like me, and you forget the names and details of even your favorite stories. I know I end up putting off reading the books I’m looking forward to because I feel like I’m forgetting things. It’s a vicious cycle and I’m here to break it with a catch-up on the major plot points from the last book, Courting Death.

The following section contains spoilers for the first and second books in this series. It may also contain sensitive, though not explicit, material, covered in the content warnings for Courting Death on my website.

Courting Death opens in Greenbriar MS. Xavier and Grayson are gone, leaving nothing but scattered belongings and jaguar blood in their wake. Tomas' wolf snapped at Sunday and ran off destroying a screen door in the process. We pick the story back up with Sunday cleaning up blood and Tomas fixing the door.

Sunday finds Tomas in the barn, and they have an emotional chat before making plans for that evening's visitors. There are still demons on the way and Sunday has a plan to use the twins to listen in on the demon’s thoughts. She's hoping they can get some information about Colton and Vivien.

Wade and the girls arrive, and with Ben's help, they assess the girls’ psychic range. They realize that Gemma's range is better when she hears a woman who's trapped in the flood waters. A plan is hatched to divide and conquer the evening's activities. Wade will wait with Lily in the barn while Tomas talks with the demons and Gemma will go with Sunday and Ben (in his tiger form) to rescue the woman.

Things don't go entirely as planned. The woman is part tree, part shifter, part energy vampire, and very odd. She's been trapped behind a powerful ward for the last three thousand years. She says she is from Arcadia so Sunday calls her Cady. She elects to fly back to the farmhouse.

Back at the house, Tomas tries to get information from the demons but only discovers that Roxana has purged her court, killing all the vampires, and that Grayson was indeed recalled by his maker. The demons are freaked out when a giant Stymphalian bird appears in the driveway. They agree to help Ben, Tomas, and Sunday travel to Hibernia, though Tomas doesn't like that he will owe them a favor in the future.

Cady shifts back into her less terrifying human form and makes a beeline for Grayson's pod. She destroys it with a blast of green energy then Sunday verbally destroys her and shows her the door.

Wade realizes that Cady cannot be left to wander the streets and takes her with him when he leaves, intending to put her at Aunt Sue's house. He gets one of his feelings and brings her home where she handles the cat who is really a witch (and Council spy). Wade introduces her to JoAnne as the girl's fancy new nanny, and she believes him, which is kind of crazy in retrospect.

Meanwhile, X and Gray are shadow-walking to a car dealership and purchasing a vehicle. Gray is ambivalent about how easily the jaguar calms his inner monster and eases the pain of his maker's call. They find a hotel room in Atlanta and Gray sends Xavier out to pick up supplies and rendezvous with a vampire who might help them get travel documents together for X.

X returns later than expected but brimming with confidence and an unusual sense of purpose to find Gray drinking and sulking. They have a short altercation where Gray reminds X that he's a scary vampire and X gets to eat two steak dinners.

After arranging for a forged passport and transportation to Elba they retire for the day with Gray reminding X that they should behave. X waits for Gray to die and then does whatever the hell they want anyway. Gray awakens with a jaguar bite (on his ass) and a big cat made of shadows hunkering down in his bond space. He's livid and X is nonplussed while efficiently getting them ready to leave for Elba.

The next morning in Mississippi is quietly domestic. Sunday trains with Tomas and then makes phone calls to check on her best friend, job, and condo. Tomas informs her that she's been working for vampires, and she quits. He hires her as an official agent of The House of Marchese.

They go to Wade and JoAnne's house, where Sunday has an apartment in the walk-out basement. She needs warm clothes for their Ireland trip. Uncle Dalford shows up with catfish and the boys learn about Dal's gift when Ben reveals his greatest secret over dessert.

After Sue and Dal leave, crows begin to gather and eventually, they attack. The crows are controlled by three shape-shifting mages. Sunday hides in a closet while Tomas takes on the brunt of the birds inside and Arcadia handles them outside. Tomas is gravely injured; the mages are killed and the birds destroy the house.

Sunday begs Arcadia to help Tomas and Arcadia grows a tiny spindly apple for her. Sunday chews it up and spits it into Tomas' mouth bringing him back to life and healing most of his injuries. Then they pack the girls up and relocate the family to the farmstead. With Colt in Dae, the house is empty and close to Arcadia's grove. These are all good things because those mages were there at Roxana's behest, and no one in the Prescott family will be safe until she's gone.

Sunday speaks to Bane Sandoval and requests an immediate extraction to Hibernia. Bane and his partner Andros Lee open a portal for the group to step through. On the other side are the Ossory Packlands that surround the Hibernian vampire castle, also known as The Rock.

In Hibernia Sunday and the gang gawk at the permanent Christmas decorations and meet the extended Argyros family. The king, Aiden, is pretty terrible to Sunday, and his child, Memphis takes after dear old Dad. Gretchen, however, is welcoming if not a bit vapid, and Valentine is strange but tolerable. They also meet the blood mage, Willa, when she is ordered to check Sunday's blood for proof of a bond with Grayson.

The evening ends with... ahem, pack-strengthening exercises in front of a roaring fire.

While this is going on, Grayson and Xavier fly overnight and arrive in Elba the next morning. Now both groups are in the same time zone and your author rejoices. Xavier meets Francesca, an otter shifter, and enjoys doing 'guard shit' while their new friend, Virgil, the demon, melts their brand-new phone.

That night on Elba, Gray rises to deal with Roxana and his maker. Instead of keeping his bond with X on the down low, he immediately brags about it to Roxana. He insists on rooming with his guard and bonded. Roxana freaks out as expected.

They realize there are no other vampires and get the otter shifter to tell them the truth about Roxana murdering her entire court. Then they go in search of Roxana's chyld Farin who's being held in the dungeons. They discover him being tortured and X releases him, perpetrating a crisis of conscience for Grayson. Vampires respect the maker bond above all else, but Gray knows she needs to be stopped and that poor Farin needed to be saved.

Lys and Roxana find them leaving the dungeon with Farin's body. Lys, in a moment of clarity, orders Roxana to close her bond to her chyld and gives him to Grayson to foster. Gray makes plans to have Hudson shelter the injured vampire while he convalesces, and Xavier makes sure Gray doesn't get too hangry.

The next morning in Hibernia the gang splits up; Tomas and Sunday continue their training and flirting, while Ben visits the true shifters living on the packland. They all meet up for dinner, music, and dancing at the Packhouse. Ben does his impressive party trick for the wolves and Sunday then takes them to meet Henry.

Henry is a young demon who lives with his parents and the true shifters. He has small horns that he can't glamour. Unlike transitum, A demon who can't glamour their demonic traits isn’t allowed in the Earth Realm because of the secrecy statute. Henry's family are refugees from Dae and they’re part of a large population of dae being sheltered by shifter packs around the world.

When they return to their rooms late that night, Ben decides to give Sunday and Tomas some privacy. This results in Ben running back in when Sunday briefly 'passes out' thanks to the alpha wolf's attention.

Gray wakes from a dream, which is pretty shocking for a dead man. He was dreaming about the horse he had as a human and Sunday was there. While he was mostly dead, Xavier helped Virgil and Franny get Farin's pod to a waiting jet. Now they're mostly just being a brat.

Roxana orders Grayson to meet with her before they preside over vampire court time. It's every bit as awful as he expected it would be and he's distressed by the interest she takes in his jaguar, because Xavier is his, make no mistake about it.

Court is a shit show with angry vampires coming from all corners of the realm to seek redress for their slaughtered chyldren. In the end, Roxana announces that she will be making Gray her consort in two weeks and that every House must send a courtier to witness it. Back in their rooms, Gray and X grow closer, a lot closer.

When Grayson awoke from his dream Sunday was spit back out in her reality too. She makes notes of every detail she can remember, in case it means something, and we get to hear a bit more about her dream-walking abilities. One thing's for sure, traveling across a continent to reach a dreamer's mind is a new feature.

They go to the kitchen for breakfast and find a large box of artisan cheese waiting for them. Grayson is still trying, and Sunday really needed to know she hadn't been forgotten. After Sunday consumes her weight in cheese, a very rude shifter appears with a tape measure and an attitude. It seems there's a ball in three nights' time... in Sunday's honor, and they will all be expected to attend.

Plans to visit Henry again are scuttled when their cottage is attacked by demons. Ben and Tomas shift and help the wolves defend the demon family while Sunday discovers she can do a little more than she thought with her wild magic. After extinguishing the roof fire with rain and neutering the demons by removing their fire-wielding, Sunday needs to relax.

Tomas and Ben have just the solution for her, THC-infused syrup and warm saltwater pools. After some inventive shifting and sucker marks, Sunday's ready to deal with Aiden. She has to ask him for help in an official way...and threaten him, just a little.

Valentine shows up and helps with Sunday's hair. Sunday meets with Aiden in his office... she spends some time admiring the king’s art and making small talk before asking for his help in retrieving their lost family members from Dae. Aiden demurs and Sunday presses, until she's inadvertently threatened the entire vampire race with extinction.

Back in Elba, Xavier has been busy all day, gathering intel on Minos and trying to discover how Roxana is controlling her maker, Lysamachus. They break into Minos' office and find proof of Roxana paying for demon labor and sketches of a distinctly Mayan-looking ruin. They’re hit on the head and come back to consciousness in a dank dungeon beneath the castle.

The next chapter is the one we don't speak of, and if you didn't already hate Roxana, believe me, you do now. It's hard to read but Xavier is saved when Smoky and Shadow work together and push them across Gray's bond to Sunday.

Xavier is delivered to Sunday, and she manifests them on the floor of their bedroom in Hibernia. But they aren't breathing. Valentine comes as soon as she's summoned. She asks for just one thing in return for her healing—that they take her with them when they leave. Sunday agrees to it immediately. Between her blood and Sunday’s, they manage to bring Xavier back to life. Val departs after asking if she can check on X the next evening.

Sunday promises herself she's done cleaning up blood and they fall asleep around Shadow. Sunday chooses to celebrate their return instead of dwelling on the huge Grayson-shaped hole in her heart.