Chapter One I was ten feet from the office door of Cutting Edge Investigations, when I heard our phone ring inside. Unfortunately the key to the office was in my sweatshirt pocket, which at the moment was full of pale pink slime dripping from the tentacles resting on my shoulders. The tentacles weighed about seventy pounds and my shoulders really didn't like it. Behind me Andrea, my best friend and partner in crime solving, shifted the bulbous mass of flesh that was the rest of the creature, rearranging it. "Phone." "I hear it." I dug in my pocket, all but glued shut by slime. Cold wetness slipped through my fingers. Ew. "Kate, it could be a client." "I'm trying to find the key." Clients meant money and money was in short supply. Cutting Edge opened its doors three months ago, and while we were getting a trickle of paying jobs, most of them were lousy. Despite a good recommendation from the Red Guard, the premier bodyguard outfit in the city, clients weren't knocking down our door in a rush to hire us. Our world was beset by magic waves. They flooded us at random, smothering technology and leaving monsters in their wake. One moment you had rogue mages spitting fireballs and lightning, the next the magic would vanish, and the cops would gun down