The Invocations

From the author of Zara Jones believes in magic because the alternative is too painful to bear--that her sister was murdered by a serial killer and there is precisely nothing she can do to change it. If there’s anything Zara cannot stand it''s feeling powerless, so she decides she will do whatever it takes--even if that means partaking in the occult--to bring her sister back from the dead. Jude Wolf might be the daughter of a billionaire, but she is also undeniably cursed. After a deal with a demon went horribly wrong, her soul is now slowly turning necrotic. Flowers and insects die in her wake and monstrous things come to taunt her at night. If Jude can’t find the right someone to fix her mistake, she fears she’ll die very soon. Enter Emer Bryne: the solution to both Zara and Jude''s predicaments. The daughter of a witch, Emer sells spells to women in desperate situations willing to sacrifice a part of their soul in exchange for a bit of power, a bit of magic to change their lives. But Emer has a dark past all her own--and as her former clients are murdered one-by-one, she knows it’s followed her all the way to London. As Zara and Jude enter Emer''s orbit, they''ll have to team up to stop the killer--before they each end up next on his list.

Auteur

Krystal Sutherland is the New York Times and indie bestselling author of House of Hollow, A Semi-Definitive List of Worst Nightmares and Our Chemical Hearts, which was adapted into a film by Amazon Studios. Her books have been published in more than twenty countries and nominated for the Carnegie Medal and YA Book Prize, among others. Originally from Australia, she has lived on four continents and currently calls London home.

Texte du rabat

From the author of New York Times bestseller House of Hollow comes a darkly seductive witchy thriller where, though both men and demons lurk in shadows, girls refuse to go quietly into the night.

Zara Jones believes in magic because the alternative is too painful to bear—that her sister was murdered by a serial killer and there is precisely nothing she can do to change it. If there’s anything Zara cannot stand it's feeling powerless, so she decides she will do whatever it takes—even if that means partaking in the occult—to bring her sister back from the dead.

Jude Wolf might be the daughter of a billionaire, but she is also undeniably cursed. After a deal with a demon went horribly wrong, her soul is now slowly turning necrotic. Flowers and insects die in her wake and monstrous things come to taunt her at night. If Jude can’t find the right someone to fix her mistake, she fears she’ll die very soon.

Enter Emer Bryne: the solution to both Zara and Jude's predicaments. The daughter of a witch, Emer sells spells to women in desperate situations willing to sacrifice a part of their soul in exchange for a bit of power, a bit of magic to change their lives. But Emer has a dark past all her own—and as her former clients are murdered one-by-one, she knows it’s followed her all the way to London.

As Zara and Jude enter Emer's orbit, they'll have to team up to stop the killer—before they each end up next on his list.

Échantillon de lecture
PROLOGUE

A GIRL walks home alone at night.
   It’s All Hallows’ Eve in London, and the street that stretches before her is empty, quiet except for the soft thud of her boots on the sidewalk and the rustle of autumn leaves plucked by the wind. Hazy sodium lights struggle to shift the dark.
   The girl is dressed as a witch. Cartoon-green skin, pointy hat, a fake wart on her nose. She is coming from the Electric Ballroom, where, at a Halloween concert with her housemates, she saw the boy she likes kissing a girl dressed as a sexy angel. It immediately made her regret her costume and want to go home.
    Now she slips through the gap between two buildings, past the canal-side pub she goes to with her friends in the summer. A girl sits on the other side of a window decorated with bat decals, her face smeared with blood. A couple in matching hot-pink jumpsuits are breaking up on a bench.
    The girl takes a few steps onto the footbridge that leads over the water and down onto the towpath on the other side.
    It is here, on the bridge, that she pauses. The canal beneath her is a thin snake of shallow water. On a clear day, you can see the algae-coated detritus that collects at the bottom: the bicycles, the shopping trolleys, the tires. Tonight it is black and impenetrable. If you didn’t know its depth, you might think it fathomless.
    Across the water, the bars and restaurants of Camden Market are still busy with the Halloween crowd. Men and women in costumes cluster around the spaceship-red glow of outdoor heaters, laughing, drinking mulled wine out of steaming mugs.
    Ahead, the footbridge slopes down to the towpath that winds alongside Regent’s Canal, below street level.
    The girl hovers at the edge of the dark, weighing her options.
    Usually she avoids the canal after sunset. It is unlit. It is the kind of place she has been told all her life to avoid for the simple fact that she is a girl—but tonight she is cold and drunk and sad and hungry for the leftover pad thai she knows is waiting for her in the fridge. The path by the water is the shortest, fastest route home.
    Yet something tells her not to go any farther. Perhaps it is the memory of what happened to her on another night like this one. The stranger waiting in the dark, all the warnings she had been given growing up suddenly manifesting as flesh and breath and muscle.
    Then the girl remembers the words at her wrist and runs a fingertip over the cool metal letters sunken into her skin. Words that took her a year to find. Words that mean she no longer has to fear the night or anyone who might be lurking in it.
    She crosses the bridge. She plunges down into the blackness.
    The first part of the walk is fine. The path is narrow and cobbled. The canal is bordered on both sides by converted warehouses turned into blocks of fancy flats. Light from their windows reflects on the smooth surface of the water, creating an eerie mirror world just below the real one. Houseboats sit snug against the canal’s edge, the smell of woodsmoke clinging to the air around them. A huge, fat dog sits atop one, watching her as she passes. The sounds of revelry dissolve into the distance, but there is still life here. Still people to hear her, if she were to scream.
    She crosses beneath a bridge. It is mauled with graffiti and lit with shocking blue light to discourage drug use. Combined, they make the place feel dangerous. She moves on quickly, back into the waiting shadow.
    The next stretch of the walk is worse. There are no more houseboats. There are no more fancy flats. There is no one to come to her aid. There’s more greenery along the side of the path, vines and brambles that don’t lose their foliage as the nighttimes turn to frost. She moves closer to the water, wary of attackers hidden in the creepers.
    The girl crosses under a second blue-lit bridge, and then a third that’s rancid with the stink of urine. She makes it to the base of the stairs that leap up out of the darkness and onto the brightly lit street above.
    A girl walks home alone, but not alone.
    She feels him before she sees him. There’s no sound, or movement, or smell. Just some primordial response left over in the blood from a time before humans were humans. A sudden p…