The Collector of Curses

SOME RELICS WERE NEVER MEANT TO SURFACE. Elijah Dane has spent his life cataloguing the things history tried to erase. As curator for the Order of the Black Sun, he is responsible for relics too dangerous, too politically explosive, or too inexplicable to be left in public hands. But when a rusted antique phonograph suddenly starts playing a recording that should not exist, whispering his name and driving him toward a horrifying act of self-destruction, Elijah realizes one of the Order's sealed artifacts has already found him. The trail leads to Thaddeus Rose, a flamboyant former stage magician and expert in occult fraud, forgotten rituals, and the darker corners of New Orleans history. Together, they uncover a clandestine network built around the legend of Cagliostro-an eighteenth-century occultist, alchemist, and conman whose followers believe his greatest secret was never lost. Now that secret is about to be sold. Behind the doors of an underground auction house, billionaires, private collectors, crime syndicates, and secret societies are bidding on relics with impossible histories and very real body counts. If the collection is broken apart and scattered across the world, the Order may never be able to contain what follows. With David Purdue, Dr. Nina Gould, and Sam Cleave trapped on the other side of the globe, Elijah has no reinforcements and no way out. His only chance is a deception so dangerous it borders on suicide: he must infiltrate the auction by impersonating Purdue himself. But the buyers are ruthless. The cult is watching. And every object in the room has a history written in blood. Some collections are worth killing for. Others are worth dying to keep hidden.

Pagina's: 246, Paperback, Independently published