Special Agent Emma Monroe is an FBI agent who finds
missing children – both as a profession and as a curse laid on the siren by
Demeter in revenge for her failure to find Persephone. As part of that curse,
Emma may not be happy, may not fall in love.
And love is not what she shares with Kallistos, the
vampire king who shares her bed, though they certainly have fun. Less fun is
her FBI partner Zack, werewolf, professional, fellow agent – and ex lover. If
he could remember it – unknown to him they were once lovers and deeply in love
and unable to be together without risking Demeter’s wrath. Saying no, is hard
though.
All three are drawn into the hunt for missing girls – but
it’s a hunt that spills over from her professional life to the supernatural as
both werewolf and vampire politics raise their ugly heads.
There is a lot of sexual tension in this book, certainly more
so than in the first book – but it’s just that for most of it, tension;
there’s a lot of both of them lusting after the other, a fair amount of
physical description that isn’t always necessary and more than a dollop of
angst because of the curse that keeps Emma and Zack apart. There’s also a
thread of angst between Emma and Kallistos; she has a no strings attached
relationship with the vampire, the only kind of relationship that could work
for her.
In many ways it does work, neither of them are embarrassed
or ashamed about having casual sex, nor is their relationship considered wrong,
something to hide, something to be embarrassed about or in any way it’s nice to
see. But at the same time it’s inherently cast as inferior because it will
always be the second choice to Zack and that shadows the whole thing – no matter
how casual a relationship is, Emma pining after another man does not exactly
make Kallistos feel happy and joyful. So it’s a fairly good representation of
shameless sexual relationship but still holds it as inherently inferior.
The other source of conflict in their relationship is Kallistos being a vampire ruler and, because of that, a man who does evil things out of necessity. This is one of the better conflicts of the book – because it’s very tempting to look at Kallistos as the good vampire and then Lamont, an antagonist, as the bad vampire. But there’s a lair of complexity there – Kallistos is not a good person, he cannot even be a good person and still hold power. In fact, it can even be argued (and he does argue) that he cannot be a good person and even be a vampire – he can be a less bad person – but ultimately he is a being that preys on humanity which, on some level, means the exploitation and use of humans; made more fraught by the necessity of secrecy. I like how it looks at many of the things that other books may present as hallmarks of a “good” vampire and points out that “less bad” and “good” are a long way apart – and messing with people’s memories, stealing their blood, etc are not ever going to go in the “good” column.
