Something has been stolen from the deepest vault beneath London. Now the city is going quiet.

Clara Ashworth, the only living Stormcaller in London, has spent five days inside the hidden city of the Gloam. The Lantern Council calls her a guest. The gilded cage, the watching Wardens and the hearing nobody will schedule suggest otherwise.

Then the Council's most dangerous secret goes missing: the Vesper Stone, a black glass stone that drinks the self out of living people and leaves only calm, empty bodies behind. Across London, bus passengers, nurses and night-shift workers are sitting down and not getting up. The Stone feeds for seven nights, reaching a little further each time. On the seventh, it opens.

The Council needs it found, and turns to the one person who is not a suspect: Clara. She has five nights, a young Warden who hates the very place they have to go, a candle-sprite with opinions, an old bookseller who knows exactly who the thief is, and a best friend with a whiteboard and a gift for spotting patterns.

The trail leads down to Shadow Alley, where shadows are sold, luck is currency and every answer has a price, and then along the buried River Fleet to a drowned chapel where the empty are waiting. The thief used a real Council key. Someone is feeding the hunters. And one of the Council's nine seats is lying.

SHADOW ALLEY is a fast-paced urban fantasy mystery set in hidden London, with a ticking clock, a magical underworld, a council conspiracy and a heroine who must decide who she can trust. Book Two of The Banned Arbiter Chronicles, best read after The First Spark.

Pay the price. Beat the clock. Find the traitor.

Shadow Alley

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