Ferryl Shayde

How many people have a tattoo that teaches them magic? While trying to outrun the local bully, Abel trips over a stone slab and something wakes up. After it helps him escape, Abel returns the favor and breaks the binding seals and finds himself apprenticed to Ferryl Shayde. Once Ferryl takes up residence as a tattoo on his arm, Abel can see the magical creatures that live alongside us every day. Not the ones of folk tales, but their scruffy, slimy, fanged cousins. Worse, he finds that the pact that should keep them under some sort of control has failed.

When 15-year-old Abel discovered Ferryl Shayde, the disembodied sorceress, and freed her from her 200 years trapped in a pit, he never bargained on finding out about magic. Though when she moved into his tattoo and began the lessons, it all seemed like a lot of fun for him and his friends. They even added just a little magic to the board game Abel and his two best friends were developing.

After the huge battle with a leech nest, Abel now has the key to Castle House, a big old house wreathed in lethal magic. But the key only opens the first door, leading him to the next clue. His friends want to help, but the house won't let them, and even the first puzzle needs sorcerer-level magic. Luckily, Abel has something up his sleeve or, rather, in his tattoo! Even so, he'll need another missing key, and a way through all the other doors before he can reach the mystery at the center and claim his heritage.

Pendragon is dead, and now Abel is thrust into the position of a true sorcerer, ruler of a demesne! It would help if he had any idea what that meant, apart from apparently having the power of life and death over the thousands of unsuspecting non-magicals living there. It's time for Abel to come clean, and tell the Tavern just who he is, and what his blood link means. The sorcerous and church communities know the Master of Castle House has claimed a demesne, now they want to find out more.

Abel’s new magical alliance brings him ever closer to the heart of Castle House. Barely surviving he and the Taverners finally realize what true intent, honed and concentrated, can accomplish. Elsewhere, an enemy hides from Creepio and God's SAS, and the game character sorceress K'liss becomes a reality. Jenny sets off to contact new Tavern hopefuls in Canada and finds a magical hornet nest. American history, the magical part, is nothing like the history books! Closer to home, Abel finally arranges an important meeting of sorcerers and fears the worst about the date, Halloween.