Book 4 of the Unlikely Guardian series opens far from home, with Rose alone on a rain-lashed Scottish beach confronting a powerful dark sorcerer who once ordered the deaths of Sadie’s parents, Lili and Bobby. It’s a tense, atmospheric duel between two formidable magic users, and it does excellent work reestablishing just how dangerous Rose’s world really is outside the family’s carefully guarded suburban bubble.

The fight itself is a showcase of everything readers love about Rose as a character: quick thinking, ferocious skill with a blade, and a refusal to back down even when clearly outmatched. Her deception, pretending to be the heir the sorcerer seeks in order to draw him out, nearly costs her everything when he sees through the ruse and escapes before she can finish him. It’s a gripping, well-choreographed action sequence that raises real stakes right from the first page.

The chapter’s true gut-punch comes in its final beats, as Rose realizes her worst fear: this sorcerer has sensed a new surge of powerful magic on the American east coast, meaning Sadie’s wild, teenage magic has begun breaking through the family’s protective wards. With a dangerous enemy now hunting for the source, Rose scrambles to get home before he can find her niece first, setting the entire book in motion with real urgency.

📖 Join the family’s Myrtle Beach summer — get Summer Break Fae on Jamie Davis’s site:

jamiedavisbooks.com/books/summer-break-fae/

 

Summer Break Fae — Chapter 1

Cold spray blew across the shingled beach stones, dampening my hair and plastering stray strands to my cheek where they escaped the hood of my raincoat. I suppressed a shiver and used a little of my precious magical mana to cast a charm against the chill coming off the North Sea.

As my eyes pierced the foggy night’s gloom, my Fae sight cut through the darkness. I stared at the stone seawall and the path behind it, tracking the shadowed figure coming toward the small patio where I crouched behind a picnic table. I pulled at the shadows around the back of the metal table. I didn’t want to be seen.

The approaching person was taller than I’d expected. My sources said they were a fairy or low Fae. Unlike the high Fae, who were sometimes named elves in the misguided lore of humans, the simpler fairy folk tended to be smaller and slight of build. If the information I had was correct, this particular fairy was a giant among their kind.

I shifted my crouched position to the side and caught the corner of the metal bench with my kneecap. Pain shot through my left knee and down my leg. Before I could stop myself, I drew in a hissing breath.

The figure paused only a dozen yards away, and the darkened shadows of their hood turned in my direction. A man’s voice, thick with a highland Scottish brogue, said, “Who’s there? Come out and show yourself.”

I held still, hoping my hold on the surrounding shadows was enough to keep me hidden. I wanted to follow this person, not challenge them on the beach of this coastal Scottish town.

The man pulled his right hand from his pocket and raised it up, palm outward in my direction. He snapped his fingers, and a glowing globe of white light about the size of a softball floated toward me. The magical energy of his casting pressed hard against my cloak of shadows, giving me a taste of his dark power. His mystical strength might have outmatched my own. On the plus side, at least it illuminated him so I could see better. The trimmed salt-and-pepper beard and mustache framed an older man’s face creased with age and concern.

The shadows around me melted back as the globe drifted closer and closer. Beads of sweat popped up on my forehead despite the cold sea winds blowing on my face. I was losing my hold on the magical shadows. Light magic almost always overpowered shadow magic, and his strength with the dark forces made it even easier for him.

I released the spell and stood, my hand gripping the hilt of my sword beneath my long, gray raincoat.

“Who are you?” the man asked. His floating light stopped six feet away from me, lighting up my face in the gloom. “What are you doing lurking out here in the night?”

“I’m waiting for you, actually.” Sometimes, simple honesty could disarm an opponent.

“You’re an American? I don’t know anyone from your country.” He paused and tilted his head back while he sniffed at the air. A wry grin twisted the corners of his mouth upward. “You’re Fae, not a human witch. What do you want with me?”

“I traced you from your posts on a dark web chatroom. You talked about having a vision that revealed the new Fae Queen to you.”

“Bah, that? I was just messing with the conspiracy types who hang out there. It wasn’t real.”

He was lying. Warren, my investigator, had a series of search queries scraping the web for keywords. This guy’s posts had come too close to be accidental. He’d either actually had a vision of my niece, Sadie, or knew someone who had. I didn’t fail to notice his left hand dipping into the cloak’s folds. What was he hiding?

“You said the new queen would be found in the minster of the west in the New World. That she’d appear ordinary and live amongst the mundanes. Where did you see or hear that description?”

The man barked a laugh. “I knew it.” He crowed at the moon before returning his gaze to me. “She’s real and in America, like I said.” His right hand pointed at me. “And you know who she is.”

I readied myself for the inevitable confrontation. There was just one piece of important information I needed before I dealt with him.

“So, it was you who had the vision? You saw the future queen?”

His mouth twitched in a frown. “I might have seen it, or I might have heard it from someone. That you’re here now tells me all I need to know. Her growing power is breaking through the veil that has hidden her from those who seek her. It’s only a matter of time before we narrow our search enough to identify her.”

I had worried this would come someday, though I’d wished for a few more years before Sadie was discovered. Her increased command of the powerful forces at her beck and call must have breached our family’s long-standing wards, put in place to hide her and our entire line.

The shadow man brought out his left hand from the cloak, gripping something in his fist. He held out his hands and cupped them together. A soft, deep-red glow leaked from between his fingers. “I sent a team to the States over ten years ago. They followed the clues in an obscure line I found in a forgotten prophecy. I put little faith in them discovering anything until they disappeared without a trace after reporting a successful hit on a minor noble family. I never followed up on it, assuming the Unusual community in America had snapped them up. I see now that was a mistake.”

I froze, quivering with anger. Had this man been the one who’d ordered Lili and Bobby’s deaths all those years ago? My teeth ground together. He had to be stopped.

No. He had to die\!

I snarled my battle cry and charged at him. My sword swung from its scabbard at my side. I lunged up and over the table, using my magic to propel my leap forward.

My blade clove through the space where he’d stood only a second before. I landed in a half crouch. He wasn’t there.

A booming laugh from the darkness to my left warned me he’d projected his image forward on the sea path. I had been a fool to fall for his illusion. Now I was going to pay.

With my free hand, I swept up the edge of the long raincoat. I’d imbued it with a charm of protection earlier. I hoped it would be enough.

The glowing ember of magical energy the man held in his cupped hands erupted outward in my direction. At this range, he couldn’t miss. It grew in size until it was as big as a grapefruit and impacted on my raised coat.

My impromptu shield crumbled into burning ash around me. The spell’s explosion blasted me off my feet, and I landed nearly ten feet away. Gravel beside the concrete path dug into my exposed and now-burned skin. Pain seared through me as I struggled to regain control. He’d easily pierced my protections.

I pushed past the pain and bounded to my feet, lucky to have kept a grip on my blade. I adjusted my path to his true location and charged back.

He laughed and sent another energy ball at me.

This time, I was ready. I swept my magical blade in an arc, intercepting the captured globe of heated plasma. My natural magic drew in power from the chill air and misting rain around me. I vented it out through the sword to dissipate the energy inside the spell.

It was my turn to laugh. “You won’t catch me unawares again. I’ve searched for you at least as long as you’ve searched for us.”

“Let me guess, my team killed someone you loved. A friend, a lover, perhaps?”

I growled. “She was my sister, my best friend. She didn’t deserve the end you sent after her. Know this. I’m the reason your acolyte never returned to you.”

He walked in an arc away from the seawall, keeping the distance between us constant. “You have genuine power, then. My resources in the States were formidable.”

I shifted to follow his movements. “A witch and a few weretigers weren’t much of a challenge. Though they took the secret of who paid them to the grave.”

“Well, now you know who to thank. If your sister was the one who died, then you should have risen to her place. That makes you the one I’ve been searching for.”

I almost missed a step. He thought I was the heir to the Fae Queen’s throne. That meant he didn’t know about Sadie. She was still hidden, at least for now. I needed to end him and the threat he posed before he discovered anything else. As she got older and more powerful, Sadie would eventually reveal herself to all, no matter what we did to hide her away.

“Yes,” I said, standing tall. “You’ve found me at last. Come and finish the job, if you dare.”

The man clapped his hands together. A thunderous blast lanced down from the sky.

I dove to the side, narrowly avoiding the called lightning and the crater it blasted in the gravel. My hand pushed down, and I completed my roll and regained my feet in time to counter the incoming blow from the ironshod club he produced from behind him.

My blade drew a shower of sparks from his magically charged weapon. I didn’t fear him. My sword had power, too.

I pushed aside the club, causing it to thump into the ground beside me. Then I recovered with a riposte and lunge at his midsection.

Somehow, he twisted to the side, and my sword met thin air, though I ripped through his black leather cloak as he whirled away from my attack.

“You are a challenge.” His tongue flicked out as if he were a snake tasting the air. He cocked his head to the side and chuckled. “No, you’re not the one I seek. Your magic doesn’t have the taste, the wild energy of the one I have sensed in the distance. Your ruse did not work.” He raised his hand in a gesture of runic traveling. “I will not be sidetracked.”

Realizing he’d discovered my lie, I drew in all my power and funneled it into a single thrust at his back. I was already overextended, but I didn’t have a choice. I couldn’t let him get away.

My sword glowed, incandescent in the deep, rainy gloom by the seawall. The magic exploded out in a wave of crackling heat that should have seared through his protections. The sword’s tip passed by, striking nothing. There was no one there. I swung around searching for him, but he was gone, his runic spell taking him somewhere else.

I collapsed onto the sidewalk, gasping for breath. I’d spent physical power as well as my remaining mana stores in that attack. And it was all for nothing. The rain pelted down harder as I rolled onto my back. It didn’t matter. My raincoat was a tattered wreck of ash and singed fabric across my shoulders. Not enough remained of it to shield me from even a thin drizzle, let alone the North Sea’s storm-driven rain, now pressing in on the seaside town of Stonehaven.

I didn’t know how long I lay there on the concrete, soaking up the water through every inch of my clothing all the way to my skin. A shiver passed through me. *That’s enough, Rose. Get ahold of yourself.*

A dog barked in the distance, near the buildings along the strand of beach skirting the town’s old harbor. I had to get moving. Unlike my adversary, I couldn’t snap up a rune of traveling and disappear. If I wanted to get back to protect those I loved, I had to catch an early flight out of Aberdeen, get to London, and fly back to the United States.

I didn’t think the warlock—or whatever he was—could make the trip all the way across the Atlantic with a simple rune spell. There was still a chance I could catch up with him and make it home before he arrived to track down Sadie. I had to get her away from home for a little while until her magic dissipated some.

Puberty was hard enough without having to wrestle with wild Fae magic and everything that came with it at the same time. Thirteen-year-old Sadie had a lot to learn about controlling her burgeoning powers as well as reining in her headstrong pre-teen emotions. It would be best to deal with that away from home.

I sat up, ignoring the growing force of the wind and rain on my face. I leaned to the side, and my hand passed across something thin and round on the concrete beneath me. Holding the disc up, I peered at it in the deepening gloom. The wooden talisman coin was ringed in black iron, a black and red runic design carved on either side. I didn’t recognize the runes or the intricate way they interlocked inside the pattern. My adversary had dropped it when he escaped.

I slipped it into my pocket for later investigation and pulled out my phone. I looked up the contact I needed and tapped the icon to place the call.

The phone rang twice before they picked up on the other end.

“Mistress Rose,” Taren said. “I didn’t expect to hear from you so soon after your arrival in Scotland. Is there a problem with the accommodations I arranged for you?”

“No, Taren, the suite at the hotel is fine.” My dig-master had traveled the world with me on my many archeological adventures over the years. I often used him to make travel arrangements for me. “I’ve completed my business here earlier than expected and need to push up my flight arrangements to go home.”

“Oh, my. It’s late in the evening, but let me pull up the British Airways site and see what I can do.”

“Thank you. I’m headed back to the hotel to pack up now. Get me something leaving first thing in the morning if you can. I don’t care if I have to sit in the center seat. Speed is of the essence, not comfort.”

“Is everything all right, Mistress? If there’s something I can help with, you only have to ask.”

“No, I just need to get home. Text me the flight details once you’ve arranged everything.” I hung up and suppressed a shiver as a gust of icy wind off the North Sea whipped past me. I was a wet mess and had to get back to my rental car to get warm again. I used up the bit of reserves I had left to keep the dangerous chill at bay. A long shower and some food would go a long way to help me recover. I also needed to inspect the burns on my arm, though my Fae charm necklace’s fire protections had staved off the worst of that initial attack when the raincoat had failed.

There wasn’t much open all night in this part of the country, but I was sure I could find something on my way back to Aberdeen. If not, I had some energy bars back in my suite. They would do well enough in a pinch. I could always grab something at the airport in the morning.

📖 Loved Chapter 1? Keep going — get Summer Break Fae on Jamie Davis’s site:

jamiedavisbooks.com/books/summer-break-fae/