Mist Warden Series: The story so far...

(SPOILERS! To the end of book : )

All Jessica wanted from her first year of high school was to hang out with her friends Beth and Kathy, somehow stay close to her boyfriend who moved to the city, and try not make too many waves.

Then her classmate Chris died.

Suicide, they said, but her all-too vivid dreams suggested otherwise—that there was an evil stalking her small town.

And not just evil. A whole lot of weirdness came along for the ride: A girl turning into a wolf, strange apparitions in the school bathroom, another student somehow managing to burn her hands in the library without a fire source, and for some reason Jessica was getting visions of it all piped into her head before they happened.

Trying to ignore the visions and desperately clinging to her normal life didn't work well. She gained a reputation for being weird. Kathy and Beth turned away from her, unwilling to let their own high school plans be disrupted by her struggles.

Her first attempt to get rid of the monster that killed Chris failed spectacularly, seemingly imposing a kaleidoscope of different places over her own reality. Thankfully it was brief, confined to the school grounds, and mostly intangible. However, the experience deeply shook her tenuous confidence in her abilities.

Encouraged by new allies Michiru and Drew, Jessica made plans to try again. They knew now that the monster had taken control of another classmate, Bill. They had to get it out of him and somehow destroy it.

Pushed into action by the most horrific vision yet, Jessica and Michiru steal a magic relic from a church, take Jessica's parent's car, and kidnap Bill from a house party. Back at Jessica's house they subject him to the world's clumsiest exorcism. It was messy on many levels, but it got the monster out of him…and into Jessica!

Saved by the intervention of the Gatekeeper—a strange and probably friendly intelligence that offered to teach Jessica how to control the new magic flooding her town—Jessica and Michiru kill the monster and free Bill.

Jessica pays the price for the shortcuts she took in pursuit of the monster: A massive fight with her boyfriend, major trouble with her parents, and a brush with the cops. One of whom happens to be Beth's dad, so she knows it will be whispered all over school.

Despite the cost, she feels a fierce pride in saving Bill and defeating the monster. None of it will bring back Chris, or make Beth and Kathy be the people she thought they were, but it's enough for her to know she made a difference, and found people like Drew and Michiru who want the same thing.

And the story continues in Curse Bound