Rhapsodic (the Bargainer, #1)

The first installment in The Bargainer series is set in a world where supernatural beings, including sirens, fairies, and werewolves, live alongside ordinary humans. The story alternates between past and present, tracing the relationship between Callypso "Callie" Lillis, a teenage siren who can compel people with her voice, and Desmond "Des" Flynn, a fae king who moonlights as the Bargainer, a notorious dealer in secrets and favors.

The novel opens with a prologue set eight years before the main story. Fifteen-year-old Callie stands in her kitchen, drenched in her stepfather's blood. Hugh Anders, a wealthy and powerful seer, sexually abused Callie for years, and she has killed him with a broken bottle. Rather than call the police, Callie summons the Bargainer using a business card. He materializes as a strikingly handsome man with white-blond hair and silver eyes. Though he normally refuses to deal with minors, he agrees to dispose of the body, erase the crime scene, and enroll her at Peel Academy, an elite supernatural boarding school on the Isle of Man, charging her nothing.

In the present day, Callie is in her mid-twenties and co-owns West Coast Investigations, a private investigation firm, with her best friend, Temperance "Temper" Darling. Callie uses her siren glamour, the illegal ability to compel anyone through her voice, to extract confessions from criminals who prey on the vulnerable. She is dating Eli, a werewolf bounty hunter who works for the Politia, the supernatural police force, though the relationship feels stifling.

One evening, Callie returns home to find Des lounging on her bed. Seven years have passed since he abruptly left her life. He draws attention to the bracelet of 322 onyx beads covering her left forearm, each bead representing a magical IOU for a favor she purchased from him at Peel Academy. He initiates a game of truth or dare as a framework for repayment, and his first dare is a kiss. A single bead vanishes.

Through flashbacks, the novel reveals how Callie's debt grew and her bond with Des deepened. After his initial rescue, his concealment magic began to fail, and a Politia inspector started investigating Hugh Anders's death. Callie summoned Des again, incurring her first bead of debt. She continued buying favors not for practical needs but for companionship; lonely at school, Des became her only friend. Their evenings watching movies, playing poker, and sharing pastries grew into a deep bond. Des eventually revealed that he is the King of the Night, ruler of one of the most powerful kingdoms in the Otherworld, the realm of the fae. When one of Callie's instructors sexually assaulted her, Des held her while she cried and later brutalized the man, who resurfaced in another country with most of his bones broken.

In the present, Des's return forces Callie to confront her unresolved feelings. She breaks up with Eli, and Des begins collecting debts, extracting personal truths and imposing sobriety on her because he insists she learn to cope without drinking.

Des also reveals the real reason he has returned. Male fae warriors have been disappearing across the Otherworld, and only the women come back, sealed in glass coffins in a state between life and death, each clutching a newborn child. Des's own compulsion magic gives his subjects the option to die rather than obey, and they are choosing death. He needs Callie's glamour, which permits no refusal, to interrogate witnesses. Callie agrees, and Des takes her through a portal to his floating capital city, Somnia.

There, Callie interviews Gaelia, a terrified human nursemaid caring for the children born to the sleeping warriors. Gaelia reveals that the children are listless except when they feed on their caretakers' blood and prophesy, and that their father is a figure called the Thief of Souls. When Callie meets the children, they respond to her singing but deliver chilling warnings. They grab her arms and trigger a prophetic vision of caged women, a throne, and a man with antlers who calls her a "pretty, pretty bird."

Back on earth, Eli arrives during the Sacred Seven, the week surrounding the full moon when werewolves cannot control their transformation, and declares Callie his mate. She glamours him to stop his advances, and a near-deadly confrontation with Des follows. Callie chooses to leave with Des, who flies her to his Catalina Island home. The next morning, she wakes to find her mattress shredded and hundreds of feathers arranged in the shape of wings around her bed, evidence that something entered her room while she slept. Des demands she move in permanently.

As Callie and Des grow closer, she discovers a portfolio of his sketches, all portraits of her from years ago. He confesses that the seven years apart were a nightmare. Meanwhile, Temper informs Callie that male fairies only display their wings around their betrotheds. Callie confronts Des, but he corrects her: A fairy shows his wings not to his betrothed but to his soul mate. Des confesses that he has loved her since she first summoned him and that she is his soul mate.

A final flashback reveals the night everything changed. Des took Callie to her school's May Day Ball, and afterward she kissed him. His wings appeared for the first time, proof his feelings had overwhelmed his restraint. He tried to leave, but in desperation Callie spoke an ancient binding verse, wishing for him to be hers forever. Des granted the wish, but his magic demanded payment: seven years of forced separation during which his own power blocked every attempt he made to reach her.

Des recites the Night Kingdom's sacred vow, and Callie tells him she never stopped loving him. They consummate their relationship.

The next morning, a stranger appears in Des's backyard. He is the mysterious client who had been contacting West Coast Investigations. He silences Callie's voice with magic and abducts her. She wakes in an underground prison filled with cells containing captive women. Her captor is Karnon, King of Fauna, who is revealed to be the Thief of Souls. Karnon plans to impregnate Callie, seal her in a glass coffin, and deliver her to Des as leverage. He forces dark magic into her, attempting the process that paralyzes fae women, but Callie's human physiology resists it.

Over days of captivity, Callie befriends Aetherial, a warrior from the Kingdom of Day, who confirms that Karnon rapes the captive women. During one visit, Karnon unleashes his full power into Callie's back. Her body is forcibly transformed: Wings erupt from her spine, scales appear along her forearms, and her fingernails sharpen into claws.

Des blasts open the throne room doors. He absorbs every magical strike Karnon throws without flinching. When Karnon seizes Callie as a hostage, Des unleashes his full power in an explosion of darkness that vaporizes the Fauna King.

Des carries the broken Callie back to his palace. She is horrified by her transformation, but Des reminds her they are not victims but someone's nightmare. Callie sees in a mirror that her face is unchanged and asks Des to teach her to be dangerous again. Karnon's death has not broken the spell on the sleeping warriors; thousands remain in glass coffins, and the male warriors are still missing. Callie vows to remain at Des's side "till darkness dies," echoing the Night Kingdom's most sacred oath.

In the epilogue, Callie dreams of darkness and children's laughter. An unseen presence whispers that the danger is far from over.