Sacrament and Shadow

About this book

In New Orleans, faith has always had a little magic in it. Gerard Gaudet is about to discover just how much.Only weeks from ordination to the Catholic priesthood, Gerard has spent his life preparing for the altar. But when something impossible happens during an experiment with the Church's older rite, his certainty about where miracles end and magic begins starts to unravel, along with everything he has been working toward since childhood.Gerard's awakening does not go unnoticed.Constant House, a secret magical order hidden in a fold of space beside Bayou St. John, has been watching for signs of power like his. So have factions within the Church, and beyond. Some are determined to understand what happened. Others are determined to contain it. And Gerard's former mentor, Monsignor Pierre Arceneaux, knows something Gerard does not: the power awakening in Gerard was suppressed long ago.Drawn into a New Orleans of ceremonial magicians, Vatican secrets, forbidden rites, and powers woven through the city's streets, Gerard must reclaim an inheritance deliberately kept from him-and confront the people who decided what he was allowed to know about himself.But while rival factions struggle over Gerard and the power awakening within him, an older and more dangerous magic is taking shape, one that could turn the Church's own secrets against the city it has guarded for centuries.Sacrament and Shadow is a contemporary urban fantasy where Catholic mysticism and ceremonial occultism collide with Louisiana folk tradition and the living supernatural landscape of New Orleans. At its heart lies an unsettling question: What if the greatest danger isn't the magic the Church condemns, but the magic it has tried to control?