The first book in a wildly entertaining new fantasy series from acclaimed author Josiah Bancroft where a married couple team up to solve magical,and often quite oddmysteries. The HexologistsIz and Warren Wilbyare quite accustomed to helping desperate clients with the bugbears of city life. Aided by hexes and a bag of charmed relicsthe Wilbies have recovered children abducted by chimney-wraithsremoved infestations of barb-nosed incubiand ventured into the Gray Plains of the Unmade to soothe a troubled ghost. Well-acquainted with the weirdthey never shy away from a challenging case. But when they are approached by the royal secretary and told the king pleads to be baked into a cake–going so far as to wedge himself inside a lit oven–the Wilbies soon find themselves embroiled in a mystery that could very well see the nation turned on its head. Their effort to expose a royal secret buried under forty years of lies brings them nose to nose with a violent antiroyalist gangavaricious ghoulsalchemists who draw their power from a hell-like dimensionand a bookish dragon who only occasionally eats people. Armed with a love toughened by adversity and a stick of chalk that can conjure light from the darknesshope from the hopelessIz and Warren Wilby are ready for whatever springs from the alleysgravesand shadows next.