When the kindly old ferryman to the underworld injures his ankle, primordial gods come together to help guide the newly departed to their final journey. To make the task more interesting to the deathless, a quaint little shop hawking ephemera becomes the vehicle through which breadcrumbs to the underworld are scattered.

All this is a temporary situation, meant to end when the broken ankle is healed. It sounds easy and simple enough.

Or so it seems. The Nightshade family, headed by Barbara Nightshade, the most feared matriarch of an eternal bloodline, are dragged into the twenty-first century from their comfortable existence in Chaos.

And it's through this shop and their day-to-day dealings with mortals that the children-now young adults-learn something new about themselves. Time moves differently in Chaos, and maturity drags for primordial gods.

Now that Viktor and his twin, Narcisse, have turned twenty in immortal years, their physical forms scramble to catch up. Hormones are roused, hearts learn to feel, and minds struggle against prejudices learned through the centuries, and, boy, is it a pain.

It's a sore trial especially for Viktor when he crosses paths with a sweet and shy potter and finds himself behaving quite out of character. There's something else at work here, however.

Something meant to guide him down a road he refuses to travel-a road where love comes with a price tag too dear even for Death to pay. True, there are perks to being immortal, but no one outruns Fate.

. .