Justine (Tina) Clancy is just an ordinary law student with a faulty arrest record, a part-time job in Baltimore’s radioactive Zone, and a family secret so bizarre even she doesn’t believe it. That is, until in a fit of fury she damns her boyfriend to hell—and it’s exactly where he ends up.

     Much to her surprise, Tina is apparently one of Saturn’s daughters, with the power to wield vigilante justice. But poor Max didn’t deserve to go up in flames, even if he did almost run her over with her own car. Tina’s convinced someone cut the brakes—and now a relentless nemesis is stalking her through the Zone’s back alleys, where buildings glow, statues move, and chemical waste exposure comes with interesting consequences. Tina’s usually a loner, but now she needs a posse like no other: a shape-shifting kitten, an invisible thief, a biker gang, a snake-charming private detective, a well-meaning cop, and her sleazy, sexy boss. But in between freeing Max from hell, saving her own neck, and solving a mystery that threatens the Zone and her newfound friends, how is she ever going to study for finals?<

1

Over the door, the tin scales of Lady Justice dipped ominously to the wrong side as Andre Legrande strolled into Bill’s Biker Bar and Grill. The boss had been up to no good again, and our miniature Lady disapproved.

Personally, I thought the dipping scale meant the little statue knew Andre was a fraud, but I was keeping my head down and my mouth shut these days. Rather than feed my boss’s arrogance by admiring his assets, I propped my corrective boots on the stool rung and leaned over my tally sheet, pushing my cheap, black-framed reading glasses up my nose and letting my overlong bangs hide my face.

The weird anomalies—like moving statues—that had begun appearing in the Zone after the first chemical spill ten years ago now seemed an everyday part of my life. I’d taken a job in this South Baltimore neighborhood two years back when no respectable place would hire me. That’s pretty much the story of everyone in the Zone.

Society’s flotsam and jetsam gathered in what would be the world’s largest Superfund site if the authorities had the guts or the funds to rope off more than just ground zero. But all they did was fence off a strip along the harbor around the contaminated Acme plant where they used to make nerve gas. After a series of spills and that final flash fire, the harbor was shut down for half a mile on either side of the plant. Fishermen really didn’t appreciate glowing attack fish.

The EPA ignored the homes and businesses farther inland, because, let’s face it, we’re a slum. As long as no one reported rising cancer rates in the area surrounding the original spill, the government considered their work done. Officialdom had moved on.

The contamination, or whatever in hell was left behind, was moving as well—unless you wanted to believe inanimate objects developed weird lives of their own. If anyone noticed that sometimes the gargoyles took days off from their perches on buildings, they shrugged it off as a gimmick meant to attract more lowlifes to the bars littering the area.

Observing the statue’s dip from the reflection in the mirror behind the bar, Andre smirked. Or maybe gazing at his own handsome image produced that smug smile. Legrande, after all, means “the large one,” and I’d figured long ago that he’d made up the name to match his ego, if not his size. Not particularly tall but elegantly lean, he wore fitted silk shirts that emphasized his sleek muscles. Except silk belonged onstage with the Chippendale dancing boys, not in this industrial blue-collar backwater.

Andre had a reputation for toughness, though I’d never really seen it in action. Still, he’d lived here all his life, and the weak don’t survive long in the Zone. Harmless yuppies seldom found their way into an area marked with DANGER: ENVIRONMENTAL HAZARD signs.

I have a weakness for old cowboy movies where the bullies always get what they deserve. I thought of Andre in the part Jim Garner plays in Support Your Local Sheriff. He’d just stand there and eat his beans while the fistfight flowed around him—until a punch came his way, and then I suspected Andre might turn lethal. I didn’t want to be around to find out.

“Got my reports yet, Miss Clancy?” Andre asked, making himself at home behind the bar and pouring tonic over ice. He disliked being ignored, even by a nonentity like I tried to be. He was deliberately irritating me by not calling me Tina as everyone else did. It could have been worse. He could have called me Tiny, and I’d Read Less