THE SECRET RULE OF MAGIC

She was supposed to have died in a basket.

Morgan Smith works the last cash lane on a Philadelphia toll plaza, eyes down, drawing lines on the backs of receipts with a four-color pen. She has no family, a file an inch thick, and a trick for keeping the colors behind her eyes from getting out. Then a man in pajamas pulls up to her window with a banana in his hand and tells her she has a twin.

Her sister is Guinevere Blackwood, heir to an Order that has kept the river of magic dammed for a thousand years, and that killed every chaos-born twin at birth, by law, until a marshal named Peter Gilliad lied and hid one in a foster home. Now Guinevere is dying in a desert, the President's plane is in the sea, and everyone who wants the war to end wants the thing under Morgan's ribs to end it with.

Morgan has had a lifetime of people wanting the thing and not her. She would like, once, to be asked.

A novel of two sisters, one law, and the pen that was left on a table.

A fantasy novel for older teens and adults. It contains violence and death.