Wild Magic

And darn it, that's not available until September 2010! Ann Macela hooked me on this series with her magical premise and soul mate imperative with her first book. I've been a fan ever since and she just keeps ramping up the magic and the excitement and wraps it all around a moving love story and present day, not fantastical situations. How cool is that? Irenee Sabel is a good witch with high level powers and a Defender. She encounters a DEA agent while she's on a mission to retrieve an evil item from a rogue warlock. Jim's trying to gather information on the warlock's illegal activities. It's this opening situation that pushes the readers into learning more about Jim as he and Irenee discover he's got "wild talent." Together Irenee and Jim learn to blend their magic talents along with their hearts to battle an evil unlike another. This is a book you can't put down.

In Chicago, Irenee Sabel works as an event planner, but is also a witch who enforces the codes of magic usage especially those evil artifacts outlawed. She is assigned to destroy the cataclysm stone; her first solo major act. Irenee attends a party thrown by an alleged ancient warlock Alton Finster whose safe supposedly contains an evil relic. She sneaks away from the gala using an invisibility spell to conceal her movement in order to break into the safe. However, she is caught by Department of Homeland Security Agent Jim Tylan, who is legally searching for financial records to attack Finster, the man he blames for his sister's death. Somehow he sees her in spite of her cloaking. As they team up, she believes he has some magic skills and is her soul mate, but first they must make the world safe from a malevolent mage. The latest Defends & Swords Magic romantic urban fantasy (see YOUR MAGIC OR MINE?) is an engaging tale as Irenee is as stunned as Jim is when he sees the "glowing" handbag and the invisible sorceress holding it. Filled with magical and romantic mayhem, fans of Ann Macela's fun series will enjoy the latest entry as Chicago's historical Gold Coast is the focus of WILD MAGIC. Harriet Klausner

Wild Magic is part of Ann Macela's Magic series which I didn't know when I first read it. In it, the world is similar to our own except there are people who regularly practice magic which the general populace is unaware of. There are people who are part of the magical community who are called Defenders and Swords, two different groups, and it is their job to protect the magical community and enforce its rules. Through touch, a Defender can give their magic powers to the Swords who are the elite magic police who must confiscate and destroy magic items that have been used for evil magic purposes. Basically the Defenders are the police detectives for the witches with the Swords being the most powerful of the police witches. Wild Magic starts out with Irenee Sabel who is a Sword on an undercover job. Irenee is at the opulent party of wealthy suspect Alton Finster who is believed to be using an evil magic object for evil and illegal purposes. Irenee has cast a `don't-notice-me' spell on herself so she can sneak into Finster's office safe to remove the evil magic object so that it can be destroyed. While Irenee is in Finster's office, a man, Jim Tylan comes in looking for Finster's secret financial records. Jim Tylan is from the Department of Justice and Homeland Security who has been looking at Alton Finster and his cousin, Bruce Ubell for various crimes. They don't know that Finster and Ubell are using magic to cover their crimes from regular law enforcement agencies. In Finster's office, Jim Tylan is surprised to see Irenee especially because she appears to be glowing as does her tote. A rug and hidden safe on the floor also seems to be glowing. Irenee is surprised that Jim can see her through her `don't-notice-me' spell and can see the safe that is hidden by magic also. Irenee and Jim realize that they are looking for the same thing, the hidden safe, and they each want something from inside it; the evil magic object and hidden financial records on computer flash drives so they cooperate and then part ways. Irenee takes the evil magic object to the Defenders and Swords headquarters where she and the other Defenders and Swords destroy it. It takes a lot of power to destroy the evil magic object which turns out to be just a piece of a larger evil magic object, the Cataclysm Stone. When the evil magic object is destroyed, Alton Finster falls into a coma because he is so connected to the evil magic which leaves the evil Bruce Ubell in charge of the Finster financial empire. Jim Tylan investigates the mysterious glowing woman and finds Irenee. The two are attracted to each other from the beginning but there are problems as Irenee explains about magic to Jim who has frequent "hunches" that help him with his job. He has a hard time believing in magic spells especially since he can see through any spell that Irenee casts. Which leads everyone (the Defenders and Swords) to find out that Jim is a "wild talent" which means that he is o