When the Beast Hungers

The trouble begins with a lost earring ... Gray Becq expects his girlfriend to meet him when he steps off the bus, ready to begin his third year at the School for the Magically Gifted. She is not waiting for him, and instead he encounters some of those responsible for his imprisonment in the Dire Realms the previous school year and nearly gets into a fight with one of them. That inauspicious beginning plunges him back into a spiral of bitterness and depression. When he finally finds his girlfriend, her excuse for not meeting him is that she had to help her distraught roommate search for a missing earring. That excuse arouses his anger. How could she have let something so trivial keep her from meeting him as she'd promised? The lost earring becomes the first of a series of lost or stolen items, but all except the earring are objects that students use to enhance their magical powers. The loss of an earring must be just a coincidence. Along with the thefts come murderous attacks on students. Gray is quick to blame the crimes on his former enemies until Headmistress warns him that he may have brought a beastly demon back from the Dire Realms. He-or the demon within him-may have committed the horrors. Gray doesn't want to accept that possibility, but he suffers mysterious memory lapses and after one such lapse finds blood on his hands. He begins to doubt himself. He must learn the truth, but to do so, he will have to walk lonely and tortuous paths. Do you dare to walk those paths with him in this tale of mystery and murder? Follow Gray to learn what he must do to conquer the demons of anger and despair-the hungry beasts within.