Toxicity

by Grace Bridges

You’ve got magic, but the spring water that bestows it is locked away.

In someone’s backyard. At an expensive spa. Or miles out of town and you don’t have a car. There are ways to fix that…

Nancy Armstrong reckons those Earthcore folks are just do-gooders whose supernatural springs got handed to them on a silver platter. She’ll do whatever it takes to top up her magic, even if it gets her little sister Colette into trouble.

Dazza Leonard wants to join the Earthcore, but Nancy still wields a terrible leverage over him. And now there are others who fall into her tangled a shady businessman and his reluctant son, a pair of prankster twins, a construction worker and an unhinged activist.

Nancy doesn’t care who gets dragged into her schemes, as long as their powers are useful. But some of the springs are strangely toxic, and the dangers aren’t what anybody imagined.

292 pages, Kindle Edition

Published March 31, 2024

About the author

Grace Bridges is a geyser hunter, cat herder, editor and translator, and Kiwi. A former longtime president of writers' organisation SpecFicNZ and Chair of GeyserCon, New Zealand's 40th national science fiction and fantasy convention held in Rotorua in 2019, she is often found poking around geothermal sites or under a pile of rescued kittens. She is a two-time winner of the Sir Julius Vogel Award from the Science Fiction and Fantasy Association of New Zealand, a founding member of Realm Makers, an editor and mentor for Young NZ Writers, and has edited dozens of published books including many anthology projects. Her own published books include Irish cyberpunk, a shared-world space opera project, and the Earthcore urban fantasy series based in New Zealand. More information and free stories at www.gracebridges.kiwi.