In the ruins outside Ashmere, magic is a memory and a crime ? until Elara pulls a corroded, humming device out of the dirt and wakes something that hasn't stirred in twenty years.
She's spent her whole life scavenging the wreckage of the world before the Sundering, the catastrophe that turned every magic-user in the Ministry's territory into a hunted thing. She never expected to become one of them. She never expected the device to answer to her blood specifically, or for a man who already seems to know her name to come looking for it before she's even understood what it does.
Elara falls in with the Exiles, a scattered resistance who believe magic and technology were never the real threat ? only the people who weaponized them. Together they follow the truth about Project Nexus north through dead cities and forests thick with residual power, chasing fragments of a family she doesn't remember and a cover-up that never really ended.
But the Ministry isn't finished hunting, and the device isn't finished showing her what it cost to bury the truth the first time. Some secrets don't stay buried. Some debts come due generations late ? and Elara is about to find out exactly what she's inherited.
Echoes in the Forest is a story about the weight of power, the cost of memory, and the family you choose when the one you were born into has already been erased.
Autorentext
Lee Emerick writes horror-comedy for people who like their nightmares served with a side of laughter, and their laughter served with a side of mild dread.
Lee has spent years researching terrifying places, including the DMV, the dentist, the gym, the timeshare, the fertility clinic and the wedding venue. Most of the research was done firsthand, which explains a lot.
Lee's books contain cursed appliances, waitresses who have been dead since 1974, and at least one cul-de-sac that has no business being that friendly. No animals were harmed, but several HOA meetings were.
When not writing, Lee can be found avoiding all-night diners, refusing to renew anything in person, and checking the tooth roots of strangers for signs of ancient entities.
Lee lives somewhere quiet, and it is definitely fine. Please don't ask about the basement.
Find more of Lee's books on Draft2Digital, and remember: if a book seems to be reading you back, that's a plot device. Probably.
info@leeemerick.co.uk