The Joining: Ainsworth Chronicles Book One

Detective Carol Ainsworth is on secondment from Vancouver as Manager of the Fairmont Empress Hotel, Victoria. Two Italian families are booked in for a wedding. Only Canadian intelligence is pointing to the real reason; they are there to form a new west-coast drug cartel using Victoria as a conduit to the USA. Jake, is really an FBI agent, as Carol discovers. Carol's nephew goes missing, and she discovers that other young boys are being abducted. Enter elderly American psychic, Agnes. Much to Carol's chagrin, this bizarre lady claims she can read minds and proves it. One of the mafia bosses is found hanged in his room, the evidence points to the perpetrator being a ghost. Agnes begins to fill Carol in on the vast number of ghostly goings-on in Victoria. Agnes, is not in Victoria purely by chance, she has been hired to solve the decades-old abduction of a young boy. Carol's detective instincts lead her to the discovery of an old curse involving Satanists and First Nations' peoples, in the sewers of Victoria, where the "stoners" hang out, ancient trapped spirits are becoming restless and angry. Only something goes awry and one of the trapped energy beings begins to merge with human DNA; a new being is formed. Carol's undercover operation goes into overload when one of the mobsters, a handsome Italian, begins falling for her.