Split Ends & Soul Debts

In the Realm of Veridian Spite, magic costs an arm and a leg. Usually literally. Ava Heartstring is twenty-two years old, chronically broke, and currently serving a life sentence as the host to a parasitic entity that lives on her head. To the naked eye, it looks like waist-length, vibrant red hair. To Ava, it is "Red"—a sentient, prehensile, and verbally abusive nightmare with a personality disorder and a taste for violence. Red doesn’t just have a mind of its own; it has a chaotic agenda, sticky fingers, and a bad habit of strangling Ava’s dates if they try to pay the check. Ava’s ambitions are low: keep her job at The Bitter End potion shop, avoid the gaze of the tyrannical High Coven, and make the monthly interest payments on her parents’ "Soul-Storage" fees. If she misses a payment, the Bank incinerates her parents' frozen bodies. It’s a simple, miserable existence fueled by caffeine and fear. But when Red decides to pickpocket a High Inquisitor during a routine inspection, Ava’s anonymity is shattered. Thrust into the crosshairs of the Coven, Ava discovers that the "accident" that turned her hair into a monster wasn’t an accident at all. The realm is dying, the magic is rotting, and the High Crones are hunting for the Singularity—a witch with enough raw power to reboot the universe or burn it to ash. Ava thinks she’s just a glitch in the system. Red knows better. Now, on the run with a bounty on her head and a voice in her ear (well, a knot in her hair), Ava has to make a choice: continue paying the world’s unfair tax, or let Red off the leash and show the Coven exactly what a bad hair day looks like. She isn't the victim of the curse. She is the curse..