That zombie, my first one, turned out to be the best friend I’ve ever had. My father raised him that night because I needed protection. There was a price on my head and I wasn’t even four years old. The only child of Charlotte and Desmond McGee was worth a lot in the Shadow world. The bounty hunter who brought me in could be paid in magic or money, seller’s choice.

In those days, the Shadow world was our name for the real world – the ones with bankers and lawyers and movie stars but if you were paying attention, that world included witches, vamps and zombies etc… To those bankers and lawyers and movie stars, the supernatural was the stuff of fiction – entertaining, but not real and anyone who believed it, well they were just nuts.

Liam the zombie had been my dad’s bodyguard before he was killed putting himself between dad and a deadly blast of magic. That was the night they found out about the price on my head.

Desperate to protect me, Dad raised Liam immediately and put him back to work.