This young adult fantasy debut about love, found family, and healing is βa fantastical ode to the Golden Cityβs postpunk era,β told through the eyes of a Mexican-American girl (Entertainment Weekly).
βComplex and beautiful, blending folklore, San Franciscan history, the music scene, vampires, magic . . . hard to put down.β βSchool Library Journal
Seventeen-year-old Xochi is alone in San Francisco, running from her painful past: the mother who abandoned her, the man who betrayed her. Then one day, she meets Pallas, a precocious twelve-year-old who lives with her rockstar family in one of the cityβs storybook Victorians. Xochi accepts a position as Pallasβs live-in governess and quickly finds her place in the girlβs tight-knit household, which operates on a free-love philosophy and easy warmth despite the bandβs growing fame.
But on the night of the Vernal Equinox, as a concert afterparty rages in the house below, Xochi and Pallas perform a riot-grrrl ritual in good fun, accidentally summoning a pair of ancient beings bound to avenge the wrongs of Xochiβs past. She would do anything to preserve her new life, but with the creatures determined to exact vengeance on those whoβve hurt her, no one is safeβnot the family Xochiβs chosen, nor the one she left behind.