Shattered World

Viv just wants work-any work. Well, not quite any work. But she's desperate enough to accept a job offer as personal assistant to Jasper Renner-the rich and mysterious owner of the Renner Tea House-even though odd things happen whenever he's around. She expects to deal with rich, entitled Melbournians and a full business schedule. Instead, Viv finds herself following Jasper into a strange new world where a murderous madman has been incarcerated in a secret floor at the old Kew Asylum that may or may not exist in the human world as she knows it. Reality is just as worryingly soft at the old tea house itself, which hides a few too many not-quite-human secrets. In one of the downstairs rooms, there's a little girl who has been a little girl for a suspiciously long time; in the uppermost floor, there are a few windows that show a view that doesn't exist in Melbourne. And then there are the giant cephalopod tentacles that appear from nowhere and disappear again, seemingly at will . . . Now Viv isn't sure if she's going mad, or if the world itself has gone mad and the lunatic in Kew Asylum is the only sane person she knows.

The world isn't the same as it was yesterday. In fact, Viv is no longer sure that she is the same as she was yesterday. She can do something she never knew was possible-and Luca tried to kill her, just like Jasper said he would if she let him get too close. At the teahouse, it's business as usual, however: tentacles in the top floor, an invasion of not-quite-real-but-nevertheless-terrifying spiders . . . and a new murderer to catch, of course. Someone is trying to make sure a Greek-Australian couple never makes it to the altar, and it's not just perfume they're sneaking into the bride's room. But Luca isn't talking to Viv; not since she stopped him from escaping. That shouldn't be surprising-and the last thing Viv should be doing is trying to talk to him more than she has to-but there's another murderer on the loose, and they're going to need Luca's help to catch him. Life was already hard, but now Viv has to somehow stop the wilder side of that life from spilling over into her normal life. Her human life. But if the two halves begin to split apart, which should she try to hold onto?