INTERVIEW: Cheat the Grave by Vicki Pettersson

When she was sixteen, Joanna Archer was brutally assaulted and left to die in the Nevada desert.
By rights, she should be dead.

Now a photographer by day, she prowls a different Las Vegas after sunset—a grim, secret Sin City where Light battles Shadow—seeking answers to whom or what she really is…and revenge for the horrors she was forced to endure.

But the nightmare is just beginning—for the demons are hunting Joanna, and the powerful Shadows want her for their own… In THE SCENT OF SHADOWS.”

Joanna has reluctantly accepted the roles destiny assigned her: Avenger…Savior…Destroyer…

She never asked for the mantle that’s been thrust upon her, but she will not abandon it now that it’s hers. Stalked by an enigmatic doppleganger from a preternatural realm, Joanna can feel the Light failing—which is propelling her toward a terrifying confrontation with the ultimate master of evil, the dark lord of Shadow: her father.

Vegas is all about winning big—or losing everything. To save her friends, her future, her worlds, Joanna Archer will now have to gamble it all by fully embracing the darkness inside her.

Joanna, Agent of Light, has survived a violent initiation into the paranormal world lurking behind the seedy seams of Las Vegas. She’s found a home, friends, and even the chance for a new life and love.

But evil never rests, and to save her beloved city, and herself, Joanna must venture into a new world hidden among the shadows, one where the line between good and evil is barely visible, every agent is a rogue…and each breath could be her last.

Joanna gave up everything when she embraced mortality—abandoning her powers and altering her destiny to save a child…and a city. Now her former allies are her enemies—and her enemies have nothing to fear.

Yet still she is bound to a prophecy that condemns her to roam a nightmare landscape that ordinary humans cannot see and dare not enter. And a beast is on her trail—an insane killer blinded by bloodlust, who’s determined to rip much more from Joanna than merely her now-fragile life. Survival is no longer an option in this dark realm where good and evil have blurred into confusing shades of gray—unless she can gather together an army of onetime foes and destroy everything she once believed in.