Kim Harrison has taken the step of bringing the difficult task of fantasy and real life together quite well in her series of Books of the Hollows. In ‘For a Few Demons More’ she takes the reader further in the world of Rachel Morgan and the wonderful mix of magic, mystery and every day problems like driving on a suspended license and without getting caught and the lure of good gourmet coffee. Our heroine, Rachel Morgan a licensed bounty hunter and witch, has to deal with not only the everyday rules and regulations that every non-magical person has to follow but also the additional laws set up for Inderlanders. Rachel lives in an abandoned church with her room mate and business partner, Ivy, a beautiful living vampire, Jenks her other partner, a pixie who lives in the garden with his wife and 20 odd children and various pets. Part of the old church is sanctified and part of it isn’t and that leads us right into the first problem - how does a demon get into the church - unsummoned and take over her body. Newt, the insane demon from the ever-after, had decided to appear in Rachel’s church and presented her with a most terrifying problem - how does one get rid of a demon that wouldn’t leave until it has found what it was searching for but also couldn’t remember what the item was. Luckily, Rachel’s friend, Ceri an elven princess who she rescued from the clutches of another demon in the ever-after in a previous story, shows up and manages to save not only Rachel’s home from total destruction by the demon Newt, but also Rachel. Ceri was trained in demon magic while a captive familiar of another demon, Al, for around 1000 years. Her knowledge and skill, and Rachel’s, manage to get Newt’s familiar, Minias, to the church in time to retrieve the insane demon and take her back safely to the ever-after. Minias now owes Rachel a favor and comes back later to settle the arrangements for repayment. Before Rachel can get back to sleep another friend, Glenn, from the Federal Inderland Bureau, comes knocking on her door - coffee in hand and asks her to help him with a most unusual matter. Someone has been killing Were’s in the greater Cincinnati area and making it look like suicide. Rachel and Jenks get on the case and, after a nasty run-in with an old political enemy from her late employer, the Inderland Security, they help prove that the other five Were bodies in the morgue were also murdered. Now Rachel isn’t just a bounty hunter and witch but also the Alpha female of her friend David’s Were pack.
Again, political issues are at the root of this problem and they both try to work their way around and through them. At least working for the FIB helps Rachel to keep the bills paid and with the added costs of getting her church resanctified, after Newt’s visit defiled it, she agrees to take on a security assignment for a very powerful person that she really doesn’t like, Trent Kalamack. He’s a very important person (an elf hiding as a human) in Cincinnati and one of the wealthiest and best connected who Rachel can’t stand. He’s devious and operates above the law with blatant disregard that only the truly wealthy can afford to do. So now, Rachel has to figure out who is killing the Were’s, why are they made to look like suicide, what has it got to do with the ancient Were artifact that she has been hiding from the Were community - and everyone else, and how to keep demons from strolling into her life every time she turns around. She also has to keep her boyfriend, Kisten another living vampire, from getting into too much trouble for helping her out with the various aspects of these many issues. His employer, Piscary, is a vampire that she helped to send to prison some time back. Piscary would love to see her dead after several long and endless rounds of torture first. Just when she thinks that things couldn’t getany worse, it seems that Piscary manages to get let out of jail by helping to get rid of the demon, Al, that was summoned by someone else just to ruin her reputation and trash the city. Piscary, who thinks he has the upper hand, plays right into Al’s hands and things get very sticky and uncontrollable very fast. These combined problems keep the story moving right along and Kim Harrison shows great talent in wrapping all of the loose ends together at the end. Even the heartaches and tears fall into the right places and make the story and the characters come alive.