The DuPage Parish Mysteries

Elien Martel is a survivor, but surviving, he’s beginning to discover, isn’t the same thing as living. In the house he shares with his much older boyfriend, Elien spends his days trying to stay as far away from living as possible. Living, he has learned, means that sooner or later you’ll get hurt. When a member of Elien’s support group dies under strange circumstances, though, Elien finds himself in a web of bizarre coincidences. The responding officer turns out to be another member of Elien’s support group - who has made no effort to hide his dislike of Elien.

When a woman is brutally murdered and an eyewitness claims to have seen the killer transform into a mysterious light, Eli and Dag are forced to set aside their own problems and face a difficult truth: There is another monster out there. Worse, there doesn’t seem to be anybody else who can stop it from killing again. But not all monsters are the same, as Eli and Dag discover. And the most dangerous monster might be the one who can give you what you’ve always wanted.

A year after Eli and Dag survived their second encounter with a monster, things are finally going well. Really well—as far as Eli is concerned, anyway. He’s lost weight. His energy is up. His hair is on point. There are the little things, like the occasional flare-ups of temper and the urge to murder the kids down the street, but that’s just part of living by teenagers. Right?