Blackthorn: An Audit

Valerius the Dread has survived sieges, plagues, holy wars, and the fall of empires. He will not survive an audit. Probably.

For five hundred years, the vampire household at 1847 Blackthorn Lane has maintained a comfortable relationship with paperwork — namely, not doing any.

Then a certified raven arrives with seventy-three pages from the Bureau of Eternal Compliance.

Valerius — former warlord, current Tier Two Retention Specialist at a blood-delivery startup whose app has mistaken undeath for a password recovery issue — has twenty-one days to produce five centuries of documentation that does not exist.

His household is not helpful.

Ambrose, the gentle scholar, has been quietly grieving for a hundred and thirty years and filing nothing. Zach still hasn't told his mother what he is. The House itself is sentient, resentful, and considering its options.

And the raven won't leave.

Enter Amelia Harker: paralegal, mortal, entirely unimpressed.

She has notes on all of them. She will not be sharing the notes.

Armed with a tablet, a senior partner who has never lost, and a professional calm that has unsettled creatures far older than these, Amelia begins the defense of a household that has never once been defended — and discovers the audit isn't routine.

Someone very old and very powerful designed it to erase Blackthorn entirely. The mechanism is airtight. It has been in preparation for a long time.

The vampires have secrets.

The Bureau has procedures.

Amelia has a checklist.

God help the Bureau.

A wickedly funny, unexpectedly moving novel about immortality, found family, and the terrible eternal truth that no one — no one — escapes compliance.

For readers who love the bureaucratic absurdity of Terry Pratchett and Good Omens, the dysfunctional immortals of What We Do in the Shadows, and anyone who has ever suspected that eternal life would eventually require filling out a form.