My name is Amelia Gray.
I am the Graveyard Queen, a cemetery restorer who sees ghosts. My father passed down four rules to keep me safe and Iâve broken every last one. A door has opened and evil wants me back.
In order to protect myself, Iâve vowed to return to those rules. But the ghost of a murdered cop needs my help to find his killer. The clues lead me to the dark side of Charlestonâwhere witchcraft, root doctors and black magic still flourishâand back to John Devlin, a haunted police detective I should only love from afar.
Now Iâm faced with a terrible choice: follow the rules or follow my heart.
Praise for THE GRAVEYARD QUEEN SERIES by Amanda Stevens
âThe beginning of Stevensâ Graveyard Queen Series left this reviewer breathless. The author smoothly establishes characters and forms the foundation of future storylines with an edgy and beautiful writing style. Her story is full of twists and turns, with delicious and surprising conclusions. Readers will want to force themselves to slow down and enjoy the book instead of speeding through to the end, and theyâll anxiously await the next installment of this deceptively gritty series.â
âRT Book Reviews, 4 ½ stars
âThe Restorer is by turns creepy and disturbing, mixed with mystery and a bit of romance. Amelia is a strong character who has led a hard andâof necessityâsecret life. She is not close to many people, and her feelings for Devlin disturb her greatly. Although at times unnerving, The Restorer is well written and intriguing, and an excellent beginning to a new series.â
âMisti Pyles, Fort Worth Examiner
âI could rhapsodize for hours about how much I enjoyed The Restorer. Amanda Stevens has woven a web of intricate plot lines that elicit many emotions from her readers. This is a scary, provocative, chilling and totally mesmerizing book. I never wanted it to end and Iâm going to be on pins and needles until the next book in The Graveyard Queen Series comes out.â
âFresh Fiction
Chapter One
Something had been following me for days. Whether it was human, ghost or an in-betweenâlike meâI had no idea. Iâd never caught more than a glimpse out of the corner of my eye. No more than a flicker of light or a fleeting shadow. But it was there even now, in my periphery. A darkness that kept pace. Turning when I turned. Slowing when I slowed.
I steadied my gait even as my heart raced, and I berated myself for having strayed too far from hallowed ground. Iâd lingered too long at my favorite market, and now it was nearing on twilight, that dangerous time when the veil thinned, allowing those greedy, grasping entities to drift through into our world, seeking what they could never have again.
From the time I was nine, my father had taught me how to protect myself from the parasitic nature of ghosts, but Iâd broken his every rule. Iâd fallen in love with a haunted man, and now a door had been opened, allowing the Others to come through. Allowing evil to find me.
A car thundered down the street, and I tensed even as I welcomed such a normal sound. But the roar of the engine faded too quickly, and the ensuing quiet seemed ominous. The rush hour traffic had already waned, and the street was unusually devoid of pedestrians and runners. I had the sidewalk all to myself. It was as if everything had faded into the background, and the scope of my world narrowed to the thud of my footsteps and heartbeats.
I shifted the shopping bag to my other hand, allowing for a quick sweep to my left where the sun had set over the Ashley River. The mottled sky flamed like embers from a dying fire, the light casting a golden radiance over the spires and steeples that dotted the low skyline of the City of Churches.
It was good to be back in my beloved Charleston, but Iâd been on edge ever since my return, the raw nerves a symptom of the emotional and physical trauma Iâd suffered during a cemetery restoration in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. But there was another reason I couldnât eat or sleep, a deeper unease that made me pace restlessly until all hours.
I drew a quivering breath.
Devlin.
The haunted police detective I couldnât get out of my mind or my heart. The mere thought of him was like a dark caress, a forbidden kiss. Every time I closed my eyes, I could hear the whisper of his aristocratic drawl, that slow, seductive cadence. With very little effort, I could conjure the scorching demand of his perfect mouth on mineâ¦the honeyed trail of his tongueâ¦those graceful, questing hands⦠.