"The dead never bothered me. That honor was reserved for the living." Hauling dead people around Manhattan is all in a day's work for body mover Gideon Black. He lives in his van, talks to corpses, and occasionally helps the police solve murders. His life may not be normal, but it's simple enough. Until the corpses start talking back. When Gideon accidentally rescues a werewolf in Central Park, he's drawn into the secret world of the Others. Fae, were-shifters, dark magic users and more, all playing a deadly cat-and-mouse game with Milus Dei, a massive and powerful cult dedicated to hunting down and eradicating them all. Then a dead man speaks to him, saying that Milus Dei wants him more than any Other. They'll stop at nothing to capture him and control the abilities he never knew he had. He is the DeathSpeaker. He is the key. And he's not as human as he thought... Life was a whole lot easier when the dead stayed dead.

"Great. A bunch of zombies were stealing my corpses." Halloween in Manhattan gets weirder than usual for the newly minted DeathSpeaker, as Gideon Black finds himself up against a powerful necromancer who's looking to raise a lot more than the dead. This story takes place between Wrong Side of Hell and Fields of Blood, books 1 and 2 of the DeathSpeaker Codex, but can be read and enjoyed without having read the series. Dance of the Dead first appeared in the anthology Full Metal Magic.

"The dead can't lie. At least, not to me." With the dangerous Milus Dei cult collapsed, Gideon Black is trying to get used to his new life as a half-Fae, and the DeathSpeaker—a legendary Other with the ability to compel the dead to speak. But when freshly murdered bodies turn up in New York with ankh-and-sword tattoos identifying them as cult members, Gideon realizes the battle is far from over. While dealing with a singing dead man and a powerful Seelie noble out for revenge, Gideon discovers that the remaining Milus Dei survivors have skipped town. Their new target: his werewolf friend Sadie's estranged pack in the Appalachian Mountains. Sadie's younger sister has been abducted, and Gideon and his newfound brother Taeral offer to help get her back. But the rescue mission soon turns deadly as they uncover the cult's true target—and find that Milus Dei is not only far bigger than the New York branch, but also developing a biological weapon to turn their soldiers into unstoppable killing machines, capable of taking down any Other. And Sadie's blood holds the key to perfecting that weapon.

"The dead must answer to you, and no one else. Remember that, Gideon." He may be the DeathSpeaker, but Gideon Black has no idea what he's doing. The job didn't come with an instruction manual. That's why his half-brother Taeral plans to bring him across the Veil to the Fae realm of Arcadia, to consult with an ancient Fae who knew the previous DeathSpeaker personally. Those plans are violently interrupted when the royal Unseelie Guard invade their home, dragging Taeral and their father, Daoin, to Arcadia ahead of schedule. And Gideon will do anything to get them back. But the concrete jungles of Manhattan are nothing compared to the threats waiting in Arcadia. Facing deadly wildlife, even deadlier enemies, and magic he never imagined possible, Gideon must learn quickly to wield his power as both a Fae and the DeathSpeaker—before the vengeful Unseelie Queen can exact a cost higher than death from his family, and everyone he holds dear.

"My past came with sharp teeth, and I didn't enjoy letting it bite me." Gideon Black has just returned from a grueling visit to the Fae realm with a stronger grip on his abilities, both as a half-Fae and the DeathSpeaker. But none of that prepared him to be kidnapped and dragged into a fight against a god. When the Duchenes' master, an ancient and powerful Other who's taken the name of the voodoo god Papa Legba, summons the family for attempting to defy him, Denei Duchene invokes a promise Gideon made long before he knew that promises could kill the Fae. Now he must travel to New Orleans with the secretive siblings and free them from their bonds—or die trying. But Legba isn't the only danger lurking in the Louisiana swamps. Milus Dei, the cult dedicated to wiping out the Others, has been recruiting a new breed of hunter. The most dangerous, lethal poachers they can find, heavily financed and retrained to target and capture all types of non-humans. And the group currently hunting the bayou is all too familiar to Gideon.

"The enemy of my enemy should be left the hell alone." A creatively violent killer who's clearly not human is targeting Milus Dei members, and Gideon Black isn't exactly sure he should stop it. After all, the deadly cult hasn't done him any favors—unless you count torturing his father and brother, brutally experimenting on his friends, killing countless Others, and attempting to use his power to wipe out the rest. So when Milus Dei asks for his help finding the killer, he's pretty comfortable turning them down. Then two strangers turn up with personal stakes in the investigation, both a type of Other no one's heard of before. Their paths cross with Gideon, and they soon learn they have a common enemy. But it's not Milus Dei. With the help of a thief, a genie, and an uneasy alliance with the cult that's been hunting him down, the DeathSpeaker faces his greatest challenge yet. There's a monster beneath the city, an immortal shapeshifter whose goals are far beyond revenge—and the future of the world is written in blood.

"Hell if I'd let some dead woman get the best of me. It was supposed to be a break. A few days in Lightning Cove, Maine—a very small town with a very old history—and a chance to get to know Special Agent Calla Frost better. She swore it was just a routine check-in with a research team. No monsters, no magic. But when Gideon arrives in Lightning Cove, things are just a little too perfect. And even before the first dead body—the one that won't talk to him—he realizes that nothing and no one is what it seems in this place. Including Calla Frost.

It's NOT safe to go back in the water... After a promise gone horribly wrong, Gideon Black has sworn off doing favors for people. But when the mysterious Lady Tethys offers him a house—a home of his own for the first time in his life—in exchange for retrieving an artifact, he agrees. Unfortunately, the artifact is at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean with a ship that went down four hundred years ago. To get to the wreck, Tethys arranges passage for Gideon and his friends with Captain Alex Walsh. But when they board the ship, they find that the crew not only know about and distrust Others, but are armed with cold iron weapons, one of the few things that can kill a Fae. And the captain is looking for any excuse to use them. Then they reach the dive site, and things go from bad to worse when the ship is attacked by something far more dangerous than humans with cold iron.

"What we know about Milus Dei is a lot, but nowhere near enough." Ever since he learned he was the DeathSpeaker, Gideon Black has been fighting Milus Dei—usually after they commit some massive, bloody atrocity. So when an old friend comes to him with reports of a hidden facility in the New Mexico desert and the legendary Fae-killing weapon they plan to mass-produce, he jumps at the chance to strike first and stop them before the slaughter begins. There's also a powerful and mysterious figure involved in this operation, one who's high on the command chain of Milus Dei with direct ties to their unknown leader. If Gideon and his friends can take him and destroy the weapon before they make more, they'll be one big step closer to finding the leader of the deadly cult and bringing Milus Dei down permanently. But what awaits them in the desert may be more than Gideon bargained for as he faces not only an ancient threat to the Fae, but an enemy who's far more than what he seems, with a power Gideon's never encountered before. One his magic might not be enough to stop.

On the bright side, if this didn't work, I'd be too dead to worry about forgiveness. Heartbroken and furious on the heels of a devastating loss, Gideon Black heads to the Fae realm of Arcadia, reluctantly bringing along a pair of old friends who've sworn to help him even after he insists that he's going alone. Because what he's planning to do there has a high risk of deadly failure. His self-appointed mission: to face down a god, and to restore a life that was stolen from him. To bring someone back from the dead. But nothing is simple when it comes to the gods of the Fae. The DeathSpeaker soon finds himself battling his way across the realm in search of the ancient keys, lost to the ravages of time, that will enable him to enter eternity and come back alive. And through it all, the greatest challenge lies in what should be the simplest task: convincing the object of his quest that he's worth saving.

"We're not the monsters. They are." With life back to whatever passes for normal, Gideon Black intends to start an exciting new phase in his battle against Milus Dei ... research. Unfortunately, his grand plans are put on hold when someone from his past shows up asking for help—from Captain Abraham Strauss. There's been a murder in the area formerly known as the Hive, and Abe recruits Gideon to help him navigate the supernatural world and find the killer. But there's something darker at play, and the hunt for a suspect will ultimately bring the DeathSpeaker face to face with his greatest enemy. The man responsible for all the suffering and death that's plagued him from the beginning. Dante is coming. And his arrival will change everything.

"Things were a hell of a lot worse than I could've possibly imagined—and I couldn't think of a single way to fix them." The Council meeting to gain the support of the Fae in the war against Milus Dei was supposed to be a formality. But when Gideon Black arrives in Arcadia, it's to an argument between the Seelie and Unseelie nobles over how to handle the situation. One side wants to stay out of the war. The other side wants to actively avoid it. Unfortunately, the DeathSpeaker and his friends soon face a more immediate problem: the Veil, the connective realm between Earth and Arcadia, has been tampered with—and whoever's behind the massive spell seems to have performed it from Earth. They set out immediately to return and repair the damage to the Veil. But when they finally make it home, something has gone terribly wrong ... and the world is a different place. A place where Dante and Milus Dei have already won.