In New Orleans, faith has always had a little magic in it. Gerard Gaudet is about to discover just how much.
Only weeks from ordination to the Catholic priesthood, Gerard has spent his life preparing for the altar. But when something impossible happens during an experiment with the Church's older rite, his beliefs about faith and magic begin to unravel, along with everything he has been working toward since childhood.
Gerard's awakening does not go unnoticed.
Constant House, a secret magical order hidden in a fold of space beside Bayou St. John, has been watching for signs of power like his. So have factions within the Church. Some are determined to understand what happened. Others are determined to contain it. And Gerard's former mentor, Monsignor Pierre Arceneaux, knows something Gerard does not: the suppression of Gerard's connection to magic began long ago.
Drawn into a hidden New Orleans of ceremonial magicians, Vatican secrets, forbidden rites, and powers woven through the city's streets, Gerard must confront an inheritance deliberately hidden from him and decide whether the sacred belongs only to those who claim authority over it.
But while rival factions struggle over Gerard and the power awakening within him, an older and more dangerous magic is taking shape-one that could turn the Church's own secrets against the city it has guarded for centuries.
And what is coming for New Orleans may be something none of them are prepared to face.
Sacrament and Shadow is a contemporary urban fantasy of sacred power and forbidden magic, where Catholic mysticism meets ceremonial occultism, Cajun folk tradition, and the living supernatural landscape of New Orleans. At its heart lies an unsettling question: what if the most dangerous magic isn't the magic the Church condemns?