Halcyon Clinic is a refuge for people like Nadine Blumenthal — one of the most powerful psychics on the east coast, who grew up impaired as a result and now lives a humble, divorced life in California. The clinic is full of doctors who are also extraordinary. Nobody is prepared for what happens next.
Get the Book Meet the StaffOne of the most powerful psychics on the east coast. Grew up impaired from it. Lives a humble, divorced life in California. She is invited to Halcyon and accepts. She doesn't know yet what she will become here.
▶ Color: Blue · Totem: WolfShifts gender day to day. An Episcopalian pastor. A Teiresias figure — which is to say: they have seen both sides of everything, and this is either a gift or a wound, depending on the day.
▶ Color: WhiteA young swan of a woman — black hair, white skin. Deals with death, hospice, the passage. Manages the intensity of that by being a cookie-baking normie. Think Charlotte from Sex and the City, but her patients are dying and she's guiding them through.
▶ Color: Black / White · Totem: SwanBisexual hippie with circuits braided into his hair. Does UFOs and interdimensional work, which none of the others quite believe in. Powerful psychic regardless. His live-in situationship is Andrew. They are very different people.
▶ Color: VioletStraight-laced. Yellow as a primary color. Works with books, media, systems of thought — the architecture of knowledge. Once got lost in a book for a week. Literally. They had to go in and get him.
▶ Color: GoldThe black sheep. His totem is a mean-eyed cat. Works city magic — the memories of locations, spiritual imprints, poltergeists. Every place has a story it won't stop telling. Jeremiah is the one who listens.
▶ Color: Green · Totem: CatHead of the clinic. Tiny blonde bird of a woman, classic beauty, funny sarcasm. You would never guess her area is body shamanism, sexual function, and animal spirits. She runs the whole thing and you'd never know how.
▶ Color: Red · Totem: Bird"Remember Ariadne, young Ariadne, daughter of Minos and Pasiphae, who was a daughter of Helios. She did not scruple to befriend Theseus and save him in his hour of trial; and then, when Minos had relented, she left her home and sailed away with him. She was the darling of the gods and she has her emblem in the sky..."
— Apollonius Rhodius
Beyond the clinic · the world outsideThe Big Dig · First memory · White grass · No return
They met as teenagers, at the Sweat — the woo-woo facility started in the 70s for kids with powers. Feminism, shamanism, ritual. Nadine loved it. Apache pretends to disbelieve in all of it and is a powerful empath herself.
The wolf. A transmitter. A sponge. Unformed in this book — becoming the backbone of everything that follows.
Harsh, funny, bohemian. Half-Native American. The blue sparks come alive in her hands like lightning. She always knew. She's your favorite. I already know that.
What they called the Lodge. A woo-woo facility started in the 1970s for children with abilities. Feminism. Shamanism. Ritual. The party line was that it was science — unmapped, still mysterious, still an opportunity to learn. Ninety percent of it was bull, Nadine thought. But the women who ran it taught her to use what she had. That made all the difference.
An all-woman witch militia. Where Halcyon takes the clinical, refuge approach — containing, protecting, treating — the White Circle takes action. Against magical and spiritual threat. Against the things that hurt people like Nadine before they learn to protect themselves. They are not always gentle about it. They are always effective.
A mischievous old woman who is also God. She lives in a desert bungalow. Nadine finds her at the bottom of the Big Dig, after she finally jumps. What they talk about there is the heart of the book.
The clinic. The Big Dig. Grandmother Spider at the bottom of a coma, in a desert bungalow. The beginning of everything.
▶ Available nowThe psychopomp and the archivist. Death and systems. What they know about each other that nobody else does.
▶ ForthcomingThe director and the black sheep. The clinic from the inside. What it costs to run the thing that saves everyone.
▶ ForthcomingThe finale. Interdimensional and Teiresias. The furthest edges of what the clinic ever imagined it could reach.
▶ ForthcomingNadine Blumenthal is a powerful psychic who grew up impaired as a result and has spent her adult life managing. She is divorced and humble and good at coffee and when she is invited to join the staff at Halcyon Clinic — a refuge for people like her — she accepts.
The clinic is full of extraordinary people. Each of them carries something. Each of them knows something the others don't. Together they are the Urges — named for what they do, not what they are.
The book is structured like a double exposure. The clinic and Nadine's life before it — childhood, the Sweat, the marriage — alternate until the event that puts her in a coma. Then: the clinic seen through Apache's eyes, and Nadine inside the coma, walking toward a great hole in the world, and eventually jumping in. At the bottom: a desert bungalow. An old woman. God.
Updates from Halcyon and beyond — new volumes, release news, and everything the Urges would want you to know. Via the Wild Magic newsletter.