Spirits That Walk in Shadow -- Nina Kiriki Hoffman

Jaimie Locke is not your typical college freshman:

Picture ID, I thought.  Not like I had a driver's license or anything.  I'd never needed any kind of identification.  Everybody knew who I was . . . until now.

Dad glanced at me and muttered something, rubbed his thumb across his fingers.  A white rectangle shimmered there.  He handed it to me.

It was a driver's license.  The picture showed me, in a green long-sleeved T-shirt, with my thick dark hair pulled back--exactly what I looked like right now.  Of course, it was a picture he took two seconds ago without even using a camera--air had the power of image--only with a blue background.  I glanced around.  Nothing in Fernald Complex was blue.  Dad was good.  All my vital statistics were on the card, and so were these gold overlay holograms that said OREGON over and over with many copies of the state seal.  It looked real.

I held it up and trelled it.  Layered, compressed air.  I had never seen work like this before.  My dad, lawyer and master criminal!

Jaimie's plan is to learn what it's like to live as a normal person in the non-magical world -- and, due to Recent Happenings Back Home, to avoid her family for some time.  But (there's always a but, isn't there?) after meeting Kim Calloway, her roommate, it's clear that keeping her nature a secret just isn't going to happen. 

Because Kim has a problem.  For months, she has suffered from sudden waves of crippling depression.  She's seen every sort of doctor imaginable, but no one has been able to do a thing about it.

Understandable, as it isn't a medical problem -- it's a magical one.  A viri -- an emotional vampire -- has developed a taste for Kim, and if no action is taken, she will die.  Jaimie has to enlist the help of not only her cousins, but also of a minor god (or Presence) who chose to accompany her to college.

While I never really got very attached to the characters, I got into everything else -- the magic system really piqued my interest, and the references to Jaimie's backstory at Chapel Hollow have me curious enough that I'm planning on ILLing one of Hoffman's earlier books.

There are enough similarities that I might try it on some of the more patient fans of the Stolarz color series.

Comments

[Chrissy]

A Red Heart of Memories. Would you please read A Red Heart of Memories?

Actually, I'm pretty amazed that you found a copy of The Thread That Binds the Bones. I can never find her older books anywhere.

[Leila]

I just put it on my list. I don't have a copy of Thread that Binds in hand -- I just filled out the ILL request form today. Looking forward to both, though.

[Chrissy]

Ah, I thought you already had it on its way. I think that one is one of the few of her's I don't have. I'd lend them out, but then I'd need a contract signed in blood that I would get them back. Also, they are packed. Unpacking the books will not happen until spring.