Midnight Blue-Light Special

Official cover

**Midnight Blue-Light Special** is the second novel in the InCryptid series by Seanan McGuire. It features Verity Price.

## Synopsis

**Normal, adjective:** Conforming to the standard or common type. See also "ordinary."

**Abnormal, adjective:** Deviating from the common type, such as playing monster-human on the rooftops of Manhattan. See also "Verity Price."

The Price family has spent generations studying the monsters of the world, working to protect them from humanity—and to protect humanity from them. Verity Price is just trying to do her job, keeping the native cryptid population of Manhattan from getting into trouble, and doing a little ballroom dancing on the side.

Enter Dominic De Luca, an operative for the Covenant of St. George, and Verity's on-again, off-again boyfriend. When he tells her that the Covenant is sending a full team to assess how ready the city is for a purge, Verity finds herself between a rock and a hard place. Stay, and risk her almost-certain death, or flee, and leave the cryptids of New York with nothing between them and the Covenant.

With allies and enemies on every side, and no safe way to turn, it's going to take some quickstepping for Verity to waltz out of this one. There's just one question on everyone's mind: Is this the last dance for Verity Price?

## Plot

**Prologue:** Thirteen years ago, Verity’s father ponders ways for her to enjoy the limelight without endangering the family.

### Verity POV

**Chapter One:** Verity drags Sarah along on a mission to capture the mananaggal that has been killing newborns and their mothers in the local hospitals.

**Chapter Two:** Verity works a shift at the Freakshow, the under-new-management alter-ego of Dave’s Fish and Strips. Then Dominic shows up and asks to talk.

**Chapter Three:** They return to her apartment, where Dominic shares that a group of Covenant agents are coming to Manhattan to assess his progress and prepare for a purge.

**Chapter Four:** Verity sends Dominic away and then updates her family. Then she tracks Dominic down at Gingerbread Pudding to strategize.

**Chapter Five:** They share the news with Sarah and ask her to inform the dragons. Sarah pokes at Dominic’s mind to confirm he is still on their side.

**Chapter Six:** Verity updates Kitty and her friends at the Freakshow. Kitty refuses to shut the club down since that would be a red flag that the “creatures” advertised there weren’t just smoke and mirrors.

**Chapter Seven:** With everyone properly informed, Verity and Dominic return to her apartment for some private time. The next morning, the Covenant calls Dominic to meet up with them.

**Chapter Eight:** Verity follows Dominic to the docks and secretly observes the rendezvous. She gets Artie to run the rental car’s plates to finally learn where Dominic’s apartment is. When she arrives home, Uncle Mike is there to offer backup.

**Chapter Nine:** Verity negotiates with Candy to rent the dragon’s old nest in the meatpacking district. She doesn't feel safe with Dominic knowing where she’s staying and his loyalties uncertain.

**Chapter Ten:** Verity and her allies settle into the dragon’s old warehouse. Artie touches base with Dominic’s address, and when she goes there to case the place she runs into Dominic himself, who is not surprised to see her. He shares that Margaret Healy is one of the Covenant agents.

**Chapter Eleven:** Verity checks in with both Sarah and her family, putting everyone on alert.

**Chapter Twelve:** When Verity goes to visit Sarah, they encounter Margaret in the hotel.

**Chapter Thirteen:** Unable to talk or telepathy their way out of the situation, Sarah knocks Margaret out and flees with Verity.

**Chapter Fourteen:** Verity takes Sarah back to the warehouse to settle in for the long haul. She calls Dominic, who is shocked to hear Margaret found them. Then she calls all the cryptids she cares about in Manhattan to warn them of the coming danger.

**Chapter Fifteen:** Sunil and Rochack come to the warehouse and are freaked out to meet Sarah. Verity goes free-running to clear her head and gets knocked out by an angry Margaret.

### Sarah POV

**Chapter Sixteen:** Sarah feels it the moment Verity disappears from her psychic plane. She freaks out and rallies the troops.

**Chapter Seventeen:** Sarah and Istas go to the dragons for help. They agree, citing their debt to Verity for finding William.

**Chapter Eighteen:** Dominic finds Sarah and comes back to the warehouse with them after letting Sarah psychically verify his intentions.

**Chapter Nineteen:** They gather more allies at the Freakshow. Together, they all coordinate a rescue plan. The mice agree to act as scouts and spies throughout the city.

### Verity POV

**Chapter Twenty:** Verity awakens in an empty room, chained to the walls in a way that suggests she is being held in a box within a larger building. Margaret and the other Covenant agents recognize her as a Price and begin to torture her for information about her family

**Chapter Twenty-Two:** Margaret lets her personal vendetta show through as she questions Verity. Robert pulls out proper torture devices and Verity eventually tells them her name. Some time later, she tricks Peter into releasing her, knocks him out, and escapes onto the support beams of the warehouse she’s being held in.

**Chapter Twenty-Three**: Verity evades them for a while, but is caught by Peter when making a break for a window. Before they can contain her, though, reinforcements arrive. Sarah mind-controls Margaret and makes her hold a weapon to the others, giving Verity time to escape. Peter is killed in the showdown. The tables are turned, and Verity’s friends discuss what to do with their captives. If they are killed, the Covenant will just send more, increasingly hostile agents to investigate. In the end, Sarah rewrites Margaret and Robert’s memories to believe they had never found Verity in the first place.

**Chapter Twenty-Four:** Verity awakens in the city’s cryptid-run hospital. Angela, Dominic, and Mike are by her side; Angela was the first family member who could make it to Manhattan after the showdown with the Covenant.

**Chapter Twenty-Five:** Verity learns that Sarah psychically damaged herself when rewriting the agents’ memories, and Angela isn’t sure if she is safe to wake up.

**Epilogue:** Verity invites Dominic to travel back to Portland with her, then belatedly tells him she loves him.

## Characters

### Major

Verity Price: Journeyman cryptozoologist who splits her time between dancing, waitressing, and protecting the sentient cryptids of New York City.Dominic De Luca: Covenant agent questioning his loyalties since coming to New York and meeting the non-monstrous crytpids who live there. He and Verity are dating, which the Covenant can never find out about.Sarah Zellaby: Verity's cousin. Sarah audits university courses in the city and uses her cuckoo powers to stay under the radar.

* Margaret Healy: Current Covenant agent and Verity's distant cousin. Margaret hates the Price family for defecting generations ago, as her family line has been treated with suspicion by the Covenant ever since. She visits New York with a tactical team to check up on Dominic's progress.

### Minor

* Ryan Yukimura
* Dr. Morrow
* Lauren Morrow
* Kevin Price
* Evelyn Price
* Antimony Price
* Sunil
* Rochak
* Mike Gucciard
* James Garcia
* Dennis Garcia, James's husband
* Peter Brandt - demolitions expert
* Robert Bullard - tactical specialist
* William
* Priscilla
* Eva, a preteen dragon
* Angela Baker
* Kitty Smith
* Angel - human, bartender
* Carol - lesser gorgon
* Marcy - employee
* Nye - new employee
* Jahi - male wadjet
* Maibe - snake dancer
* Daisy - bartender
* Joe - Pliny's gorgon

### Mentioned

* Dave Smith
* Alexander Healy
* Thomas Price
* Theodore Harrington
* Enid Healy
* Frances Healy
* Piyusha
* Evelyn Price
* Alice Price-Healy
* Mary Dunlavy
* Jane Harrington-Price
* Jonathan Healy
* Alex Price
* Darren and Cassandra Bullard
* Uncle Billy

## Field Guide

Aeslin MiceBeán SidheCaladriusCoatlCuckooDragonLesser GorgonMadhuraManananggalTanukiWadjetWaheela**Mentioned**

* Boob Fairy
* Border Imp
* Bugbear
* Chupacabra
* Cofgod
* Harpy
* Hidebehind
* Hitchhiker
* Incubus
* Lindworm
* Nixie
* Oceanid
* Phantom Roadster
* Plesiosaur
* Routewitch
* Sasquatch
* Servitor
* Sewer kraken
* Sorcerer
* Succubus
* Unicorn
* Witch
* Zombie

## Locations

* Manhattan, New York City
	+ St. Catherine's Hospital
	+ St. Giles' Hospital
	+ The Freakshow
	+ Verity's apartment
	+ Gingerbread Pudding Cafe
	+ Port Hope Hotel
	+ Manhattan Museum of Mathematics (mentioned)
	+ Battery Park / Department of Docks
	+ Warehouse in the Meatpacking District
	+ Dominic's apartment
	+ Midtown Comics (mentioned)
	+ Covenant-rented warehouse

**Mentioned**

* Los Angeles, California
* Underworld
* Columbus, Ohio
* Chicago, Illinois
* Warsaw, Indiana
* Portland, Oregon

## Organizations

* Covenant of St. George

**Mentioned**

* Dance or Die

## Objects

* Telepathy blocker: "A thin disk of what looked like pure copper floating in a vial of water mixed with crushed herbs" (Ch. 13)
	+ Includes a homing compulsion
* Holy water

**Mentioned**

* Confusion charm
* Blessed cedar ash - an ingredient Antimony accidentally put into her blindfolded cooking

## Continuity

**Novels**

* It has been nearly a year since William was discovered, and the dragons now have several eggs to care for.
* Verity is extra impressed by Antimony's trapeze skills after swinging from slaughterhouse chains (Ch. 20)
* Alex is in Ohio working on a basilisk breeding program. (Ch. 24)
* Angela adopted Sarah after her human foster parents died, when Sarah was seven (Ch. 24). This conflicts with the family tree and later books, which have Sarah adopted when she was eight or nine.
* The psychological trauma Sarah suffers as a result of the events in this book lasts for five years, and she's only fully recovered by Imaginary Numbers, where it's revealed she was actually going through her instars and becoming more powerful.
* Margaret Healy returns as a villain in Magic For Nothing.

**Prequel Shorts**

* Mary died when she was run off the road in 1937.
* Callback to Mike's ancestor Arturo Gucciard, Frances and Jonathan Healy, and their encounter with a river hag.
* The Covenant has a habit of dropping their operatives into bare-bones housing just this side of livable.
* "The existence of the cuckoos wasn't proven until my great-grandfather [Jonathan] went to Colorado to look into the movement of a local hive of Apraxis wasps. Before that, there had been rumors, but never any hard proof. One of the last communications my grandfather [Thomas] sent to the Covenant before cutting off all ties was a letter describing everything we knew about cuckoos. Warning people about them was way more important than hiding information from the Covenant." (Ch. 12)
* The mice originated from Enid [Carew]'s side of the family, making it uncertain whether Margaret would know about them.
* Thomas's disappearance
	+ Verity refers to Thomas's deal with "one of the Netherworlds" and talks about him being sucked into the "Underworld" - she doesn't seem to be aware of the crossroads (Ch. 13)
	+ The family disappeared from Covenant radar at the same time Thomas opened an interdimensional portal and disappeared. (Ch. 3)
	+ References to "the Michigan incident" that supposedly wiped the Price-Healys off the map (Ch. 18)
* Mike discusses getting the lay of the land. (Ch. 19)
* Verity's great-grandmother [Fran] died of a broken neck. Her great-grandfather [Jonathan] died of a swarm of Apraxis wasps.
	+ Alice: "I carried my father's dead body out of the woods while I was bleeding out from Apraxis stings." (Ch. 22)

## Trivia

* Dominic believes the Covenant could sense if he had hosted a woman in his apartment the moment they stepped inside, regardless of how well he cleaned up after her (Ch. 7)
* Therianthropes generally have large appetites (Ch. 10)
* Verity notes that she resembles Alice and Fran's Healy genes - ironic given that Fran is only a Healy by marriage. (Ch. 12)
* Family code:
	+ "I picked up the movie you wanted" = currently at the train station
	+ Picked up the dry cleaning = on the street
	+ Picked up the groceries = in a bus station
	+ Did you check the mail today? I'm expecting a package = check for surveillance, need covered
* There are at least eight naturally empathic cryptid species (Ch. 13): unicorn, cofgod, lilu, cuckoo...

## Quotes

### Epigraphs

**Main Article: Epigraphs**

Epigraphs in this story include quotes from Enid Healy, Alice Healy, Frances Brown, and Evelyn Baker.

## Pop Culture

* David Bowie, Adam Lambert, Hot Topic, Mia Farrow, Brady Bunch, George Lucas, Jurassic Park, Daphne and Velma, Lady Gaga, Lady Godiva
* Our Bodies, Our Selves
* Disney World, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White
* Mike calls Verity Batgirl
* Antimony calls some of Verity's stunts "pulling a Gwen Stacy"
* Sarah: Willy Wonka, King Midas, Salvador Dali, Wolverine vs. Captain America, lots of mathematical theorems, The Muppet Show, Cinderella

## Playlist

Spotify

YouTube

(both missing "Superheroine" by Liz Nickrenz)