Echo, child pickpocket turned career thief, must find the Firebird, the only hope of ending a centuries-old conflict. As enemies become allies, Echo will learn that the truth of the Firebird lies within.

With the shopkeeper’s indignant squawk all but lost in the clamor of the crowd, Echo knew this simple fact to be true. Feet flying across pavement slick with the day’s drizzle, twisting and turning as she dodged rickety carts and gawking pedestrians, she also knew that if she didn’t find her way out of Taipei’s crowded Shilin night market within the next ninety seconds, she probably wouldn’t live to steal again.

Taking a healthy bite of the pork bun, she spared a thought for her cozy, cramped bedroom, a long forgotten storage room nestled high above the stacks of the New York Public library, warded to high holy hell to keep out intruders and nosy staff, and she wondered if she would ever see it again. It would be a shame, Echo thought, if no one were there to eat the rest of burrito she had swiped from the backpack of an unsuspecting college student earlier that day as he napped with his head pillowed on a battered copy of Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables. There had been poetry to that minor act of thievery, which was mainly why she had done it. She no longer needed to steal food to survive, as she had when she was a child, but sometimes an opportunity was too good to pass up.