On Christmas Eve, around 1812, Pip, an orphan who is about six years old, encounters an escaped convict in the village churchyard while visiting the graves of his mother, father, and siblings. The convict scares Pip into stealing food and a file to grind away his shackles, from the home he shares with his abusive older sister and her kind, passive husband Joe Gargery, a blacksmith. The next day, soldiers recapture the convict while he is engaged in a fight with another convict; the two are returned to the prison ships from which they escaped...

Brandyn Taylor had entered Kiera's life when she was seven years old, and they had been best friends ever since. Kiera even saw herself marrying him, but all her hopes of a happy life with him are smashed to pieces when he goes missing. The deeper Kiera gets into trying to solve the mystery, of where Brandyn's Body is, the deeper into trouble she gets herself. Convinced she is going to find a body, she sets off trying to trace his whereabouts. As she rules out all possible, feasible, reasons for his disappearance, she begins to think the un-thinkable. Has he been kidnapped? Are there drug rings involved? Someone's life can't simply be erased, leaving no trace of them what so ever. Can it? Follow Kiera's story, as we delve into the mind of a troubled young woman, who desperately needs her best friends support, and whenever she's needed him before he has always been there for her. Why isn't he there for her this time? If you enjoy reading this and feel like voting for a chapter, I'd much appreciate it, but it's not necessary. It means more to me that people are reading this story than numbers on a voting page. (But it IS lovely to see people like it enough to leave it a vote.)

Volume 1: Pickpocketing Living in secret and stealing to eat is a hard life , but it's all Kuro has ever known. Fear and necessity honed him from a young age into the finest young thief in in the wizard kingdoms. Nobody can hide forever, though, and a run of poor luck lands Kuro in a place where his quick hands and quiet feet count for nothing: Avalon Academy, school of magic. Out of his depth and unable to escape, can Kuro find a place among the other misfits at the school, or will his past return to ruin the one chance he has to leave his life in the shadows?