Tithe

Kaye Fierch is sixteen and has spent her whole life traveling with her mother's rock band, shifting from one city to the next. After a violent night, she is sent back to her grandmother's house in a shore town in New Jersey.

Back in that town, Kaye learns that the faeries she remembers as imaginary friends from childhood are real. She also learns that she is less human than she always assumed.

At the edge of the woods she rescues a faerie knight named Roiben. The act draws her into the rivalry between the Seelie and Unseelie Courts, two factions with long-standing enmity.

Within that conflict, an old ritual sacrifice called the tithe has been revived, and Kaye may be the one it is meant for.

The faerie story is dark and modern, moving between bar gigs, a waterfront rave and the suburbs of the Jersey shore. It opens The Modern Faerie Tales, a series that continues with Valiant and then Ironside. The Mythopoeic Fantasy Award shortlisted it in the children's literature category.