STEEL, SPELLS, AND SECOND CHANCES
Michelle Walker believes in rules, paperwork, and doing her job right. When a routine assignment pulls her into a hidden system of magic built on agreements and obligations, she doesn’t realize what process she sets in motion until it’s too late.
Once You Agree is a clean, standalone urban fantasy about contracts you don’t realize you’ve signed, systems that don’t explain themselves, and the burden of choosing responsibility when walking away would be easier.
The most dangerous magic hides in plain sight.
Ordinary is intentional in this world. Noticing the wrong thing has consequences.
When city inspector Michelle is sent to confirm the demolition of a long-abandoned building in Seattle, she expects rot, rain, and red tape—not a missing floor that appears only sometimes, and never on paper. Inside, she finds a strange occupant who shouldn’t exist and a system desperate to pretend none of it does. As Michelle digs deeper, she’s caught between the cold authority of a reality-policing agent and something older, wilder, and fiercely alive that refuses to be documented. What begins as a routine inspection spirals into a surreal confrontation with memory, power, and the dangerous consequences of noticing what you’re told to ignore.
Once You Agree is a clean, standalone urban fantasy novella. It’s a complete story with no cliffhanger, designed as an entry point into a larger world of magic and consequence.
In the worlds of Shaleen Thomas, the pace is fast, the humor cuts sharp, and danger always arrives before breakfast. Monsters don’t scare her, unless they smear chocolate on a first draft. Long before it was cool, she was conjuring magic, mayhem, and second chances, earning multiple awards and an MA in teaching English along the way.
Shaleen’s urban fantasy is rooted in places she knows and loves. She lived in the Seattle area after college, where gray skies, hidden corners, and layered histories lodged permanently in her imagination. Though she now writes from the red-rock desert of the U.S. Four Corners—where she waits daily for rain that seldom comes—the Pacific Northwest still calls to her and finds its way into her work.
A incurable fantasy addict since middle school, Shaleen is the mother of four grown daughters and is married to a husband who can do almost anything.
If you’re ready to see clearly, step inside her worlds, where not everything dangerous looks the part.
© 2026