Fool Moon characters

Appears from the start

Chicago's only professional wizard, working as a private eye and a consultant to the police. As this case opens he is broke, cold, and on the outs with Karrin Murphy, who has realized he held things back from her during their last investigation. Proud, sardonic, and unable to leave the helpless unprotected, he is drawn into a run of full-moon killings and forced to reckon with how little he actually knows about werewolves, and with the cost of the knowledge he refuses to share.

Appears from the start

Head of the Chicago Police Department's Special Investigations unit. Stung by the secrets Harry kept during the Sells case, she calls him back to consult on a series of full-moon maulings but no longer trusts him, and much of the case is spent with the two of them at odds. Dogged, brave, and unwilling to be handled or protected, she pushes into danger that magic makes far worse than she understands, and pays for it in blood before the truth brings them back together.

First appears in chapter 2

A young woman with a small talent for magic whom Harry has informally mentored. She comes to him asking to be taught a powerful containment circle far beyond her level; uneasy about why she wants it and certain it is meant for something dangerous, Harry refuses to teach her.

First appears in chapter 3

The spirit of knowledge bound in a skull in Harry's laboratory, his encyclopaedic and amoral research assistant. In this case Bob's lore about the many different kinds of werewolf is essential, and when Harry is stripped of his tools and his options, Bob leaves the skull to act on his own for a time - a rare and risky freedom for a spirit whose appetites are not always trustworthy.

First appears in chapter 4

The hard, ambitious FBI agent leading a federal task force that muscles into the killings. Denton treats Harry as an obstacle and hoards the investigation, and there is more to his interest than jurisdiction: he and his team carry secrets of their own that make them far more dangerous than they first appear.

First appears in chapter 5

The tabloid reporter chasing the supernatural, and Harry's girlfriend, still pressing him for the story he keeps from her. Undeterred by the danger, she involves herself in the werewolf case and is caught up in its violence, a recurring tension between Harry's need to protect her and her refusal to be shut out.

First appears in chapter 7

A stocky, earnest college student who leads a small group of friends, the Alphas, who have taught themselves a spell to take the shape of wolves. Idealistic and brave, Billy and his pack use their power to protect ordinary people from the things that hunt in the dark. Underestimated at first, they prove staunch and capable allies over the course of the case, and Billy becomes one of Harry's most reliable friends in the fights to come.

First appears in chapter 8

The composed, watchful fiancee of Harley MacFinn and the person working hardest to keep his curse contained. Tera moves and thinks like a predator and is plainly more than an ordinary woman; she trained the Alphas in their craft, and she fights fiercely to save MacFinn from the beast inside him.

First appears in chapter 10

A wealthy, haunted man who carries a hereditary curse: under the full moon he becomes a loup-garou, a monstrous and nearly unstoppable wolf that kills without control or memory. MacFinn has spent his life trying to cage the beast, aided by his fiancee Tera West, but the containment is failing and the deaths are mounting. He is as much a victim of the curse as those it kills, and a genuinely tragic figure at the center of the case.

First appears in chapter 13

Chicago's crime lord, cool and methodical as ever. This time Marcone is not a bystander but a target: the loup-garou at the heart of the killings has reason to hunt him, and the threat forces a wary, temporary crossing of his interests with Harry's. He remains a man of his own hard code, dangerous to friend and enemy alike.