The Menopause Grimoire

Forty-three, divorced, and eating cold lo mein over the sink in my underwear. This was not the fresh start I had in mind. Maggie Kowalski just wanted a house of her own after twenty years of marriage to a man who looked through her like furniture. What she got was a fixer-upper with a surprise feature: a seven-foot shadow demon bound to the foundation by a four-hundred-year-old covenant. Azazrith, Lord of the Seventh Circle, Commander of the Fallen Legions, Keeper of the Eternal Flame... and apparently, her new live-in housekeeper. He makes her breakfast. He mixes perfect Cosmopolitans.

At forty-seven, Tori Jennings has perfection down to a science: invisible at work, forgotten by her ex-husband, and convinced she'll never feel anything again. Then her company gets a new CEO—and everything she thought she knew goes up in flames. (Along with her internal thermostat. Perimenopause is delightful.)

I've been serving coffee to monsters for six years. I just didn't know it. Darcy Novak works the night shift at a diner in a Colorado mountain town nobody's ever heard of. She's thirty-nine, perimenopausal, and her biggest concerns are a dying coffee maker and an ex-husband who won't stop texting. Her life is small. Predictable. Safe. Except for the two men who've been showing up at her diner every night for six years.

She moved to the woods to disappear. Something ancient was already there—and it saw her. Josie Jordan, 42, has done the math. Sold the salon she built from nothing. Finalized the divorce that was ten years overdue. Bought a house in the Appalachian woods with the last of her money and a clock ticking on every dollar. She's not having a breakdown. She's starting over. She walks the woods every day because it's free and it's the only thing that makes her brain shut up about the bank account. Then she meets a man on the trail. Quiet. Formal. Slightly odd.

Eight million people ride her subway line. Not one of them has looked at her in fifteen years. Then something came up out of the tunnel. Frankie, 39, works the overnight at the 168th Street station. Bulletproof glass, four-inch ledge, two cameras that have been out of focus since 2016. Her ex took the coffee maker and left a hoodie on the bathroom door. Her mother calls on Sundays to mention that Cousin Angela with the teeth got engaged. Frankie is not sad about any of it, which is the most damning thing she can say about two years of her life.