Katie is a circus performer on the run from her abusive husband. Lionel is an Air mage working as an illusionist in a music hall. Both think they've found exactly what they need when they meet--Katie needs a job where she can hide, and Lionel needs an assistant who isn't going to run off and get married. But they didn't count on Katie being an unawakened Fire mage, or her relationship with the former-soldier doorkeeper (also a Fire mage) becoming serious, or her husband showing up to ruin everything. 
 This book had a welcome uptick in quality from Home from the Sea, but it still pales in comparison to earlier Elemental Masters novels (The Fire Rose, I'm looking at you). This time, at least, we have sympathetic characters with understandable motivations, yet the chemistry between the romantic interests is flat, and the conflict resolution piles on incredibly quickly in the last couple of chapters and then ends abruptly. The ending has none of the emotional satisfaction that the end of The Fire Rose had, and Katie and Jack's relationship feels convenient, not carefully built. Likewise, that two fire mages can even live together contradicts several other books (not least, again, The Fire Rose), in which Lackey claims that two fire mages can never live too close together because they just don't get along. 
 Like another reviewer, I'm tempted to wonder if Lackey is even writing her books anymore. If not, at least this ghostwriter is better than the one who wrote Home from the Sea and The Collegium Chronicles. If so, I'm sad to see an author whose work was formative in my teen years slide into writing lackluster books rather than the gems (however problematic those gems sometimes were) that were the early Valdemar or Elemental Masters novels.