When we left off in Book 3, The nukes had been safely disposed of…Except the one that got itself stitched into Jeb’s Impact, his fifth dimensional body.

Now Jeb is on a timer and has to get rid of the bomb before he melts down into a pile of radioactive goo from the inside out as the unstable nuclear device slowly kills him. Oh, and he’s got a quest to kill Mab, Queen of the fae or else the gods will take away his System…again.

He is rejected by Vex, the immortal wizard, who simply wants to watch how things play out.

Jeb then rounds Borg and Smartass up and heads for the capital, intent on leveraging some of his goodwill with the current regime to acquire help removing the bomb.

A half-dozen factions send messages, trying to bribe him into siding with them in the murky political landscape, including a messenger from Mab and one from an eldritch beast that delivers a particularly suspicious scroll with a penchant for turning people to ash.

Jeb ignores them to the best of his ability, but Smartass naively believes the hype and goes to meet with the author of one of the shadier offers.

Jeb retrieves her from the meeting place shortly after, and they head to the palace.

Jeb receives an offer of a place to stay and the empire’s assistance getting his Impact back to normal, but just as they are about to seal the deal, a magical EMP-equivalent goes off, momentarily dropping the protective spellwork on the palace proper.

Mab uses the opportunity to kidnap Jeb and tries to railroad him into journeying straight through the woods to her home. Jeb goes off-script and discovers some Fae mutating into freaky monsters.

When questioned, Mab admits that a deal made a hella long time ago has gone south, and it’s beginning to corrupt the fae who were involved at the time. She then implies that Jeb could help re-negotiate aforementioned Deal to save the species.

Jeb tries to haggle by running out the clock, but gets word through Borg’s radio that the capital is falling apart and under siege by undead.

Jeb would normally hang up, but some old friends (Casey 2&3) are living in the capital, their whereabouts and current situation unknown.

Jeb goes back to the city to rectify the situation, and the emperor slaps him with a ‘clean up this mess’ Deal. The emperor’s undead father has been released during the magical EMP and is currently trashing the city.

Jeb fights some undead, then discovers Casey 3’s location and goes on a mad dash to rescue her with Vresh, an assassin and a handful of alien college students.

Turns out it’s a trap.

Having leveled past 50 in the ensuing battle, Jeb uses his newfound Ability to make some nuanced, powerful Mystic triggers, and goes tit-for tat on the whole trap thing, using a satellite as a red herring to lure the emperor’s dad out of hiding.

They kill the former emperor, while Mab steals Casey 3 and begins to groom her to make a really bad Deal for humankind.

Jeb takes exception to this and uses the particularly suspicious scroll to sign away his freedom to an eldritch being of destruction in exchange for Mab getting (figuratively) bent over a barrel, the terms of which force the elder being to make nice-nice indefinitely, ensuring he won’t have to actually hold up his end of the deal as intended until the end of time.

The gods get a new member, the faeries are saved, the baby is saved, and Jeb’s soul may eventually get eaten by a wrathful deity.

Just before the end of the book, Vex makes an offer Jeb can’t refuse: Apprenticeship.

And yes, he has Dental.