After the events of Dead Man's Hand, Grimsby was finally brought on as an Auditor for the Boston Department of Unorthodox Affairs, though, he finds the job isn't quite as exciting as he always pictured it to be. For one, he is having trouble becoming fully qualified. Between his own low level of Impetus and his scarred body causing what Impetus he does have to produce weaker magic than it should, Grimsby fights to perform even the basic tasks required by an Auditor. Grimsby is only allowed to take on simple, low-risk runner duties like making sure the local shapeshifters are scheduled to go to the Asylum during the upcoming full moon.
After six months of these milk-run tasks, Grimsby confronts his boss to demand a real case, only to learn that, supposedly, the primary reason he can't be assigned anything more important is because his would-be partner, the un-retired Leslie Mayflower, AKA The Huntsman, hasn't been showing up for work and without a partner, the job is too dangerous. Not satisfied with this answer, when his boss is distracted, Grimsby swaps his own assignment with another one on the desk, a RUIN case assigned to his academy friend, Elizabeth "Rayne" Bathory.
From there, Grimsby decides to confront Mayflower regarding his absence in the hopes of shocking the man out of his routine, and when that doesn't work, he goes home in the hopes of getting some good rest. Of course, his Unorthodox roommate, Wudge, has other plans for Grimsby. Wudge also feels he has been too patient and demands that Grimsby help him find the pieces of the door that a different Auditor had promised the little creature so he could return home. The result is a trip to the Elsewhere.
In the strange broken mirror world, Grimsby and Wudge find themselves in a lair guarded by two creatures, Lump and Echidna. Grimsby and Wudge narrowly escape with their goal in hand, but the odd nail that Wudge claims is what they are looking for not only causes Grimsby's spells to act strangely, but it also appears to stay stuck to his hand no matter what he does to try and remove it.
Needless to say, Grimsby is getting pretty annoyed. Not only is he failing his qualifications, but his partner seems determined to not help him get better cases, and the one case he does have isn't even officially his. To top all of that off, he is cursed with this strange nail and who knows how his next attempt at qualifications will go with his spells acting up as they are.
Meanwhile, Rayne isn't too happy to find her RUIN case has been switched for what is clearly meant for a low level Auditor. While she has been focused on searching for her missing partner, Wilson Hives, she also has a special connection to that particular RUIN case that she both wants to investigate and keep hidden from the rest of the department. RUIN cases, or Ritual of Unknown Intent and Nature, are, more often than not, nothing big or dangerous. Any ritual site where it isn't outright obvious what was done is classified as RUIN until the details are worked out. But Rayne has a bad feeling that this one isn't just a simple low-level crime, but something much worse.
Rayne's frustrations only grow as she hits another dead end in her search for Hives, but she seems to get a fresh set of eyes on the problem when an agent from the New York department strolls into town and presents Hive's old badge. It seems that the badge showed up in a recent raid and Agent Defaux has come to Boston in the hopes of helping Rayne in her investigation. With something that has a strong enough connection to Hives as the man's former badge in hand, hopefully the right tracking spell can finally give Rayne the closure she needs after the events of Dead Man's Hand.
While Rayne's story is prominent in Long Past Dues: The Unorthodox Chronicles - Book 2, most of the book follows Grimsby in his investigation of the RUIN case with Mayflower by his side. It seems that the glimpse Mayflower caught of the disturbed ritual site sparked some memory from the man's older cases, and was just the nudge he needed to get back out on the streets. But Grimsby's cursed magic, alongside his inexperience, will get the two of them into some tough situations. While not everyone will come out the other end of this book unscathed, it does seem like Long Past Dues is starting to build up some interesting story arcs for the main characters. I am very interested to see where this series goes as it evolves.
