Michael Ryan was the author of a runaway bestseller, Space Coast", but its publication coincided with his wife's murder in a bank raid. Now he's back to face the ghosts of his past.Michael met Claire when she was dragging Paul de Luca, detective novel writer and owner of a porn shop, out of the sea after he'd lost his feet in a shark attack.
A year has passed, but not a day goes by without Meggie thinking of Inkheart, a book whose characters came to life. Resa is back, but she has no voice. For the fire-eater Dustfinger, the need to return to the tale has become desperate. When he finds a crooked storyteller ,Orpheus, to read him back, he abandons his apprentice Farid, and plunges into the pages. Orpheus doesn't read Farid back into the book like he was supposed to, he leaves the name "boy" out...
The story begins with Farid working for Orpheus, in hopes of him reading Dustfinger back to life, and Meggie and her parents living with the Black Prince and his gang of robbers. However, the key to bringing Dustfinger back is communicating with the White Women themselves, and so far Orpheus does not have any knowledge as to how to meet them. Knowing that Mo has the power to summon up the White Women, Orpheus offers him the return trip to the real world his wife and daughter, and demands a meeting with the White Women.
When Orpheus looked inside, he saw that he was standing in front of a river with fire burning on its surface. There was an old man there with wild, white hair, standing next to a boat.
