Smoke and Dagger — Douglas Wynne

Catherine Littlefield was raised in a seaside New England town haunted by whispers of arcane lore that remained tantalizingly out of reach to a daughter of well-to-do Baptists. But when her studies at Barnard College in New York lead to an encounter with a secret society, she is offered access to the knowledge she has always sought...if she can pass a test. Dispatched to California to infiltrate the occult world of a rival magician-a pioneering rocket scientist with ties to the apocalyptic Starry Wisdom Church-Catherine soon discovers that she's not the only one spying on Jack Parsons. A fledgling government agency devoted to the investigation of weird science in the aftermath of World War II has assigned a pair of hard-nosed agents to gather information on her target, whose experiments with sex magic and eldritch artifacts are approaching a cosmic crescendo. Drawn into the volatile chemistry of Jack's inner circle and tempted with knowledge and power, Catherine must determine what's at stake for a world threatened by dark forces and decide where her true loyalties lie.Featuring 25 pages of black-and-white illustrations by Mat Fitzsimmons