A wealthy widow returns to her large home in an exclusive Minneapolis suburb to find blood everywhere, no body - and her student daughter missing. Instantly, she suspects the involvement of the weird Goth crowd her daughter had been hanging around with. With no sign of the widow's daughter, dead or alive, a second Goth is found slashed to death - but it's only when a third dead Goth turns up that Lucas Davenport gets involved. But the clues don't seem to add up. Then there's the young Goth who keeps appearing and disappearing. Who is she? Where does she come from and, more importantly, where does she vanish to? And why does Davenport get the sneaking suspicion that there is something else going on here - something very, very bad indeed?