Forty years ago a genetically engineered virus killed half of the world's human population and exposed the creatures of dreams and nightmares that had, until then, lived in secret alongside humanity.
Rachel Morgan is a runner with the Inderland Runner Services, apprehending criminals throughout modern-day Cincinnati. She is also a witch.
Fuelled by pride, Rachel is a talented and unconventional runner, used to confronting criminal vampires, dark witches and homicidal werewolves. But her latest assignments - apprehending cable-stealing magic students and tax-evading leprechauns - have prompted her to break her thirty-year contract with the I. S. and start her own runner agency.
But no one quits the I. S.
Marked for death, Rachel is a dead witch walking unless she can appease her former employers and pay off her contract by exposing the city's most prominent citizen as a drug lord. But making an enemy of the ambiguous Trent Kalamack proves even more deadly than leaving the I. S.