Someone wants Marla Mason dead. Usually that's not news. As chief sorcerer of Felport, someone always wants her dead. But this time she's the target of a renegade assassin who specializes in killing his victims over days, months, or even years. Not to mention a mysterious knife-wielding killer in black who pops up in the most unexpected places.

To make matters worse, an inmate has broken out of the Blackwing Institute for criminally insane sorcerers - a troubled psychic who can literally reweave the fabric of reality to match her own traumatic past.

With her wisecracking partner Rondeau reluctantly in tow, Marla teams up with a "love-talker" whose dangerous erotic spells not even she can resist.

Together they're searching the rapidly transforming streets of Felport for a woman who's become the Typhoid Mary of nightmares, infecting everything - and everyone - she touches with a chaos worse than death itself.