The dead don't cast spells.
The living do.
Isabel Ramos left the LAPD because she could no longer live with what the system asked her to ignore. Now she works alone, taking the cases that pay and watching for the ones that don't make sense.
Beneath the bed of a murder suspect in one of New Orleans's oldest families, police find a ritual packet made from authentic objects and constructed with enough knowledge to pass as a curse.
Only the woman the family wants blamed can see where that knowledge ends.
The Dalcourts are old money: private, powerful, and accustomed to making trouble disappear. They hire Isabel to make their daughter Camille's case disappear into someone else's name.
Working with Patrice Delisle, a New Orleans private investigator with his own history of the family, Isabel begins tracing the packet's materials — and discovers that every object in it was taken from a past the Dalcourts thought they owned.
Their investigation leads to a forgotten killing and the machinery that has protected the Dalcourt name for generations. As the family closes ranks, Isabel begins to understand that Camille's crime was never an isolated act.
Someone has been directing the living.
And they have not finished yet.