Dr. Marie Levant aka Leveau, great-great granddaughter of Marie Laveau, has achieved fame and notoriety for saving New Orleans from the wrath of a vampire. Now she's taking a break from the city, heading up the highway to DeLaire. She doesn't know this backwater town, but an elderly woman called Nana has been expecting Marie to arrive and save her and others in this God-forsaken place from sickness and death.

Yet all of Marie's powers can't bring life back to the corpses she finds in a house by the road. Nor can she force those who know how they died to say so or to confess. Were the crimes committed by shape-shifters, vampires, and ghosts--or by living men and women? And even as Marie searches for answers, a hurricane threatens to break the levees of Louisiana and cause unimaginable destruction.

Jewell Parker Rhodes blends magic and man-made evil and weaves New Orleans's past and present into a spine-tingling mystery that is masterfully crafted and deeply haunting.