A widow comes home to her large house in a wealthy Minneapolis suburb to find blood on the walls. But no body and her college-age daughter missing. She's always known that her daughter ran with a bad bunch. What did she call them — Goths? Freaks is more like it, running around with all that makeup and black clothing, listening to that awful music, so attracted to death. And now this.

But the police can't find her daughter, alive or dead, and she panics. There's someone she knows, a surgeon named Weather Davenport, whose husband is a big deal with the police, and she implores Weather to get her husband directly involved. Lucas comes on-board only reluctantly — but then when a second Goth is slashed to death, he starts working it hard. The clues don't seem to add up. And then there's the young Goth who keeps appearing and disappearing. Who is she? Where does she come from and, where does she vanish to?

Most important, why does Lucas have the sneaking suspicion that there is something else going on here, something very bad indeed?