Emily Banter has spent years surviving Albert Hauser — her captor in everything but name, and the architect of fraudulent séances that profit from the grieving. She's finally saved enough to leave. One last night. One last performance. Then a life that belongs to her.
Instead, a guest opens a box she was warned never to touch.
What emerges is ancient, patient, and drawn to sorrow like a current to water. When it devours one of the guests, Emily understands their careful deception has torn something open that cannot be closed. Worse, the entity has chosen her—sensing a grief deep enough to be its finest feast—and begins orchestrating deaths within her circle to ripen her despair.
Trapped between Albert's tightening grip and the Shadow's hunger, Emily finds unexpected allies in Mabel, a librarian fluent in old folklore, and Gilda Thatcher, a practitioner of magic who recognizes the mark on Emily. But the entity cannot be driven away. It can only be bound—by the one whose grief it hunts.
