"Alex is determined to break Darlington out of purgatory, even if it costs her a future at Lethe and at Yale. Alex and Dawes can't call on the Ninth House for help, so they assemble a team to save the gentleman of Lethe. Together, they have to navigate a maze of arcane texts and artifacts to uncover the societies' secrets and break every rule doing it. But something deadly is at work in New Haven, and if Alex is going to survive, she'll have to reckon...

As a lovely weekend approaches on the Yale campus it appears that a number of students--including the sons of both the Secretary of the Army and newest Supreme Court justice--may have gone missing. Attention quickly focuses on the fortress-like tomb of one of Yale's secret societies. Suspended Boulder police detective Sam Purdy soon finds himself in New Haven, where he joins FBI agent Christopher Poe and CIA analyst Deirdre Drake to solve the riddle...

Police reporter Annie Seymour tries to solve the mystery of a murdered Yale-student-by-day, escort-by-night. If things weren't bizarre enough, New Haven, Connecticut, is being infiltrated by a parade of ceramic cows.