Fifteen-year-old Maria leaves her mother and their Puerto Rican home to live in the barrio of New York with her father, feeling torn between the two cultures in which she has been raised.

A war is brewing among the different Houses, some of Sierra's shadowshapers are still in jail, and the House of Shadow and Light has been getting threatening messages from whisper wraiths, and even though one spy was exposed Sierra is not quite sure who she can trust--but the deal with Death made by one of her ancestors has given her power, and she will need to control it and confront her family's past if she has any hope of saving the future.

In addition to the ordinary problems of a Puerto Rican teenager in Brooklyn, Sierra Santiago is working on developing her shadowshaping skills, and she is beginning to think she may need all the skill she can summon because it seems that when she channeled hundreds of spirits through herself in order to defeat Wick she woke up something very powerful and very unfriendly and put her family and friends at risk.