Someone is playing deadly games. Lieutenant Luke Pittman lies in the hospital in a coma after being attacked by one of their own. Veronica Manes, Burning Lake’s most respected modern-day witch, is dead, her murder left unsolved. Natalie Lockhart has become embroiled in a case with threads that become increasingly difficult to untangle. Now, a new horror is uncovered, one that shocks the town as never before, and the dark, shadowy path forward for Natalie is paved with challenges that haunt her past --- Veronica’s unsolved case. Her sister’s traumatic murder. The long-lost disappearance of her old best friend. Natalie’s obsession with finding the truth leads to a twisted, elemental struggle between good and evil --- and nothing will ever be the same again.

Detective Natalie Lockhart gained unwanted notoriety when she and her family became front and center of two sensational murder cases. Burned out and always looking over her shoulder, Natalie desperately thinks that quitting the police force is her only option left. All that changes when a beloved resident --- a practicing Wiccan and founder of the town’s oldest coven --- is killed in a fashion more twisted and shocking than Natalie has ever seen before. Natalie has no choice but to help solve the case along with Detective Luke Pittman, her boss and the old childhood friend she cannot admit she loves, even to herself. There is a silent, malignant presence in Burning Lake that will not rest. And what happens next will shock the whole town, and Natalie, to the core.

The day after Burning Lake’s notorious, debauched Halloween celebration, Detective Natalie Lockhart uncovers a heartbreaking scene --- a young woman, dead and lying in a dumpster. There’s no clue to who she is, save for a mystifying tattoo on her arm and a callus underneath her chin. As Natalie retraces the victim’s steps leading up to her death, she uncovers a deeper, darker horror: a string of murders and disappearances, seemingly unconnected, that may have ties to each other --- and explain the abrupt disappearance of her best friend years ago. As she digs deeper within the mind of the hunter, Natalie finds a darkness she never could have imagined.

Natalie Lockhart is a rookie detective in Burning Lake, New York, an isolated town known for its dark past. Tasked with uncovering the whereabouts of nine missing transients who have disappeared over the years, Natalie wrestles with the town’s troubled history --- and the scars left by her sister’s unsolved murder years ago. Then Daisy Buckner, a beloved schoolteacher, is found dead on her kitchen floor, and a suspect immediately comes to mind. But it’s not that simple. The suspect is in a coma, collapsed only hours after the teacher’s death, and it turns out Daisy had secrets of her own. Natalie knows there is more to the case, but as the investigation deepens, even she cannot predict the far-reaching consequences --- for the victim, for the missing of Burning Lake and for herself.