Running low on funds, Macey Spade has accepted a new job—as a teaching assistant at Whaler’s Bay College, presiding over a class on Time-Travel in Film and Fiction. Macey anticipates a relaxed semester grading papers and browsing the stacks of the college library, but fate has several cruel tricks in store for her.

A phone call from crime scene investigator Roddy Overstreet informs her that a body has been found in the dockyards of Whaler’s Bay, in an empty warehouse storing various decorations and supplies for the upcoming fall festival. The body belongs to Perla Waffler, a forty-something heiress with a distinct lack of social awareness. Having but recently arrived in Whaler’s Bay, Perla seemed largely oblivious to the chilly reception she had received from the locals. But who would hate her enough to kill her?

Meanwhile back at the college, all is not well. The new Residence Life Coordinator, Anatole Grahame, is leading a secretive and tightly-knit student group some are alleging is a cult. The members of the group claim to possess extraordinary prophetic and magical powers. When the Dean of Campus Life enlists Macey to infiltrate the group, she finds herself drawn into the orbit of two students—Arianna Marlark, a dreamy theology student, and Gareth Frieslan, a fedora-wearing poet and music-lover. When a member of the group is murdered, Macey must act quickly to uncover Harris’s true origins and break the spell he holds over the group before disaster falls on all parties.

And are these two murders related?