""When your read this, I'll be dead…""

These are the troubling words Serena Charter's grandmother has written on a note accompanying four pages of a centuries-old illuminated manuscript delivered after the old woman's passing.

Seeking clues to the mystery laid out before her, Serena turns to Erik North, a reclusive manuscript appraiser with a passion for the past. Erik's examination of the vellum pages raises perplexing questions – about Serena's legacy, the possible location of the remainder of the manuscript…and the senseless murder of an eccentric old woman.

Suddenly, Serena and Erik find themselves in the center of a firestorm that rages between two worlds…a past long dead yet living on in an ancient text and a contemporary landscape fraught with terror. Now, there is no one they trust except each other as they get closer to a shocking revelation about what is really at stake and how far a killer will go to possess a vanished treasure.