In Charlie Hall's world, shadows can be altered, for entertainment and cosmetic preferences, but also to increase power and influence. She can alter someone's feelings and memories, but manipulating shadows has a cost, with the potential to take hours or days from her life. Charlie is a low-level con artist, working as a bartender while trying to distance herself from the powerful and dangerous underground world of shadow trading. She gets by doing odd jobs for her patrons and the naive new money in her town at the edge of the Berkshires. But when a terrible figure from her past returns, Charlie's present life is thrown into chaos, and her future seems at best, unclear, and at worst, non-existent. Determined to survive, Charlie throws herself into a maelstrom of secrets and murder, setting her against a cast of doppelgangers, mercurial billionaires, shadow thieves, and her own sister, all desperate to control the magic of the shadows.