Chloe Dorn is missing. The sixteen-year-old was there, in the Stanford Cactus Garden, the night of the murder. She saw something, knows something. Now she's running for her life. A young man is dead, killed in a particularly bizarre and frightening way. The cops find the body, neatly laid out with hands crossed on his chest, two puncture wounds to the neck, his blood drained. Either a cult is at work, or a cunning killer has taken a vampire game too far. Vampire games permeate this case, as private investigator Catherine Sayler soon discovers when she's called in both to search for a computer programmer who has disappeared and to help find Chloe. Chloe Dorn had a fascination with vampires, and she knew Matt Demming. Together, they were part of an LARP, a Live Action Role-Playing game, in which human beings play the role of vampires and the city streets become the game board. Chloe and Matt played the game the night they disappeared. Matt, Catherine soon learns, is the victim who was killed in the Cactus Garden. Catapulted into a high-profile case, where the cops, the media, and Chloe's outraged pastor are screaming "cults", Catherine plays for time as she enlists her niece Molly, her lover Peter, and her partner Jesse in her search for the truth, and, even more urgently, for Chloe.