Gordon Lormor is a defrocked priest and con man. And something more. He treads a path between light and dark magic, a risky journey he avoids unless he's required to take it.

But his ex-girlfriend makes a fear-laced telephone call to him, pleading that he come to Vermont and free her from a witches' coven. Gordon leaves his business, Profane Possibilities, in the care of his assistant and drives north.

Death arrives before he does, and Gordon tasks himself with solving the murder and eradicating the coven. As his situation worsens, he asks for help from both his decidedly unfeminine assistant AJ and a Catholic cardinal.

Death revisits often as Gordon, joined by AJ, picks open the protective scab the witches have clotted over their activities. He teeters further and further over the edges of physical and spiritual death as he struggles to prevent infant sacrifice and solve the murder of the woman he had loved.