Some people are born with a birthmark, but everyone has a deathmark, eventually. 16-year-old Michael and his mother have been running from the Shadow Woman for as long as Michael can remember. Every time they begin to settle in somewhere, the Shadow Woman shows up and people start to die. Now Michael and his mother are hiding out in Portland, Oregon, and he doesn't want to leave. He has made friends his own age, Bobbie and Jules. And then there's young Sam, who has a dirty yellow glow around his body that no one can see except Michael. He's seen this glow before: around the man who died in the alley outside their home in Phoenix and around Melissa, as a truck came barreling toward her. Michael had been able to save her, and she was convinced he was some kind of angel. Now people around him are beginning to die again, and he wonders if he's a mark of death for everything and everyone he loves.