Under Miss Beatrice Lockwood's plain gray gown, a pistol waits at the ready. For Beatrice is a paid companion on a secret mission, and with a secret past, and she must be prepared to fight for her life at any moment. Yet she is thrown off guard by the fierce-looking man who joins her in foiling a crime outside a fancy ball, and who then disappears into the shadows, leaving only his card. Joshua Gage is a cipher in the shadows with a hypnotically calm voice and an ebony-and-steel cane. Joshua, who carries out investigations for the Crown, is equally intrigued. He has a personal interest in Miss Lockwood, a suspected murderer, not to mention a fraudster with claims of psychical powers. The search for her has pulled him away from his mournful impulses to hurl himself into the sea, and engaged his curiosity about the real Beatrice Lockwood, whose spirit, he suspects, is not as delicate as her figure. He does know one thing, though: This flame-haired beauty was present the night Roland Fleming died at the Academy of the Occult. Guilty or not, she is his guide to a trail of blood and blackmail, mesmerism and madness, a path that will lead them into the clutches of a killer who calls himself the Bone Man.