In the summer of 1997, nineteen-year-old Charlotte Baum and her little sister Annaliese were abducted off the streets of St. Louis by a fledgling serial killer. After killing Charlotte too quickly with an overdose of mind-altering drugs, her captor turned to the dark arts to repair his broken toy. Offering up Annaliese in exchange for the unholy knowledge he needed to bring Charlotte back from the dead, he ended up getting a hell of a lot more than he bargained for.

Twenty-six years later, Cherry - as Charlotte is now known - survives as a grave wight, an all-but-immortal reanimated corpse who must feed on the soul of at least one human being each lunar cycle. She stalks the darkest shadows of her hometown, hunting down violent criminals who slip through the cracks in a broken system, killing with the touch of a hand.

Cherry operates by a strict moral code: the people she preys upon must be unquestionably guilty and utterly beyond redemption. But when the bodies of innocent people start turning up all over the City, each bearing the unmistakable hallmarks of grave wight kills, Cherry and her allies in the Police Department must track down clues to the killer's identity, a killer seemingly intent on amassing an army of the undead. And Cherry quickly realizes that the culprit may be someone closer to her than she ever imagined.