The bodies tell a story of young lives cut short. The bones tell a story of pure evil.

           In Charlotte, North Carolina, a house under renovation becomes the site of a heated forensic investigation and unrelenting media attention when a plumber stumbles upon a forgotten cellar. There he finds animal and human remains — including a teenage girl’s skull — cauldrons and religious artifacts, all arranged in a gruesome display. Then an adolescent boy’s torso, carved with a pentagram, is found nearby. Panic over Satanism and devil worship has Charlotte’s citizens on a witch hunt led by an evangelical politician. For Tempe Brennan, nothing about the murders is clear . . . and neither is her own heart, which has her tempted yet reluctant to move on from her departed lover. But as she digs deeper into contradictory evidence from the gruesome cellar, Tempe will unearth the truth darker and more frightening than she ever imagined.