Aided by hexes and a bag of charmed relics, the Wilbies have recovered children abducted by chimney-wraiths, removed infestations of barb-nosed incubi, and ventured into the Gray Plains of the Unmade to soothe a troubled ghost.

Well-acquainted with the weird, they never shy away from a challenging case. But when they are approached by the royal secretary and told the king pleads to be baked into a cake - going so far as to wedge himself inside a lit oven - the Wilbies soon find themselves embroiled in a mystery that could very well see the nation turned on its head.

Their effort to expose a royal secret buried under forty years of lies brings them nose to nose with a violent antiroyalist gang, avaricious ghouls, alchemists who draw their power from a hell-like dimension, and a bookish dragon who only occasionally eats people. Armed with a love toughened by adversity and a stick of chalk that can conjure light from the darkness, hope from the hopeless, Iz and Warren Wilby are ready for whatever springs from the alleys, graves, and shadows next.