County Judge Bertha Brannon's life blows up when her partner of twelve years, police sergeant Toni Matulis, the love of her life, is killed during a domestic violence call gone bad. Bertha is still trying to accept what's happened when she gets the first of several threatening phone calls. This is followed by one dangerous incident after the next, one dead body after the last. The police are no help, so Bertha starts her own investigation and learns that Toni was working on a case that no one wanted her to solve, a case of corruption that goes all the way to the top.

For Lisa Crandall the onset of adolescence brought with it the fiery dreams that challenge her sanity. Night after night she watches the flesh burn off her own body in an emerging tale of a young woman burned as a witch. Offered a teaching position on the East Coast Lisa and brother Carter, move cross-country to search for the cause of the dreams. In Anderson's Landing she literally runs into one of the School Board in the person of Michael Adams.On a quest of his own, they join forces and seek out the evil that has plagued Maple Ridge Township for three hundred years.