Content Warning: This section contains graphic descriptions of corpses.

Harry Dresden, wizard and paranormal investigator, sits in his midtown Chicago office. He thinks about the skeptics who sometimes call merely to ask if his ad in the Yellow Pages is serious. Despite the ridicule of the skeptics, Harry knows that magic exists in the world and often creeps up when one least expects it. 

Suddenly, he receives a phone call from a woman named Monica. She asks for an appointment to speak with him about her missing husband, Victor Sells, and he schedules her for later in the afternoon. Moments later, he receives a second phone call from his friend, Lieutenant Karrin Murphy of the Chicago Police Department, who runs the Special Investigations unit to which odd or inexplicable cases are assigned. She often hires Harry to consult on crimes that have paranormal elements. In her usual brusque manner, she tells him to meet her at the Madison Hotel, where a double homicide has occurred.

Murphy is waiting for Harry outside the hotel. They go to the seventh floor, where Murphy shows him into a penthouse. As usual, Harry tries to hold the door open for Murphy, insisting on his old-fashioned sense of chivalry even though he knows that Murphy finds this habit annoying.