'Family was a hateful bitch, it was. I had the hot poker scars of that burned into my flesh, but, scars or not, sometimes family was all you had worth playing with. Maybe he would see that. Maybe he would want to play too. I played rough . . . I played to win.'
If anyone knows that having family isn't always a good thing, it's half-human/ half-living nightmare Cal Leandros. But for once, it's not his relatives causing the trouble. That headache belongs to his half-brother, Niko. His ne'er-do-well father is in town. He needs a favour, and if Niko refuses, it just might doom the entire city.
Yet an even more dangerous reunion is in the works. The entire lying, stealing, hormonally charged Puck race (including the brothers' lethally charismatic friend Robin Goodfellow) is in town for their millennial meeting - and to hold a lottery that no Puck wants to win. As Cal tries to keep both Niko and Robin from paying the ultimate price for their kin, a horrific reminder from Cal's own past arrives to remind him that blood is thicker than water . . . and that's why it's so much more frightening to spill.