Dresden is cursed. He houses a hive of bees in his chest, which he can't stop from stinging people with psychosis-inducing venom. He has been this way for centuries--since he was eighteen and magic flowed through his homeland, corrupting its people. He follows a troupe of harbingers of death to a Midwest town marked for impending disaster. There, he encounters Essie, a seventeen-year-old girl who suffers from debilitating delusions and hallucinations. His bees want to sting her on sight, but Essie doesn't see a monster when she looks at Dresden, prompting him to hold back his bees and spare her. What starts out as a simple act of mercy ends up unraveling Dresden's solitary life and Essie's tormented one. An impossible romance blooms, even as Essie is pulled into a murder investigation and Dresden embarks on a desperate quest to unravel a centuries-old curse.