"An unconventional woman and a man shrouded in mystery walk a tightrope of desire as they race against a killer to find a machine that could change the world"-- Former trapeze artist Amalie Vaughn moved to Burning Cove to reinvent herself, but after spending her inheritance on a mansion with the intention of turning it into a bed-and-breakfast, she learns that the villa is said to be cursed. When the first guest, Dr. Norman Pickwell, is murdered by his robot invention during a sold-out demonstration, rumors circulate that the curse is real. In the chaotic aftermath, Amalie watches Matthias Jones disappear behind the curtain, and reappear slipping a gun into a concealed holster. Matthias suspects Pickwell stole a groundbreaking prototype cipher machine and planned to sell it. But now Pickwell is dead, the machine has vanished, and time is running out. -- Adapted from jacket.

It was only a few days ago that Tess Biedermann, Theo Biedermann, and Jaime Cruz, along with a mysterious figure from the past, managed to survive an assault on the location of the latest clue in the Morningstarr cipher -- and, in the process, made a shocking discovery about their own connection to this one-hundred-sixty-year-old enigma. Now the friends are divided. Tess and Theo have no idea what the photo they found in Greenwood Cemetery means, but Jaime is convinced that they do, and that they've been keeping their own secrets from him. As the city continues to break around them, suddenly solving the greatest mystery of the modern world seems less important than saving their own friendship. The stakes of completing the cipher, however, have never been higher. Darnell Slant, real estate developer and owner of all the Morningstarr buildings, knows that they hold one last secret: a power that even the Morningstarrs themselves never revealed. The world has rested on a precarious balance of power for generations; now Slant and his shadowy business partners aim to unbalance it. It's up to Tess, Theo, and Jaime to uncover the Morningstarrs' final mystery in a desperate attempt to set things right. The world -- theirs, and possibly others -- depends on it.