Thackery Phin, the delightfully eccentric American University philosopher turned detective, is attracted to the headquarters of a spiritualistic group and the beginning of his second case. When a rock star is killed after trying to levitate from a fourth story window, and another member disappears behind a locked door while demonstrating astral projection, Phin begins to suspect that the members of the society may be involved in something far blacker than seances. The curse of an Egyptian amulet, a dark seance parlor, lurking death in an orgone box, psychic poison and live burial—Sladek's brainteaser fairly creeps with fiendish happenings.