Seventeen-year-old Flora Mackey is not exactly thrilled to wake up from a car accident and find out she’s a ghost. Making this lifelike hell even worse is being trapped with her arch enemy and collision partner, Laney Tipps. The two normally couldn’t get along if their lives depended on it, but now they have no choice. After recovering from the initial shock of seeing their lifeless bodies—and that they can’t escape each other—Flora and Laney have to find a way out of the twisted, gray realm. But they quickly learn that the farther they stray from their motionless corpses, the weaker they become. Luckily Sara, a spirit guide, shows up to help. Sara informs them they’ll have to wait for someone in their city to die so they can take their place in the land of the living. What’s scarier than waiting in purgatory? Time. If Flora and Laney don’t return to the physical world and leave clues for their families that they’re still alive, they’ll never be found. Which sucks, because once their bodies give out, their souls will be permanently stuck in the afterlife.

Laney Tipps wasn’t planning on returning to Lichburn ever again, especially after her unconscious body was found by her boyfriend. But sometimes life—and the afterlife—throws obstacles at a person from every direction. When Laney returns to Lichburn with Sara, her former spirit guide, she was prepared to move on, not get stuck in the all-too-familiar gray world, performing her civil duties. The Elders have all agreed that Laney is perfect for their newest job: locating the soul responsible for creating rifts in the veil between reality and the Shadowlands. If she wants to move on to Rosewood, however, she must find the soul as soon as possible, because if she doesn’t, the rifts will become too vast to seal, and the dead will walk among the living.