Erzulie shouldn’t be in the Dreaming; in fact, she isn’t really sure how she suddenly got stranded there. Worse, she soon learns that she is no longer connected to her worshippers, which, for a deity, means only one death. Against the advice of Cain and Abel, Erzulie steers her houseboat back into the rip between the worlds in an effort to return to her realm. But how will she find her way back, and what danger lies ahead in the otherworldly waters she finds herself sailing? Meanwhile, Latoya’s sisters and her girlfriend watch her comatose body in the hospital, praying she’ll wake up, not realizing they’d best be careful what they wish for…

As the life sparks of non-dreamers continue to populate the Dreaming at an alarming rate due to the spreading of Cotard’s delusions in the Waking World, Turtle and Shakpana race to see who can track down Maggie and retrieve the mysterious Book of Whispers first. Turtle, on behalf of Erzulie Dantor, hopes to stop and reverse the epidemic, while Shakpana seeks to control it…

Latoya is in a coma. Her girlfriend enlists the help of Latoya’s two younger sisters. Using the Book of Whispers, they mistakenly steal the essence of Erzulie, a deity of voodoo mythology. The psychic blowback of the spell causes her house to crash into the Dreaming, beside the Houses of Secrets and Mystery and their custodians, Cain and Abel. In the real world, the awakened young woman suffers a mystical form of Cotard’s Delusion—she believes she is already dead, and she’s transmitting her belief to others, causing them to become guardians of the Gap that has appeared in the Dreaming.