The Archer twins are fourteen, beautiful, dangerous. Now Carroll Lawton is left alone to bring them up. A phone call in the night changes Carroll's life. A newspaper reporter, she learns that her new husband, Steve, whom she thought she knew, had a first wife, Vivian, and is the father of twin girls. In the wake of Vivian's sudden death, Steve is flying west to bring them home. Then a fresh tragedy leaves Carroll alone to take care of Steve's strange, silky, and exquisite daughters, who live a bizarre secret life on the third floor of the Archer mansion, high above the California coast. Identical twins Jane and Emily Archer are by turns delightful and enigmatic. Lovely and unnerving, they baffle doctors and police as they pursue their singular obsession. Communicating in a private language, the girls live out a compelling drama of their own. Their secret passions overflow into the real worth with terrifying consequences when they are uprooted and move into Carroll's childhood home in Florida. Assigned to track down the truth about a series of killings in her small town, Carroll follows the trail back to her own family home. The terror escalates as she plunges into a life-and-death struggle for the twins' souls—and her own life. Once burned, twice shy, Carroll thinks. At least it's what she wants to believe. But in the world of the twins, she finds it's once burned, twice burned.