If murder can have a silver lining, it's 200-year-old Dovey's blossoming romance with handsome FBI agent Grant "Gib" Barlow. The two have become smitten since solving their first case together. But when a fellow agent at Gib's Bureau office who is suspected of being a mystic disappears, Dovey can't help but wonder . . . is Elric, her boss, jealous former lover, and world's most powerful mystic, responsible?

Then three murders occur with seemingly no common MO—until the medical examiner discovers that hidden on each body is a small piece of paper with the victim's full name written in elaborate script. To Dovey's eye, the script sparkles with a magical luminescence. She connects more dots when she hears about a binding gone terribly wrong within Elric's territory.

Respected mystic Veda Akkineni recently cast a binding spell on an unbound named Fitch, then enslaved him, forcing him to churn out magical trinkets at a brutal pace. Desperate to escape, yet bound from murdering Veda directly, Fitch has imbued a limited-edition Montblanc pen with the power to compel others to do the deed—whenever it's used to spell out a person's full name. But testing it has created a small army of indiscriminately murderous serial killers . . .

To stop the madness, Dovey and Gib must find Fitch and confiscate the pen. But when Fitch decides to end Dovey's meddling by writing out her name, it's her own eternal life Dovey will be fighting for . . .