PROLOGUE – WELCOME TO WINTER HAVEN

In Winter Haven, strange is the usual, wealth is the norm, and outsiders need not apply.

In this city, respectable people disappear without a trace. Healthy people die inexplicably. And no one does anything about it. Unless you consider gossiping in alcohol-laced whispers at cocktail parties an appropriate response. The desire to ensure the status quo, to protect everyone’s precious privacy, and to keep interference from authorities as minimal as possible has allowed terrible things to happen here.

One person in particular has paid the heaviest price for this perpetual looking-the-other-way: Ethan Koenig. My best friend. The man I love more than my own fucking life.

My name is Scott Westmore and I am going to do something about the one responsible for all these deaths and disappearances. The one that has lived unseen and unstopped amongst us in Winter Haven, because he has been aided and abetted by this city’s mistaken, pathetic belief that we are safe from the evil in this world so long as we ignore it exists.

What am I going to do?

I am going to kill the Erl-King.