Seventeen year-old Saira Elian’s mother has disappeared, as she does for a few days every couple of years. But this time, Saira ends up searching for her—in time. Along the way she makes friends for the first time in her nomadic life, and she learns that Vampires, Seers, and Shifters are real. But she also makes enemies, including Jack the Ripper.

Ren (Alexandra Reynolds) owns a neighborhood bar in Baltimore. One evening, Edgar Allan Poe stumbles in—not an early Halloween reveler in costume, but the real thing. In the course of their acquaintance, both Ren and Poe learn more about themselves. Did I mention that Ren is descended from a freed slave mother and a white slave-owning father? And that Poe was an anti-abolitionist?