LIfe is tough enough these days for Lydia Smith, licensed Para-archaeologist. Seriously stressed-out from a nasty incident in an alien tomb, she is obliged to work part-time in Shrimpton's House of Ancient Horrors, a very low-budget museum. she has a plan to get her career back on track, but it isn't going well. Stuff keeps happening.

Take the dead body that she discovered in one of the sarcophagus exhibits. Who needed that? Finding out that her new client, Emmett London, is one of the most dangerous men in the city isn't helping matters either. And that's just today's list of setbacks. Here in the shadows of the Dead City of Old Cadence, things don't really heat up until After Dark.