In half-hearted collusion with a neighbor desperate to find a runaway husband, architect Etta Baxter agrees to vacation on the mid-California coast in the sleepy town of Satyr's Graze, where she steps into a magnificent stone house with a monster on the outside in the form of a gargoyle and discovers there might be a monster lurking on the inside as well. The possibility of a peaceful retreat vanishes as event after event places Etta at the center of conflict. She becomes part of a blood-soaked crime and meets a family she won't soon forget, particularly when one of the owners, a wheelchair bound psychic named Toby, who has a tall, handsome twin called Noel, claims Etta has known all of them before, in lives lived thousands of years ago, and that someone or some 'thing' among them has unfinished business with everyone in the house.