After years of self-destruction—a BPD diagnosis, shattered relationships, and a violent past she can barely speak of—Jillian Duport is finally rebuilding. She has a career she’s earned, a friendship that grounds her, and a fragile reconciliation with Ben, the man she walked away from a year ago.

Determined to honor Nikolaus, her aging patron, Jillian commissions a portrait from Bonnie, a gifted but volatile artist. But Bonnie already serves an anonymous client whose commissions are anything but ordinary: grotesque paintings accompanied by instructions written in flawless calligraphy on parchment, the words precise, transactional, and devoid of human feeling.

When Jillian discovers that some of the paintings depict members of her own family, the question shifts from “who is the client” to “what is the client?”

As Jillian hunts for answers, the world around her begins to shift. She sees storefronts that no longer exist and receives coded messages from numbers that can't be called back. Something ancient is circling closer, targeting the people Jillian loves and pulling her across the boundaries of time itself. Whatever this thing is, it doesn't have a name. It only needs to feed.