The Master rose, the Hellmouth opened, and Sunnydale…adapted. Blood is rationed. Feeding is regulated. And the new Slayer is nowhere to be found.

Grace doesn’t care about any of that.

Her only goal is survival. A contract worker for the Exchange, Grace takes the jobs no one else wants—crime scene cleanup, monster removal, asset recovery.

It’s a simple system. Do the job. Get paid. Stay alive.

Until a “routine” consensual feeding death lands on her desk.

On the surface, everything is cut and dry, and all Grace needs to do is sign on the dotted line. But things in the case don’t line up, and the deeper she digs, the clearer it becomes: this wasn’t an accident. It was made to look like one—because in Sunnydale, the rules aren’t there to protect people, they’re there to protect what’s feeding on them.

The investigation drags her into parts of the city she’s spent years avoiding and into the orbit of people who complicate everything: a vampire bureaucrat clinging to the illusion of power, a washed up Watcher who wishes he’d died with his Slayer, and an enigmatic half-demon enforcer who insists he’s half-human, not the other way around.

Grace has spent her life staying out of the fight.

Now the fight has found her.