It is a dark time. The great cities are dying, like the country, from the heart out. The Redemption Presidency tolerates vigilantes who kil according to Biblical example. The police subcontract freelancers to bring in criminals for quick and televised execution.

Diane Fletcher is one of these freelancers: a "shaper" cursed with the gift of seeing and feeling the emotions of others. Armed with her hunter skills, she takes on the mysterious death of Mask, a great actor found electrocuted in the costume of a demon. But even a shaper can become lost in the human labyrinth, where patterns of innocence, guilt, passion ans deception lead inevitably into that treacherous territory between justice and vengence.