Rose has reason to celebrate. She just graduated high school, she finally worked up the nerve to ask Roger on a date, and it looks like her family's necromancy skipped her.But then she finds the corpse of a homeless man behind her brother Ed's restaurant and inadvertently revives him. Not only has she inherited her family's necromancy after all, but it's the most potent form that exists. She wants nothing to do with the magic that drove her father to kill her mother and then himself, and so she refuses to read her family's book of magic or admit that she's anything but normal.However, her power attracts three lumenancers, or wielders of light, to Albuquerque to kill her. For centuries, they have believed it their sacred duty to wipe out necromancers. Not only are they eager to eliminate Rose, but they want to kill Ed, too, just to make sure he can't pass the magic on.Rose searches for a peaceful, mundane way to get the lumenancers to leave her alone, but when they threaten Ed, she must embrace her necromancy and all that the book of magic has to teach her.