A favor for a friend puts Anita Blake in the center of a full-blown scandal that threatens master vampire Jean- Claude's reign-and makes her a pawn in an ancient vampire queen's new rise to power.

Anita Blake, who is having relationship problems of her own with her first female lover, has an unforgettable experience when she agrees to help her good friend, werewolf Jason Schuyler, handle his bisexual lover.

Anita Blake is worried that her careers as a Federal Marshal who raises the dead and as a vampire executioner may be jeopardized when she realizes that she may be pregnant--and the father could be a vampire, a werewolf, or someone else entirely.

When a rogue master vampire named Alejandro hits town and claims Anita Blake, an expert on undead creatures of the night, as his human servant, a war of the undead breaks out between the interloper and Jean-Claude, the city's Master Vampire, a situation complicated when Anita falls for Richard Zeeman, a handsome teacher with his own dark secret.