Zankou plans to get hold of the Book, but finds that impossible until the sisters' confidence, which it defense depends on, is seriously shattered. So he engages a necromancer alchemist to haunt them, first Phoebe, into despair by reviving the corpses of crucial innocents they failed to save to haunt them. Each time a sister is weakened, Zankou steals more power, until he can take the book from them. Meanwhile police inspector Sheridan refuses to take Darryl's word that the sisters are innocent in the many cases they mysteriously appeared about.
—KGF Vissers