After their last deployment, when she got shot, her fiance, Martinez, got killed, and his bomb-sniffing dog, Elvis, got depressed, soldier Mercy Carr and Elvis were both sent home, her late lover's last words ringing in her ears-|Take care of my partner.|

Some people take their secrets with them to the grave. Others leave them behind on their deathbeds, riddles for the survivors to solve. When her late grandfather's dying deputy calls Mercy to his side, she and Elvis inherit the cold case that haunted him-and may have killed him. But finding Beth Kilgore 20 years after she disappeared is more than a lost cause. It's a Pandora's box releasing a rain of evil on the very people Mercy and Elvis hold most...

Beware the blackbirds... It's Halloween in Vermont, winter is coming, and five humans, two dogs, and a cat are a crowd in Mercy Carr's small cabin. She needs more room--and she knows just the place: Grackle Tree Farm, with thirty acres of woods and wetlands and a Victorian manor to die for. They say it's haunted by the ghosts of missing children and lost poets and a murderer or two, but Mercy loves it anyway. Even when Elvis finds a dead body in the...