Carter's a homicide cop in Titanshade, an oil boomtown where 8-tracks are state of the art, disco rules the radio, and all the best sorcerers wear designer labels. It's also a metropolis teetering on the edge of disaster. As its oil reserves run dry, the city's future hangs on a possible investment from the reclusive amphibians known as Squibs.

Once and twice and thrice around, Put your heart into the ground. Four and five and six tears shed, Give your love unto the dead. Seven shadows on the wall, Eight have come to watch your fall: One's for the gargoyle, one's for the grave, And the last is for the one you'll never save. For Rose Marshall, death has long since become the only life she really knows. She's been sweet sixteen for more than sixty years, hitchhiking her way along the highways...

Jeff and Kitty Katt-Martini have learned the ins and outs of Washington politics, not the mention how to prevail in intergalactic war and foil dangerous plots. But, in the aftermath of Operation Destruction, the Gower girls' powers are burned out, the entire A-C population has been "outted" as aliens living on Earth and ACE is nowhere to be found. Then murder and mayhem are served up at an important dinner party at the American Centaurion Embassy...