Cassandra Palmer has had a rough life.  She is in her mid-twenties and on the run from Vampires.  When she returns from her dinner break at the travel agency, someone has changed the wallpaper on her computer to her obituary in the next days paper.  She is going to be killed in a little over an hour.  Before she runs, she has to let her roommate know why she’s leaving.  Cassie is a clairvoyant and talks to ghosts.  On her way to the club where she sometimes tells futures, she runs into one of the resident ghosts of Atlanta, Portia.  Portia is a southern belle who died before she made it to her wedding.  Cassie asks Portia if she has seen Billy Joe.  Billy Joe is a bad gambler from the 1800′s who got caught cheating and was killed, but luckily he had won a truly horrific gemstone necklace from a countess the week before and the gem stored residual energy.  The gem was enough to keep Billy Joe around and when Cassie came across the necklace at 17, she started giving him life energy so he could help her.  Portia hasn’t seen Billy Joe, but says she and her friends will enjoy playing lookout.  

Cassie was raised by Tony, a 3rd level master vampire, who ran the Philly mob.  He used her visions to make money, and had killed her parents when she was 4 because they objected to Tony raising her.  Cassie took off at 14 and did pretty well as a street kid but came back to get Tony taken down by the FBI for his illegal dealings with no mention of vampires.  Then she went into Witness Protection for a while, until she saw the death of her handler and couldn’t convince the marshal service to take her seriously.  

Cassie’s roommate is Tomas, a gorgeous young man who she met through the street kid program where she volunteers.  He has been living with her for 6 months and has made some sexual advances, which horrified Cassie as she was just trying to be nice.  She gets to the club and tries to tell Tomas she has to run.  He says he is coming with her and says he has to tell her something, and they duck into a storeroom.  5 master level vamps come in after them.  Somehow, Cassie and Tomas make it through the fight.  Tomas ripped out two of the vamps hearts out.  He uses the metal shelving unit to impale another one.  Cassies ward takes care of one and a group of Ghosts explodes the other.

Cassie has a vision of Thomas when he first becomes a vampire, causing her to panic.  Here she thought she was doing something good, and he turns out to be a master level vampire.  She has seen him in sunlight.  In order to keep her from leaving, Tomas dances with her and lightly kisses her neck and then her.  He is clearly being affected by his proximity, and he begins to kiss her for real.  He lifts her to his waist with the suggestion that she not fight him.  And he starts back for the storeroom.  His power surrounds her and he manages to have a pretty steamy sex scene with her and then he gets her to give him the gun.  He has her go to sleep.

When she wakes up she is in a waiting room.  The Oracle (newspaper for the paranormal) is several months old and has the headline of “Pythia’s heir missing: time out of whack”.  Raphael (yes that Raphael) tells Cassie that Tomas was assigned as her bodyguard by the senate.  And the betrayal is bothering Cassie.