Miss Kitty's already has several missing people cases, but this one is for Sazzy. Savory Lyy, a racing buddy of Sazzy's favorite brother, asks Sazzy to find her younger brother, Shalin, who has run away. Using her Seek talent on the boy's handfasting bands, Sazzy goes hunting. She follows Shalin and a friend of his out of the country into Ai'Bet. In a tiny town, just across the border, she catches up to them. But she is too late. The local constable says he is dead—not of his fall down the cliff, but of magic drain. Turning her simple runaway case into a case of murder.