Irka has never been a victim. Or unfortunate. Sure, she lives in a shabby wreck. Sure, her mother went to Germany to work and disappeared—Irka doesn’t know anything about her father except what her grandmother calls him: “Stud!” Teachers whisper: “A troubled girl…” She hears—her hearing is very sharp. And she has extraordinary gifts for languages. And… something strange begins happening around her and inside her. Whose eyes are watching her from the dark, and what Power is singing in her blood? And who—Power and blood—might they need? It all starts with an offer she can’t refuse if she wants to get her mother back. Have we mentioned that Irka was never a victim?