Alyson Prescott moves to Cutters Cove, Oregon, after being placed, along with her mother, in the witness protection program. In her previous life, Alyson was an A-list heiress with the excitement of a trend setting lifestyle and the security of old money. After witnessing a murder executed by two members of a powerful gang family, she is forced to leave her old life behind and become a middle class girl, living in a middle class town. Alyson struggles with the duplicity in her life as she strives to reconcile her new life with the old. In book two of the series, two Seacliff High students turn up missing just days before Halloween. The police believe that they have simply run away, but when strange and unexplained things begin to happen at the annual Haunted Hayride, Alyson begins to suspect there may be more going on than the adults in town would like to believe. After they the props and decorations for the annual event turn up missing, Alyson and the gang decide to look into the case of the missing students. Could the two events be connected? And what about the symbol found splattered in blood in the barn where the annual Halloween party is to take place? Could it be connected to the gypsy curse that most believe to be simply a legend?