17-year-old Zorya lives on blood, is allergic to daylight, and can lift the front end of a car (well, a small car). And nobody in polite modern American society uses the “V” word anymore—the PC term is “Nightwalker.”

She’s a popular senior at her Nightwalker high school in the California Enclave, with good grades, the newest smartphone, and the latest clothes.

Then her easy life changes drastically. Zorya’s flirtation with David, the only human “Daywalker” in her school, gets her exiled from her comfortable home and sent packing to her grandfather in a distant Idaho forest Refuge—without even her smartphone!

There the reluctant Zorya discovers her heritage, learns skills she never needed in high school, and eventually finds out the real reason for her exile: to be trained as a member of a secret organization of Nightwalkers and Daywalkers, with one foot in each world, dedicated to preserving the fragile peace between the races.