Perhaps Camilla Haven unintentionally invoked the gods that afternoon in the crowded Athens café when she wrote to a friend, “Nothing ever happens to me.” But a few hours later, an extraordinary train of events had dispatched Camilla to Delphi, to be in the company of a charming but quietly determined Englishman named Simon Lester. Simon told Camilla he had come to the ancient Greek ruins to “appease the shade” of his brother Michael, killed some fourteen years earlier on Parnassus. From a curious letter Michael had written, Simon believed his brother had stumbled upon something of great importance hidden in the craggy reaches of the mountainside.

And then Simon and Camilla learned that they were not alone in their search . . .