Paul Simard's life is a mess. When his mother dies, and his boyfriend moves out, the only thing Paul has left is his hoarder house cleaning business, and that's not exactly a recipe for dating success. But after Paul gets a call to clean out the home of some elderly biologist, nothing will ever be the same. You see, 928 Avirosa isn't just your normal cleanout. Something in the house is...alive. It's not just the fungal carpet or the mushrooms growing over every surface, or even the disturbing smell. It's the woman's voice he hears inside his head. The creeping sense he's been invaded. The powerful connections to memories and people he's never seen. Yes. Something in that house is alive. And it wants to speak to him. Before long, Paul understands the house hoards more than just secrets - and Paul's life depends upon uncovering its answers.

Now working homicide, Wager lands a gruesome case in the botanic garden Homicide cops are always suspicious of the drug enforcement division, so when ex-narcotics detective Gabe Wager arrives on the murder squad, his first assignment is the graveyard shift. His new commanding officer hopes that the late shift will keep Wager out of trouble, and give him a chance to learn the byzantine regulations that govern murder investigations. But two days later, a call comes in just after dawn reporting a death at Denver's botanic gardens. Wager could leave it for the morning shift, but he is hungry to prove himself, and legs it over to the scene of the horrid crime.   The young woman's head has been left inside the gardens, her body nowhere to be found. Without any way of identifying her, Wager is stuck without a lead. But when her torso surfaces in a junkyard, he begins the slow grind of finding the murderer who dismembered this once beautiful model.