Elizabeth Miles Bates has returned from her honeymoon with Gideon and is taking great pride in having completely forsaken her disreputable past. Then her friend Anna Vanderslice begs her to use her talents to save her widowed mother from an unscrupulous medium. Anna's mother has been attending séances in hopes of connecting with her son, David, who died of influenza. Anna just learned that Mrs. Vanderslice is paying the medium ever-increasing sums of money in her eagerness to make contact. Mrs. Vanderslice's obsession is in danger of ruining them.

Madame Ophelia is working with a group of con artists to fleece as many grieving New Yorkers as possible before moving on to another city. Elizabeth knows that simply exposing the medium as a fraud will not be enough to recoup the stolen money; the only way is to con the medium and her cohorts. Elizabeth recruits Gideon, her aunt Cybil, and her partner, Zelda, to lend a hand. Can Elizabeth and her gang of amateurs fool the professionals? Or will speaking to the dead lead to deadly consequences?