It s late December between Ground Zero and Fatal Error, a winter of discontent for Jack, who s perhaps spending too much time hanging at Julio s. An old contact, Edward Burkes, convinces him to take on a missing-person fix. As usual, nothing is as it seems and the missing person isn t exactly a person. In fact, it s like nothing anyone has ever seen. And in the middle of all this, the mysterious Madame de Medici hires Jack to safeguard a valuable object. Simple, right? Not even close —