Harry Dresden, professional wizard - he appears in the phone directory under "Wizards", after all - receives a call: a woman wants to hire him to find her missing husband. About the same time, Lieutenant Karrin Murphy, head of Special Investigations in the Chicago Police Department, asks for his help to solve a mysterious crime, that of a man and a woman whose hearts exploded while they were having sex.
The man turns out to be connected with Johnny Marcone, the local Mob boss, who tries to get Harry to forget about the case. Then there's the new magical drug on the street, Three-Eye, which forcibly opens the True Sight.
This is not a good thing, given how horrifying some things are in the Sight. Harry tries to take on both investigations at once, which proves easier than expected because of their interconnections.
He investigates people connected to the dead woman a prostitute , including a coworker and her Red Court vampire boss, Bianca. The meeting with Bianca doesn't go very well- when Dresden bleeds, Bianca loses control and attacks him.
He defends himself, and her frazzled mental state later causes her to overfeed from and kill one of her human thralls. Remember this, it'll be important later. With the Bianca angle a bust though he got some help from the coworker , he starts investigating the missing husband, Victor Sells, and with some help from his dewdrop fairy informant Toot-Toot discovers that he may have been engaged in sex rituals. Also, he seems to be a magic user himself, new and untrained but fairly strong.
