Here is Lily, a photojournalist in search of the "animal people" who supposedly haunt the city's darkest slums. Here is Hank, who knows those slums all too well. One night, in a brutal incident, their lives collide--uptown Lily and downtown Hank, each with a quest and a role to play in the secret drama of the city's oldest inhabitants. For the animal people walk among us. Native Americans call them the First People, but they have never left, and they claim they city for their own. Not only have Hank and Lily stumbled onto a secret, they've stumbled into a war. And in this battle for the city's soul, nothing is quite as it appears.