Calliope Thessaly is a teenage writer, bound to a beautiful home inside her beloved polis of Auburn due to her strict parents, Pan and Demeter. When her father announces a move to neighboring Griffin, Calliope is granted a little more freedom to explore, an opportunity she takes full advantage of, although she comes to find many of its pretentious inhabitants intolerable. Stress from the move reveals the cracks in her family and the discovery of a mysterious box reveals the city's dark past and provides Calliope with an opportunity to keep history from repeating itself.