When NYPD police detective Morgan Reilly discovers the lamp and frees the djinn, she thinks she's hallucinating. After all, she's just back on the job after a high-speed chase left her with a head injury, and it's not the first visual hallucination she's had since the auto accident.

But freeing the djinn brings Mere, an exiled merman, charging into her life. He and his sidekick, Lynell, an elf, failed in their duty to protect a dragon's hoard and must get it back.

Because Morgan can see him and interact with him although other humans can't, Mere enlists her help in finding the hoard before the human sorcerer into whose hands it has fallen can learn its deadly secrets. But first he has to convince her that he's real.