Lila Rowan runs Needle & Nine, a basement tattoo shop with salt lines, petty wards, and a basil plant that approves of good decisions. When a cursed Nightglass coin starts buying nouns out of people's lives, and the palace moves to claim the Bell of Hollow Mercy to brand the city "Mercy District," Lila is pulled into a war between glamour and bureaucracy. With iron-quiet Kade Arlen, clerical avenger Ellery Fiske, Hex inspector M. Hart, and rope-scarred ringer Ruth Calder, Lila learns to fight magic with paperwork, primes, and refusal—with thanks.