Kirby behaves with sudden anxiety, alerting Ellie that someone she loves may be in danger.

Ellie's parents receive multiple missed calls revealing that cousin Trevor has been critically injured in a car accident.

Trevor appears in Ellie's dream, tells her he was murdered, and names Abe Allerton of Willowbee as his killer.

Ellie learns Trevor died overnight and decides she must travel to South Texas to protect his family.

Jay researches Abe Allerton and discovers he is a wealthy, well-connected doctor with a spotless public reputation.

Ellie and her father drive past Allerton's gated mansion, where Kirby growls and refuses to calm down.

Abe Allerton appears at Trevor's public wake and asks Ellie for the location of the burial site.

A Hollywood psychic hired by Allerton visits the accident scene and gives a false account of Trevor's death.

Aunt Bell senses two people suffered at the real crash site and channels Trevor's final desperate cries for help.

Allerton catches Ellie and Jay livestreaming his clinic and offers Ellie money to stop her investigation.

Baby Gregory accidentally wakes Trevor's ghost, and the emissary announces it will confront Allerton at his party.

Ellie and her mother discover that Trevor's body has been stolen from his grave.

A vampire named Glorian lures Ellie and Jay inside Allerton's mansion and locks them in.

Allerton confesses to the ballroom crowd that he descends from Nathaniel Grace and that Willowbee's survival depends on him.

Ellie summons every ancestor dog, overwhelms Allerton's exorcists, drags Allerton into the underworld, and surfaces without Kirby.

When Ellie's ghost dog Kirby behaves with sudden anxiety, it signals that something terrible is about to happen to someone Ellie loves. Her cousin Trevor dies in a suspicious car accident, but not before visiting Ellie in a dream and naming his murderer: Dr. Abe Allerton of Willowbee, Texas. Ellie and her family travel to South Texas, where Allerton begins actively interfering with their investigation by sending a fake psychic, showing up at the funeral, and bribing Ellie to stop asking questions. With the help of her best friend Jay and his psychic aunt, Ellie pieces together the truth about how Allerton transferred his fatal drunk-driving injuries onto Trevor. The crisis reaches a peak when Trevor's ghost is accidentally freed and steals his own corpse, forcing a violent confrontation at Allerton's mansion that Ellie ends by dragging the doctor into the underworld.

The core murder mystery, from Trevor's death to Allerton's downfall.

Ellie finds Jay on the Herotonic Bridge, holding spray paint and trying to modify graffiti after his breakup.

Ellie's mother sharply rebukes Ellie's offer to raise Trevor from the dead, declaring human ghosts are terrible things.

Ellie and Jay meet at the mall, and she asks him to quietly research Abe Allerton online.

Al spray-paints a marriage proposal to Ronnie on the bridge beam, causing Jay to fall into the river.

Ellie recalls a past hike with Trevor where she defeated a revenge-seeking Leech monster using an army of ghost mosquitoes.

A gas station cashier suspects Ellie of theft after she pays for a trilobite fossil, and she is stopped on her way out.

Lenore begs Ellie to use her ghost-raising power to bring Trevor back, and Ellie firmly refuses.

Vivian tells Ellie the story of Six-Great confronting a coyote man who had disguised himself as a monster in a bottomless chasm.

Ellie searches Trevor's old teaching materials and finds Brett Allerton's school report on ancestor Nathaniel Grace, complete with a leech drawing.

While practicing in a park with a trilobite fossil, Ellie accidentally floods the area with ghost sea creatures and enters the underworld.

Jay notices that the white mushrooms growing all over Willowbee belong to a fairy-ring-forming species capable of teleportation.

Elder Dan warns Ellie that dwelling on death causes a ghost trainer to lean over the wall separating the living from the dead.

Ellie, Jay, and Al locate Al's coffin in the mansion dungeon and pry it open to free him.

The entity controlling Trevor's body admits it is not Trevor but an emissary of a murdered man unleashed for vengeance.

Weeks after the battle, Kirby returns home and drops an old leather toy that rattles with dried mesquite seeds.

Before the tragedy strikes, Ellie's ordinary life is filled with small moments that quietly establish who she is: a loyal friend, a curious ghost trainer, and someone who has faced prejudice all her life. As the investigation begins, her best friend Jay commits fully to helping her, while Lenore's grief pushes her toward dangerous decisions, including begging Ellie to do the one thing she has been forbidden to do. Ellie's investigation is shaped by important discoveries, including a school report connecting Allerton to his wicked ancestor and a trilobite experiment that accidentally pulls her into the underworld. An elder's warning reframes Ellie's gift as a double-edged power, while Jay's observation about fairy-ring mushrooms cracks open the mystery of how Willowbee operates. The story closes with Ellie reunited with Kirby, who returns from the underworld carrying a toy that forges an unexpected connection to her legendary ancestor.

The supporting moments and character turns that shaped the investigation.

Ellie spots an owl while biking through the dark, and the sight fills her with dread.

Ellie's father warns her that without evidence, she cannot accuse anyone of murder, even based on a dream.

Ellie and her father trace their route on a map and realize Willowbee is the exact town Trevor named in the dream.

Vivian tells Ellie the story of Six-Great hunting a two-faced river monster that used a human mask to lure victims to drown.

Ellie finds a comb tangled with Trevor's black hair in Lenore's bathroom and panics that it could call him back.

Ellie notices that Allerton arrived at Trevor's wake driving a brand-new car with a temporary license tag.

Aunt Bell tours the real accident site and channels a memory of Trevor begging someone to stop and then screaming in pain.

Vampires ambush Ellie and her mother near Allerton's mansion, and Vivian banishes one by invoking Lipan Apache land rights.

Jay and Ellie find a letter from President Roosevelt in the Willowbee library thanking its doctors for healing a wound that never happened.

Ellie presents her complete theory: Allerton was drunk driving, Trevor stopped to help, and Allerton transferred his fatal injuries onto Trevor.

Vivian reveals the secret final chapter of Six-Great's life: she entered the underworld to comfort her husband's ghost and never came back.

Ellie summons her grandmother's woolly mammoth ghost inside Allerton's mansion, and it launches Glorian into a far wall.

Vivian tells the story of a man who threatened her as a child, and how the mammoth ghost killed him to protect her.

An exorcist reaches the emissary during the ballroom chaos and banishes it back to the underworld.

Lenore decides to leave South Texas, gives Ellie Trevor's comic books, and quietly remembers that he was a good man.

From the very first chapter, small signs point toward the danger ahead, including a portentous owl sighting and a family story about a shape-shifting river predator that lures victims by wearing a human face. As Ellie and her family piece together the truth, each revelation tightens the mystery: the crash site is in the wrong location, Allerton has dark ancestral powers, and Willowbee itself has been hiding from maps for two centuries. Allerton's escalating aggression, from sending vampires to attack Ellie's mother to stealing Trevor's body, confirms that he will destroy anything in his path to stay hidden. The climax hinges on two major turning points: Vivian's revelation that even the legendary Six-Great could not escape the underworld, and Ellie's decision to take the greatest risk of her life to stop a man who feels untouchable. In the aftermath, the community begins to rebuild while Lenore finds a way to move forward, and Ellie inherits a symbol of her ancestor's approval.