A young dancer finds herself at the center of a bootlegging scheme run by elfin creatures and is forced to rely on one them to escape in this sweeping prohibition-era historical fantasy from the author of The Fairy Bargains of Prospect Hill. Working as a dancer in the Palace Ballroom, Evelyn Pulaski has become familiar with the idea of selling dreams. For a dime a dance she allows men to imagine her a partner in their lives, and then returns to the comfortable independent life she's made for herself. When a group of nix, strange elflike creatures who moonlight as bootleggers, start to hang around the Palace, Evelyn and her friends grow wary. Several dancehall girls have disappeared and the nix are the prime suspects.
Raife is also in the business of selling dreams. One of the nix bootleggers working at the Palace, he is part of an operation stealing dreams from humans and selling them in the elfinlands, the formless void the nix emerge from. With nothing tangible in their world, the nix rely on human dreams to thrive and human. Raife takes a shine to Evelyn suspecting her to be a type of vivid dreamer especially coveted by the nix.
When Evelyn's best friend disappears, she is forced to work with Raife to find her. But their rescue mission sets of a chain of events that forces Evelyn to trust Raife if she wants to save herself.
