A first edition of a 1968 book of poems, with a sonnet that appears in no other copy -- a mysterious girl with a special fountain-pen, who needs a special favor -- and an old woman who warns used-book dealer George Sydney that helping the girl he's fallen in love with will mean that he will never have fallen in love.

Hollywood Boulevard, with its bars and used-book stores and the legendary Chinese Theater, is the psychic killing ground where Sydney must learn the rules of an old supernatural rivalry -- and choose to save either the woman he loves, or his soul.