November, 1799. Jonas Layne, the acclaimed "world's greatest violist" who performs on a notorious viola known as the Inamorta whose previous owners all have succumbed to violent fates, begins keeping a journal. He is weary of the touring life and plagued by a terrifying reoccurring nightmare of a monstrous wolf. When Jonas and his father/piano accompanist Theodore are commissioned by the enigmatic Count Rufus Canis, they travel to his residence, Teethesgate Castle, in the hinterland. Teethsgate is eccentrically opulent and grandiose, but things there are not as they seem. Something ghostly clings to the castle and its bizarre family. In Larmes Harbor, the decrepit village south of the castle, people are disappearing, and the Count's seductive daughter, Daeva, has a fearful and powerful secret which will force Jonas to confront one of his own-and the reality that his nightmare might be more premonition than dream.