The narrator, a con artist, previously worked as a sex worker giving handjobs behind an associated fortune-telling establishment called 'Spiritual Palms'. She shifted her focus to fake fortune-telling, psychic reading, and aura reading.
She meets wealthy housewife Susan Burke, who believes that the Victorian house she has recently moved into, Carterhook Manor, is inhabited by a malevolent spirit. Susan has a strained relationship with her disturbed 15-year-old stepson, Miles, while her husband is usually away for business. During her fake cleansing sessions of Carterhook Manor, the narrator feels threatened by Miles. As Susan and the narrator experience more strange events and Miles grows more aggressive, the narrator begins to believe the house is really haunted. She admits to Susan that she cannot provide psychic guidance and the family should get real help.
However, Miles then reveals to the narrator that Susan's husband is a man whom the narrator often serviced at Spiritual Palms. As revenge, Susan has lured the narrator with fake stories and is planning to kill the narrator and Miles, then frame the narrator as the aggressor. Miles asks the narrator to help him flee in her car.
Later, in the car, Miles reveals that he lied: Susan had no idea of her husband's infidelity. Instead, Miles has framed the narrator as a thief and a kidnapper, and threatens to turn her in to the police if she does not comply with his orders. He needs her to help him travel the country as he wishes by posing as his adult guardian. Trapped in the arrangement and suspecting that Miles is a violent sociopath, the narrator begins a cross-country road trip with Miles to a convention for fans of the supernatural.