Extending her stay in the Lake District, American schoolteacher and literary scholar Grace Hollister is acting as advisor to a production of The Vampyre, a play written by Lord Byron's doctor. When accidents befall the cast--culminating in the death of a society lady at the Hunt Ball, replete with puncture wounds on her neck--it seems a real vampire may be roaming the village.

If that's not chilling enough, Grace is being stalked and her enigmatic love interest, ex-jewel thief Peter Fox, has been behaving suspiciously after a rash of local thefts...