The novel’s main protagonist, August arrives in New York for the first time after living in different places as she moves through her college career. She always wanted to try New York, but she also expects to maintain the life she built for herself, in which she’s not connected to anyone. She has been trying to get away from her uncle’s missing-person case, telling her mother that she wouldn’t work on it anymore. However, she’s quickly forced to reckon with everything that she has been trying to avoid: mysteries, magic, and relationships—both romantic and platonic.

At the start of the novel, August doesn’t feel like she knows what it means to have a home. She “has lived in a dozen rooms without ever knowing how to make a space into a home […] It’s been twenty-three years of passing through touching brick after brick, never once feeling a permanent tug” (16). She wonders from the start if this place will change that—and it does, partly because she immediately loves her roommates. Myla, Niko, and Wes each provide support for August in different ways. Myla and Niko invite her to Billy’s for the first time, helping her get a job there.