Staying at her grandfather Patrick's Wisconsin cabin on Devil's Lake, Lorilee makes two new friends: a human boy – the stepson of a vicious Mafioso looking for revenge when the boy's mother files for divorce – and a thoroughly non-human boy, "Zen," whose true name they cannot pronounce. Zen is accidentally transported to their lakeside retreat when Patrick activates a "portable pathway creator" brought to him by his long-lost wife (and Lorilee's grandmother), Alyzrina.
Lorilee's mother, Moira, had her protector-companion - the dragon. Patrick – and now, Lorilee finds her own unique benefactor-friend in the hirsute Hijority youth. Lorilee soon learns that when it comes to violence, Zen has a special way about him.
When Lorilee flies back to California from her grandfather's Wisconsin cabin, a severe electric storm activates a Hijority portable pathway device in the luggage compartment, propelling half of the plane into Zorzen. Every fiber of Lorilee's intelligence and resilience - and Zen's strength and ferocity - are needed to lead a weary band of surviving passengers to the nearest pathway back to Earth in Zza, the capital of Zorzen.
Lorilee meets up with some of her mother's former friends – and her most dangerous enemies – before leading her companions on a final, desperate bid to access a pathway deep in the inner sanctum of Zorzen's most sacred and well-guarded temple.