There are creatures in the woods around Mullica.  Most call them the Fair Folk, but Avery Nash knows better: they're all monsters, and she wants nothing to do with them.  But when Avery is captured by a fae shapeshifter, intent on draining her life to sustain his own, she strikes a damning deal.  In return for sparing her, she will agree to lure more humans out of her warded town and into the clutches of the Folk, ensuring her safety and the safety of the family that depends on her.  Her captor, Silas Goldthread, suggests these terms.  For his Folk have been stripped of their immortality, cursed to die slow, mortal deaths by the Kingwood Witch, a figure long since faded into myth.  And without human offerings to sustain them, they'll surely die out.  Avery is made into a Huntsman and given one year to prove her worth.  If she does not produce an acceptable number of "offerings," the price will be her life.  But the price she must pay in the meantime is her humanity, which chips away a little more with each new capture.