Somehow born without the capacity to feel any emotion except Fear, Elizabeth Caldwell has grown used to seeing physical manifestations of emotions surround the people in her life: Longing and Love surround a shy boy at school; Courage shows up at the bedside of her dying friend; Fury and Resentment at her home. Only Fear, who manifests as a handsome man, still causes her heart to flutter like a normal person's. When it is clear something supernatural is stalking Elizabeth, both she and Fear realize that they will have to figure out just how she came to be this way to save her life.