The alternate history is built upon two premises: the recent open existence of magical and supernatural species, primarily witches, vampires, and werewolves, with the human population; and the historical investment of Cold War military spending in genetic engineering as opposed to the Space Race, which resulted in the accidental release of a genetically modified tomato in the 1960s that killed a significant portion of the human population.
The series is told in the first-person point of view of Rachel Morgan, a bounty hunter witch who works with local law enforcement agencies and faces threats both mundane and supernatural in origin.
She is an equal partner in the 'Vampiric Charms' freelance runner and security service that she founded with Ivy Tamwood (a living vampire) and Jenks (a pixy), all formerly with the vampire-run federal Inderland Security (IS) police service, although they now frequently work in collaboration with the human-run Federal Inderland Bureau (FIB) on special projects.
The three live and work together in a small decommissioned stone church with attached garden and graveyard in the Hollows district outside Cincinnati.
Rachel is the sole female survivor of the Rosewood Syndrome, a normally fatal genetic blood disorder that occurs only in witch children.
Described by Trent as "five-foot-eight inches of bothersome redhead",[2] Rachel has green eyes and red, shoulder-length frizzy hair which seems to have life of its own.
She is an equal partner in 'Vampiric Charms' freelance runner and security service with Rachel Morgan (a witch) and Jenks (a pixy).
Jenks is an equal partner in 'Vampiric Charms' freelance runner and security service, together with Rachel Morgan (a witch) and Ivy Tamwood (a living vampire).
Jenks backs up both Rachel and Ivy on their runs, but can and does provide lethal force as required against what he calls 'lunkers' (big people) as well as the six-inch and fearsomely carnivorous fairies, who are the natural and mortal enemies of pixies.
Even though he looks like a healthy college-freshman-in-miniature with his athletic form, laughing green eyes, and curly bright blond hair, Jenks is nearing the end of his natural pixy lifespan.
Their children's extraordinarily high survival rate is the result of what is in pixy terms a veritable "castle of oak"[3]—Jenks and his family live in a stump within the church's lush garden).
Jenks unstintingly offers brash and unsolicited—but usually accurate—relationship advice to both of his work partners (Rachel in particular, as he thinks her relationships need "particular help") as well as anyone else who will listen.
Jenks and his family move indoors into the old church sanctuary during the cold winter months to avoid hibernation, which normally results in several children dying.
This allows them to provide on-site security for the whole building and grounds all year round, which also makes his family the first pixies in Cincinnati to experience snow.
Billionaire businessman and politician, peculiarly mysterious for one of Cincinnati's most powerful citizens, whose global empire of legitimate businesses and public philanthropy serve as a front for drug-running and illegal genetic research activities.
Breeds racehorses and hunters as well as maintaining a full pack of hounds—'The Hunt' pursues two- as well as four-legged quarry—at his vast and heavily wooded estate, which also serves as his primary residence and global corporate headquarters; public tours are available.
Trent shares a childhood history with Rachel that neither completely remembers, due to memory blockers in the water at the make-a-wish camp for dying children they both survived.
In his own words, "a dealer in flesh and seducer of souls, skilled in training people in the dark arts enough to make them marketable, then abducting them when they made a mistake in order to sell them to his peers [demons] into an extended lifetime of servitude"[4]—a Purveyor of Fine Familiars.
Personally remembers, with great bitterness and much hatred, the elf-demon war which transformed the formerly eden-like Ever After into a red hell and trapped the demons there forever.
But his own personally preferred persona of self-representation is a ruddy skinned 18th-Century British nobleman, tall and powerfully built, with green crushed velvet tailcoat and white gloves.
The one aspect he finds difficult to hide are his horizontally goat-slitted red demon eyes, so he frequently wears round blue-tinted glasses to disguise them.
According to this timeline, after the discovery of the DNA double-helix by James D. Watson, Francis Crick and Rosalind Franklin, genetic manipulation becomes a possibility, changing several events in the history of this alternate universe.
The main pixy character, Jenks, describes it as "...a drop of time that got knocked out, sitting alone by itself with no past behind it to push it forward and no future to pull it along."
Ley lines can be felt on the normal plane by magic users and the races that formerly dwelt in the Ever-after, such as the elves and witches.
The Ever-after, once a beautiful land filled with fog and forest, was destroyed by the imbalance of the Elf-Demon war, leaving a desert-like wasteland stinking of burnt amber.
Their appearance as undead is more like traditional literary vampires such as Bram Stoker's Dracula, so they then have longer fangs and paler skin.
As for weaknesses, while low- and high-blood living vampires are immune to sunlight or holy items, they can be killed in any normal way: weapons, diseases, poisons, age, and so on.
However, in the Hollows series there is one original weakness: sharing the blood of another undead vampire will result in death Weres are lycanthropes with bestial attributes who are otherwise human in appearance.
In society, Weres live and operate much as natural wolves do: they form packs with alpha pairs, betas, etc., and there are also loners as well.
The story tells that this device, called the "Focus", once used to play a major role in their political structure, revolving around who controlled it.