After a sorcerer kills her mother, fifteen-year-old Melantha is forced to live with her overbearing Gran. She longs for freedom, a normal life, and her spell-turner powers to develop. Then an elf from the Magic Council shows up and offers her both freedom and justice for her mother's murder. She's their only hope for catching the sorcerer. All she has to do is help the Magic Council get past the sorcerer's defenses. There's just one catch. She has to befriend the wimpiest kid in school: the son of the sorcerer. If she doesn't succeed, the sorcerer will be free to unleash his plan to remove magic from all spell-turners. But she'll have to be careful, or she may end up the sorcerer's next victim. A fast-paced urban fantasy featuring a kick-ass heroine, spell-binding magic, and dark fantasy with a twist of humor, fans of Harry Potter, The Mortal Instruments, or the Darkest Powers series will love Sara C. Walker's urban fantasy series!

When Melantha Caldwell suspects her friend and fellow spell-turner, Savion Lebrun, is following in his father's footsteps and becoming a black magic sorcerer, she decides to find out exactly what he's doing when he's not attending high school or magic lessons. What she discovers surprises her: he's spending time with another girl—a ballet dancer named Hope, who has suddenly developed sleep walking and seizures. Meanwhile, there's a strange sickness affecting spell-turners everywhere. First Gran is infected, then Savion, leaving Mel no choice but to trust the new spell-turner in town to help her figure out what's wrong with Hope. He calls himself Phoenix and he's much more than he seems, but he's willing to help Mel and teach her spell-turning while her tutor is honeymooning. After Mel learns the truth about Phoenix and the real reason he's in town, she's not sure she can trust him. Then Mel realizes Hope has been possessed by a demon, she and Phoenix are the girl's only hope of getting it evicted, and if they don't work together, the demon will be free to carry out its own plan for the destruction of humankind—starting with the girl named Hope.