A powerful and charismatic man. An Egyptian mummy and twenty spells written in hieroglyphics on parchment. An emerald casket, a French ropewalker and two red-haired girls, fourteen years old and living in London, but four hundred years apart - All united by blood and by a prophecy...

For Claire, life is beginning to get back to normal. But remnants of the twenty-first spell rest within her and she finds she can literally breathe life into the dead. When her baby brother Matthew is snatched, Claire is convinced of the Doctor's involvement. What does he want in exchange for Matthew's safe return? Heavily pregnant Margrat is now on the run with Christophe, making a dangerous crossing to France on a smuggler's ship. But the sinister Doctor pursues them at every turn, desperate for the fulfilment of the prophecy that his unborn daughter can bring.