Now thirteen years old, Tom Ward continues his apprenticeship with the Spook as they confront a dangerous bane who can control people's thoughts.

Tom is dismayed when his master the Spook decrees that they will be spending the winter on gloomy and forbidding Anglezarke Moor but soon discovers the reason for his master's decision, as they tangle with two dangerous witches and struggle to keep a dark mage from resurrecting an ancient evil.

Bloodeye, an ancient water witch, emerges and Tom must train under Bill Arkwright, a man who has unusual training techniques, in order to fight her.

The continuing adventures of Tom, the seventh son of a seventh son and apprentice to the local Spook, who faces danger and death daily in his job protecting the region from evil.

When witches steal Tom's inheritance and kidnap his relatives, Tom, the Spook, and Alice set out for Pendle Hill, a particularly dangerous district, in hopes of preventing the three witch clans from uniting to raise the Fiend, the Devil himself, thus bringing about an age of darkness.

As sixty-year-old John Gregory reflects on the past, he reveals how the world of ghosts, ghasts, witches, and boggarts was exposed to him and he later became the Spook, even though his first intention had been to join the priesthood.

Returning from Greece, Tom and the Spook find that their home, including the Spook's precious library of knowledge, has been burned to the ground, and that their battle against the denizens of the dark must continue.

Months have passed since Horace departed for the eastern nation of Nihon-Ja on a vital mission. Having received no communication from him, his friends fear the worst. Unwilling to wait a second longer, Alyss, Evanlyn, and Will leave their homeland behind and venture into an exotic land in search of their missing friend. When they finally catch up with him, they find Horace entangled in a military coup. Determined to protect the imperial throne, Will...

Ready to be presented to the last apprentice, Tom Ward, the spook's notebook contains instructions for vanquishing boggarts, witches, the unquiet dead, and other dark creatures and spirits.

Provides insights into the life of Grimalkin, one of the deadliest witches in the country, if not the world, whose uneasy truce with the Spook's apprentice, Tom, unites them against the ultimate evil of the Fiend.