Young Tom, the seventh son of a seventh son, starts work as an apprentice for the village spook, whose job is to protect ordinary folk from "ghouls, boggarts, and all manner of wicked beasties.

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.

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.

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.

"Alice Dean's destiny is intertwined with Tom Ward's. But he's going to be the next Spook, and she's a witch--possibly the most powerful one the county has ever seen. To rid the world of its greatest evil, the Fiend, Alice will venture into the depths of the dark"--

"Thomas Ward faces his ultimate test as he and his master prepare to deal with the Fiend once and for all"--