Ariel Moravec has started her training as an apprentice mage and amateur sleuth, under the tutelage of her grandfather, Dr. Moravec. Her days are spent garbling herbs at Aunt Clarice's hoodoo shop and working through the foundations of French occult literature.

But her studies are interrupted by the disappearance of a book that might well be a powerful work of black magic. Assisting her grandfather on the case, Ariel finds herself drawn into the tangled history of Adocentyn.

Legend has it that the town is home to the hidden treasure of a long dead pirate. As Ariel begins her own hunt for the treasure, she discovers that she is not the only person searching. Could the treasure be related to the lost book of magic, or a masked prowler roaming the hushed streets of the old city?

The threads of the case unravel and intensify, and Ariel finds herself racing against malevolent forces that will stop at nothing to find the treasure first...