Fifteen years ago, in the middle of the night, Jamie Carpenter's mother went up to the dark lighthouse on the cliffs above their small Maine town. She never came back. Jamie has spent his whole life trying to forget her. But when his little brother Danny goes missing, Jamie has to face the facts: there is another world beyond the lighthouse-the world his mother came from. And Danny is being held for ransom: his life for the dangerous magical inheritance the Carpenter's mother left her sons. Caught in the middle of a war between witches, burdened by deadly family secrets and magic he can't control, Jamie Carpenter has a whole new universe to search if he's going to put together the pieces of the puzzle left behind by his mother and save his brother's life. And he's going to have to do it fast-because in six days the gate between worlds will close again. For good.