Seph McCauley has spent the past three years getting kicked out of one exclusive private school after another. And it's not his attitude that's the problem: it's the trail of magical accidents - lately, disasters - that follow in his wake. Seph is a wizard, orphaned and untrained, and his powers are escalating out of control.

Worse, as the magical accidents that plague him grow in intensity, Seph makes a discovery: the stories he's been told about his parents' life and death are fabrications. The people he most trusted have been lying to him.

After causing a tragic fire at an after-hours party Seph is sent to the Havens, a secluded boy's school on the coast of Maine. Gregory Leicester, the headmaster, promises to train Seph in magic and initiate him into his mysterious order of wizards. Maybe here he will find a community he can trust? But Seph's enthusiasm dampens when he learns that the training comes at a steep cost. Who can he trust, when everyone around him is keeping secrets? And where can he turn, when he finds himself at the centre of a war he may well not survive?