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."

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.

Told from the point of view of Alice, best friend "and true love" to Tom, the spook's last apprentice. Alice is the most powerful witch in the world, and she ventures into the dark itself. 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 world has ever seen. To rid the world of its greatest evil, the Fiend, Alice will venture into the depths of the dark...

Although his apprenticeship was not done when John Gregory died, Tom Ward spent years learning to fight boggarts, witches, demons, and more and feels prepared to be the new county Spook, but while his youth causes many people to distrust him, Jenny is determined to be his apprentice.

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.

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.

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.