After centuries of absence, magic has returned, causing panic and controversy..

Adrienne Imlay hopes only to forget and get herself forgotten. But when unexpected fame draws her into the limelight, she has to face a string of unexpected events: the dreaded arrival of elections and politics into her lab, a series of thefts, the disappearance of another colleague, and finally, an unsanctioned research project going way beyond her worst nightmares.

Assisted by unlikely allies and armed with little more than a railway timetable, she sets out to stop this scheme. But as the lines between magic and science blur, she discovers that both worlds operate by their own set of rules.

The most critical of all is: everything has a price.