13-year-old Melody has trouble fitting in at school, at her foster home, and everywhere. To the other kids she’s too dark, too weird, too emo. To the adults, she’s troubled. Since her father’s disappearance and her mother’s coma, she felt like she hasn’t belonged anywhere.
This all changes the day she receives an ornate letter addressed in spidery elegant handwriting to ‘Mistress Melody Hawthorne’ return address just, ‘The Dowager of Thornclaw Manor,’ whom Melody is surprised to learn is her father’s mother.
Compelled to accept the invitation, Melody runs away from her foster home and is transported to Thornclaw Manor only to find that she is part of an ancient and powerful family of creatures from myths and legends and the Manor is a seat of great power. After getting over the horns, wings and fangs, she finds that her newfound family members are kind and warm. Except for the Dowager, who sternly rules the family and the entire realm from her sickbed. Upon meeting The Dowager, Melody is given a secret task. The Dowager needs Melody to travel to the WoodWitch’s lair in the depths of the Near Forest and retrieve the Elixir which will restore The Dowager to health.
What seems a simple task sends Melody through the realms of the Otherworld, a land filled with dangerous fae, nightmarish monsters, and places her at the center of a dynastic struggle between the failing Dowager and her power hungry sister, the Priestess, who wishes to unseat her and take control of Thornclaw Manor and all its secrets.
Along the way, Melody begins to unravel the mystery of her father’s disappearance.