When fourteen year old Laura Chant sees the strange face looking back at her from the mirror one morning, she knows that her family faces a terrible danger. Laura is a "sensitive" - she has premonitions and an awareness of magical powers. She has already recognised Sorensen Carlisle, an older pupil at her school, as a witch and she has already foreseen the break up of her parents marriage. So, when sinister shopkeeper Carmody Braque "brands" her little brother, Jacko, and Jacko falls seriously ill with a mysterious wasting disease, Laura knows that doctors can't save him. She must turn to the Carlisle family for help.