Sophie Mercer thought her first year at Hex Hall was a nightmare after being confronted by the ghost of her demon grandmother, but her summer vacation is going to to top that. This witch-in-training, who has been trying to play catch up because her mother kept her talents a secret, is getting a chance to meet her father, who is head of the Prodigium Council.

Sophie's dad, who like her is a demon, has asked her to come live with him at council headquarters at Thorne Abbey, a massive British estate. The goal is to help her learn to better control her powers and convince her not to give them up. She had decided while at Hex Hall to go through a dangerous technique to strip her of them in the hopes of protecting those around her. He wants her to follow in his footsteps as leader of the council and use her powers to fight off the evil L'Occio di Dio (Eyes), who are out to destroy anything of magic.

She arrives with her vampire friend and roommate Jenna as well as another former student and friend from Hex Hall with a talent for healing for support. They are surprised to arrive and find two other teens at HQ, and they are also demons, which means that Sophie and her dad aren't alone. The problem is that these two teens were made into demons only recently, which means someone is using powerful dark magic to win the war between the Prodigium and the L'Occhio.

Sophie and her friends are supposed to get close tot he other teens in the hopes of figuring out who made them so they can be undone and returned back to normal humanity. That includes trips to a magical club in the city and a run in not only with the L'Occhio, who are clearly still out to kill her, but her former boyfriend Archer Cross. The last time she had seen him, he had tried to kill her in the name of the L'Occhio.

This new opportunity to run into Archer leads to hints that not everything is as it seems in the magical war taking place. The council may not be as safe as Sophie and her dad thought, and the L'Occhio may not be totally evil. Either way, Sophie and her friends need to stay alive long enough to figure out what is going on.

This is definitely fast paced and fun, and it will appeal to fans of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It definitely lived up to the excitement of the first novel, though it moved along a bit more slowly. This is likely due to the fact that it really does a lot more explaining about who is who and what is what in Sophie's world, sort of what The Empire Strikes Back did for the Star Wars franchise. I didn't want to put this one down, and I definitely can't wait to see where Hawkins is going to go with the series.