Summary
Gemma Doyle, the series' protagonist, is determined to leave India and return to London for an education and a proper upbringing. On her sixteenth birthday, Gemma and her mother are walking through the Bombay market when the two encounter a man and his younger brother. The man relays an unknown message to Gemma’s mother about a woman named Circe, and Gemma's mother panics and demands that Gemma return home. Becoming angry at her mother’s secrecy, Gemma runs away, and has a vision of her mother committing suicide while searching for her, which she later learns is true. Gemma becomes haunted with the images of her mother’s death.
With her mother dead and her father’s growing addiction to laudanum, Gemma is shipped off to a finishing school near London, Spence Academy for Young Ladies. At first, Gemma is an outcast at the school; however, she soon finds the most popular and influential girl in school, Felicity, in a compromising situation that would ruin Felicity’s life. Gemma agrees not to tell Felicity’s secret and the girls soon form a strong friendship, along with Gemma’s roommate Ann, and Felicity’s best friend, Pippa. But Gemma is still tormented with her visions and is warned by the young man from the market, Kartik, a member of an ancient group of men known as the Rakshana, dating all the way back to Charlemagne, that she must close her mind to these visions or something horrible will happen.
During one of her visions Gemma is led into the caves that border the school grounds. There, she finds a diary written 25 years earlier by a 16-year-old girl named Mary Dowd who also attended Spence Academy and seemed to suffer from the same visions as Gemma, along with her friend, Sarah Reese-Toome. Through this diary, Gemma learns of an ancient group of powerful women called the Order and becomes convinced that her visions are linked to it. Members of the Order could open a door between the human world and other realms, help spirits cross over into the afterlife, and also possessed the powers of prophecy, clairvoyance, and what was considered the greatest force of all, the ability to weave illusions. Gemma, Felicity, Pippa and Ann decide to create their own Order in the caves to escape from the monotonous lives that they are expected to lead.
As the girls read further and further into the diary of Mary Dowd they realize that the actual Order existed at Spence Academy and that Mary was a part of it along with her best friend Sarah and the original Headmistress Eugenia Spence, who all died in a fire at the school in the East Wing. Gemma tells her friends the truth about her powers and together they travel to the realms. There Gemma finds her mother alive and well, and the girls find that they can achieve their hearts’ desires. Gemma wishes for self-knowledge, Felicity for power, Pippa for true love and Ann for beauty. The girls continue to sneak out to the caves in the middle of the night and visit the realms. However, Gemma’s mother warns them not to take the magic back into their own world, for if the magic leaves the realms, the evil sorceress Circe will be able to find Gemma and will kill her, leaving the realms unguarded.
The girls listen to Gemma’s mother, but after a time they are no longer content to only have power in the realms. The girls decide to take the magic back with them and have fun around the school with it, but find out that the magic is also evil. Then, Gemma learns that Mary Dowd’s best friend Sarah is actually Circe, and that the two of them had committed an unspeakable crime together: they killed the daughter of Mother Elena - the gypsy - Carolina. Shocked, Gemma also learns that Sarah never died in the fire. Searching desperately for a photo of Sarah and Mary, Gemma finds the picture in the school behind the photo of the class of 1872, and is shocked to see her mother's face with the name Mary Dowd under it.
After Gemma confronts her mother, she confesses that she was once a member of the Order and escaped the fire thinking the others had died. The only way for her to ever be at peace is for Gemma to forgive her. When Gemma and the other girls go back to the realms they realize that something is not right and before they can leave, the creature that killed Gemma’s mother shows up. Pippa runs off and Gemma does not have time to help her, so she takes Ann and Felicity back and while Pippa is trapped underwater.
When they come back to the real world, Pippa has a seizure (she suffers from Epilepsy) and Gemma knows she must go back into the realms to try to save her and bring her back. When she gets to the realms, she finds the creature instead of Pippa and must battle with it. Gemma begins to feel like she will lose and be corrupted by the creature, and when she believes that it is the end she thinks about her mother and forgives her. This act kills the creature and at the same time allows her mother to cross over. Gemma then goes to find Pippa, but Pippa refuses to return to a world where she is to marry a man she doesn’t love and to a society that will never see her as anything more than a pretty face. Instead she chooses to remain in the realms and cross over into the spirit world. Gemma returns to Spence on her own and finds that Pippa has died. Gemma, Felicity, and Ann attend Pippa’s funeral, with Kartik watching from afar. Gemma approaches him and tells him that it has only just begun, that she will not give up her powers and that there is no going back.
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