For James Irving, mage life isn't all it's cracked up to be. After losing his first love in an ambush attack, he's content to hibernate in his gothic home with his ghostly roommate--actually, Agatha is more like a mother than a swirl of glowing green mist from Colonial times--while the world (and his estranged older brother, the only family he has left) goes on without him. But when dinosaur skeletons break down his door and lead him to a fellow mage in distress, James is pulled into an evil plot that threatens not only his cozy hometown but all of humanity. With cursed books popping up left and right, putting people in comas and worse, James forms an uneasy alliance with a pair of young mages bent on exposing the dark magic behind the chaos. Can the team of upstarts foil a deranged mage exceedingly more powerful than they are? And will James get through one measly date with the beautiful doctor he's trying to woo (dipping a toe back in the world has unexpectedly revived his love life) without being interrupted by a supernatural emergency?.