Revolution and oppression have caused Esther Cerfbeer and Armand de Delacroix to flee their homeland of Alsace: Isabella does not know her origins and is the ward of Raphael McAlpine, the owner of Crow House. Their lives coincide in 1794, against a background of witchcraft and treachery, in North Devon, where young women are disappearing and two men have been killed, their eyes pecked out.