After his university professor father remarries, eleven-year-old David Stanley must make a series of new adjustments: first to his new stepmother, then to the strange old house in the country to which the family relocates, and finally to his new stepsister, twelve-year-old Amanda.

In contrast to Amanda's possibly staged "witchcraft", the Stanley children, particularly David and Blair, seem to have some actual psychic gifts, but do not talk about them.

However, one night a box of rocks, along with the long-lost cupid's head, suddenly falls down the stairs, in an incident not caused by Amanda.

As David glues the cupid's head back on, he learns that four-year-old Blair dropped the box down the stairs.

"[3] It made the American Library Association's list of the one hundred most frequently challenged books for 1990-2000, due to the use of witchcraft by the children.