Max Fletcher, a descendant of the Elizabethan playwright John Fletcher, lives in present-day Philadelphia where he meets Kayla Horn, a mysterious woman who turns Fletcher's world upside down when she steals a precious family heirloom-a folio believed to have been written by Fletcher's famous ancestor. After he breaks into Kayla's apartment to retrieve his stolen property, Fletcher discovers a window that leads to an enchanted world created by a spirit who covets what people love most. A fluke of magic strands Fletcher in the alternate world, and he comes to rely on a pixie and self-described pugilist extraordinaire, a vivacious witch known as 'The Toadbreeder', a dimension-hopping aviator whose fabulous flying machine can move forward and backward in time, and others to find his way home. As Fletcher does so, the Secret Cabal of Ancient Mysteries is revealed to him, a clandestine order that knows a thing or two about Fletcher's prized folio and the thief responsible for taking it.