Madame Magdala has reinvented herself many times, trying to escape Lord Byron's revenge. She destroyed the Transference Engine Byron hopet to use to transfer his soulf into a more perfect body and perpetuate his life eternally. A fanatical cult of necromancers continues Byron's mission to force Magdala and Byron's only legitimate child--Ada Lovelace--to rebuild the machine and bring Byron back.

Magdala now bills herself as the bastard daughter of a Gypsy King. She runs a fashionable London coffee salon and reading room while living a flamboyant lifestyle at the edge of polite society. Behind the scenes, she and Ada Byron King, Countess of Lovelace, use the massive library stored at the Bookview Cafe to track political and mercantile activity around the world. They watch to make certain the cult of necromancy surrounding Lord Byron, the poet king who worshipped death, cannot bring him back to life.

On the eve of Queen Victoria's coronation in June of 1838, rumors of an assassination attempt abound. Both the Bow Street Runners and Magdala's army of guttersnipe spies seek to discover the plot and the plotters. Who is behind the mysterious black hot air balloon that shoots searing light from a hidden cannon, and who or what is the target? And who is kidnapping young girls from all walks of life?

Desperately, Magdala and her allies follow the clues, certain that someone is building a new Transference Engine. But is it to bring back the dead or destroy the living?v