After the death of Lily's sister, Star, Elder Karyn assigns fifteen-year-old Lily to the office as the Light Element of Earth-a role for which she feels very unprepared. She finds herself facing a foreign culture in which she must learn to avoid the Dark Elements, navigate the nuances of human society, and graspthe Elemental laws, all while struggling to control her burning hunger to find her sister's killer.
With her newfound powers and weapons, Lily must learn to survive the perils of this new world. She will need every bit of her wit and skill to solve a series of murders in order to free the only living person who can protect the Elements from the unchecked dark forces.
Lily and her friends face a mysterious hooded figure possessing unknown weapons with a nightmarish potential that brings a new threat to their race. With the extinction of her people looming, all have placed their hope and future in Lily.
Jack Wilde is a fifth grade teacher during the school year and an instructor in the New Hampshire Writing Program in the summer. In his twenty-three years of classroom teaching, he has taught first through fifth grade. He studied at Cornell University, received an M.A.L.S. degree from Dartmouth College, and an M.Ed. degree from the University of Toronto. For the past fifteen years, Jack has done workshops and courses for a number of schools, school districts, and educational organizations. Early in his teaching career, Jack started helping student teachers develop teaching strategies: first giving workshops for student teachers at Dartmouth and in the Upper Valley Teacher Training Program, and then beginning in 1981 as a teacher of teachers in the N.H.W.P.