In the cottages around The Green sleeps a memory of long-dead hands that once wielded a terrible power.

Now it is only slumbering, waiting for somewhere to feed and grow, someone to embrace its awesome power and turn it to new purposes. On the eve of Bonfire Night it is nudged to wakefulness: a stranger all the way from Canada on a quest for family history; friends Jan and Kate's sortie into a long-closed attic to find debris for the bonfire on The Green.

This is a community holding an uneasy truce between tourist interest in legends of witchcraft and the terrible reality of a fire that burned scores of cottages and their inhabitants years before. Bonfire Night looms; objectors say there hasn't been a bonfire on The Green since The Fire and there shouldn't ever be again.

The waking power feeds on the anxieties, puts out tendrils in search of a mind to seize — and finds Jan. Into her hands will flow the deadly malevolence that once made The Burning. Into her mind will flow the hatred that once consumed everything ....