All Rae Kerrigan remembers about her parents is the suspicious fire that killed them. She moved from her home in England to New York with her uncle, and never questioned her family's history. But when a super elite, super-secret Guilder Boarding School in England seeks her out, she finds out there might be more to her parents than she could have ever imagined. For one thing, everyone in this school is special -- they all get inked with a special tattoo (called a tat) on their sixteenth birthday that gives them supernatural powers. For another thing, she finds out that both her parents were inked. And for one more thing, her dad was some evil guy trying to use his power to control the world. Can Rae prove to the school that she is not the same person her father was? Can she even convince herself? Is there a ray of hope in her life?