Stefan Bachmann

Changeling Bartholomew Kettle--half-human, half-faery--is despised by both races. When he witnesses a mysterious lady kidnap another changeling through a shadowy portal and a sinister faery in a top-hat begins to stalk his steps, he knows he is in grave danger.

In a witch's house, nothing is as it seems. When a scarecrow climbs over the garden wall, delivering twelve-year-old orphan Zita Brydgeborn a letter saying she has inherited a distant castle, she jumps at the chance of adventure. But little does she know that she is about to be thrust into a centuries-old battle between good and evil. Blackbird Castle was once home to a powerful dynasty of witches, all of them now dead under mysterious circumstances....