The Manhattan School for Magic is the newest kindling school in New York, but Maeve O'Donnell knows she doesn't deserve her place there. Though her sister, Izzy, is one of the school's founders and a hero to those who can now kindle, Maeve can't control her magic-and one day it goes rogue, leaving her desperate to repair what she's broken. Then she discovers a garden in the tenement neighbourhood of the Tarnish, a hidden place where her magic actually works. She befriends talking kittens (that is, house dragons) who need her help to find their missing mother. But someone else is searching for the kittens, someone who doesn't care how many magical sites they destroy to stop magic's expansion. And Maeve's unstable powers might be the only way to save her sister's school from being snuffed out next.