When eighteen-year-old Christian Shaw is found dead in a park, the city of Edinburgh is stunned–and the shock only deepens when police charge her best friends, Eliza Lawson and Isobel Smyth, with the murder. As social media explodes in a tizzy of theories and headlines scream for justice, rumors of bullying are overshadowed by something more wicked and frightening: whispers of dark rituals, feverish obsession, and a teenage pact gone wrong. When the trial begins, everyone in Edinburgh clamors for a front-row ticket to the show: to look upon the murderous Eliza and Isobel with their own eyes. Everyone, that is, but Matthew Phillips, a respected heart surgeon picked for the jury. But, as the trial unfolds–and the girls’ lawyers offer a surprising and unsettling defense–the reluctant Matthew finds himself questioning everything: the motives, the evidence, even his own judgement. Then he begins to have strange visions of terrifying things–hallucinations he tells himself. After all, witchcraft isn’t real . . . or is it? Who is telling the truth? Who can be trusted? And what really happened to Christian Shaw?
