When a young man arrives in Cambridge as a first-year student, he finds himself an outsider. There’s the punting and the politics, the wine and the waistcoats, all seemingly familiar to everyone but him.

Then he falls under the spell of Bryn Cavendish. A notorious party boy and skilled magician, Bryn is magnetic. To be in his circle is to revel in clouds of ecstasy, untouched by the rules.

To be exiled is to haunt the peripheries of campus life like a ghost. As the academic year intensifies and Bryn’s magic tricks become more sinister, one question lingers. Is Bryn’s charisma the source of his influence or does he wield a much darker and more dangerous power?