The Cat . Blue-black and varying in size and temper, he is the vain, unpredictable Majickal Familiar of a medieval Witch, to whom is he totally Loyal. No-one dares use his name. He flies, travels Time and can be bloody-minded, temperamental and dangerous.

Darline the Witch began life a thousand years ago as a Good Healer. Her miraculous Natural cures enable a witch-hunter to destroy her and thus wreck her planned Eternity of Love with the Lord of the Manor and reformed bully, Sir James Hawkney.

It comes to a head a thousand years later in a 2Oth Century Power struggle involving an eccentric group of Witches and Warlocks who are:-

D arren -- a dapper, but conceited warlock, whose speciality is hypnosis.

A lice -- Norman's adult inspiration with the Power, but who is also the child medium, Melanie.

R amona -- a smelly clay pipe-smoking gypsy witch on a moped to avoid crashes while levitating.

L ydia -- a kleptomaniac witch, whose thefts neutralise her Powers when she most needs them.

I rving -- a space alien Dwarf lost in Time who needs the Cat's help to get home.

N orman -- a 20th Century accountant haunted by the others. He doesn't know he is a warlock who can help them all.

E rin -- a happy dipsomaniac witch who runs a girls' school with an incredible academic record.

The initials are no coincidence.

Whether combatants or comrades, they invariably collide confusingly in an escapist fantasy where Good scraps it out with Evil to bring deserved woe to the scheming Hubert the Witch Hunter and Cedricke the Executioner .

Evil is Darline, the centre of a rescue mission by the heterogeneous band. Failure will allow Darline's Badness to become a universal Catastrophe -- not to mention leaving Sir James overweight, miserable and dead in the wrong century.

It's laced with a combination of present-day disbelief and medieval superstition as Norman -- mystified and at times terrified to find himself a first generation Warlock -- is drawn into the horrifying red aura which is the Badness of Darline. The initial task is to persuade Norman that he is the most Powerful Warlock in history and that Magick really does still exist in modern-day North-East England.

It might have been easier if the Cat had stayed out of it altogether, but impossible if he hadn't been there at all!

He's less like a Cat and more like a puppeteer who works Humans with Powers beyond their wildest dreams.

But whose side is he really on...?