Victoria McQueen has a secret gift for finding things: a misplaced bracelet, a missing photograph, answers to unanswerable questions. On her dayglo blue Raleigh Tuff Burner bike, she makes her way to a rickety covered bridge that, within moments, takes her wherever she needs to go, whether it's across Massachusetts or across the country.

Vic doesn't tell anyone about her unusual ability because she knows that no one would believe her. She has trouble understanding it herself. And she knows it isn't free. Each time she makes a trip across that bridge, a piece of herself is lost.

But Vic isn't the only one with a special gift.

Charles Talent Manx has a way with children. He likes to take them for rides in his 1938 Rolls-Royce Wraith with the NOS4A2 vanity plate. With his old car, he can slip right out of the everyday world, and onto the hidden roads that transport them to an astonishing playground of amusements he calls Christmasland. Mile by mile, their journey across the highway of Charlie's twisted imagination transforms his precious passengers, leaving them as terrifying and unstoppable as their benefactor.

Then, one day, Vic goes looking for trouble-and finds Manx.

That was a lifetime ago. Now, the only kid to ever escape his unmitigated evil is all grown up and desperate to forget.

But the end of one nightmare is just the beginning of another . . . because Charlie Manx hasn't stopped thinking about the exceptional Victoria McQueen. He's on the road again and he's picked up a new passenger: Vic's own son.

In a life-and-death battle of wills- her magic pitted against his-Vic McQueen is going to get her son back and destroy Manx once and for all. Or she'll die trying. . . .