Giulia has been an orphan all her life. Raised in Florence's famous Ospedale degli Innocenti, her probing questions and insubordinate behavior made her an unwelcome presence, and at the age of fifteen, she was given an awful choice: become a nun or be married off to a man she didn't love. She chose neither, and after refusing an elderly suitor, Giulia escaped onto the streets of Florence. Now, after she's spent two years as a successful pickpocket, an old man catches her about to make off with his purse, and rather than having her carted off to prison, he offers her a business proposition. He claims to a cabalist, a student of Jewish mysticism and ritual magic, who works for the most powerful families in Florence. But his identity is secret - he is known only as "the Magician of Florence" - and he is in need of an assistant. She accepts the job and begins smuggling his talismans throughout the city. But the talismans are not what they seem, and neither is the Magician. When Giulia's involvement with him ends with his murder, she's drawn into a treacherous web of espionage and deceit involving the forces of Rome, Naples, and a man known as Lorenzo the Magnificent. Accused of the Magician's murder, Giulia is pursued by the handsome policeman Niccolo, Lorenzo's henchmen, and foreign spies. In order to survive, she must not only solve the mystery of the Magician's murder, but that of her own past.