This story takes place in Florida, where 11-year-old Nick Vargas lives with his brother, Jules, his weird stepsister, Laurie, his father, Paul, and his stepmother, Charlene, in his father’s housing development. Laurie has read the Spiderwick Chronicles and believes in faeries. Nick thinks she is “lame” and wishes she would leave him alone. After finding a four-leafed clover (which allows people to see faeries) he sees a nixie unconscious in his yard, which he and Laurie carry into a nearby artificial pond.

In the following day, the Nixie, named Taloa, gives Nick and Laurie the Sight and sends them to find her six sisters, who were separated when their pond was destroyed. They leave after a faerie fills Nick’s father’s car with sand to look for Taloa’s sisters at her old pond. They find the pond dried, the surrounding forest burnt and the bodies of three of the nixies, accidentally waking up a giant, which they mistook for a hill. They flee from the giant, who becomes hypnotized and calm when it hears Taloa’s singing.