Book excerpt: Nadia was a girl who had everything except real happiness. She was tired of trying to buy it, and she had just about matured to the point where she knew that nothing was to be gained by deliberately hunting happiness. She saw the strange Asian in a Paris street market. His inscrutable features were dominated by a pair of mysterious eyes. He was incredible old. Without knowing why, Nadia purchased a curiously carved wooden casket. The casket contained an oriental miniature, a scroll of curious characters and a phial of glowing blue elixir. Nadia consulted a number of experts about these strange objects, but not until a psychometric boy handled them did she begin to guess at the terrible truth. She was trapped in a vortex of evil power and 20th-century science seemed unable to save her...