Nura longs for the simple pleasure of many thingsto wear a beautiful red dupatta or to bite into a sweet gulab. But with her mom hard at work in a run-down sweatshop and three younger siblings to feed, Nura must spend her days earning money by mica mining. But its not just the extra rupees in her pocket Nura is after. Local rumor says theres buried treasure in the mine, and Nura knows that finding it could change the course of her familys life forever.
Her plan backfires when the mines collapse and four kids, including her best friend, Faisal, are claimed dead. Nura refuses to believe it and shovels her way through the dirt hoping to find him. Instead, she finds herself at the entrance to a strange world of purple skies and pink seasa portal to the opulent realm of jinn, inhabited by the trickster creatures from her mothers cautionary tales. Yet they arent nearly as treacherous as her mother made them out to be, because Nura is invited to a luxury jinn hotel, where shes given everything she could ever imagine and more.
But theres a dark truth lurking beneath all that glitter and gold, and when Nura crosses the owners son and is banished to the working quarters, she realizes she isnt the only human whos ended up in the hotels clutches. Faisal and the other missing children are there, too, and if Nura cant find a way to help them all escape, theyll be bound to work for the hotel forever.