It all starts with Tipko, a creature called a "paget", approaching Kristi with a magic ruby bead that is actually a gigantic firebreathing bird. He says she needs to use it to save the world by turning into Ruby Sunshine and fighting off a magician, a villain from another dimension called Datékaln who is bent on attacking Earth. She eventually succeeds, and also captures another bead in the process - this one an opal. However, Kristi can't use the opal bead: she has to find Rowan, an old enemy of hers from school, and get her to become Opal Moonbeam so she can help defend the world. Not long after, another magician attacks: Kristi and Rowan work together to defeat her and capture two more beads - a second ruby for Kristi, but also a diamond. Time to add a third teammate! Enter Susie, who becomes Diamond Starlight and completes the group.

The next magician attack leads to several developments: Kristi discovers a surprising power. In addition to capturing some beads, the girls find that the magician has Keeda, Tipko's wife, in captivity, and save her. Rowan unexpectedly sprouts wings. Kristi's three friends turn up and witness some things that aren't easily explained away (including Susie, too, acquiring wings).

Kristi's friends are only the beginning. Soon, Rowan tells her grandfather, Kristi finishes spilling the beans to her friends (but leaves her mom out of the loop), and Susie informs her father. Then, while the girls are at school, another attack leaves them with little choice but to publicly drive off a team of two magicians. By the end of the fight, Susie is injured, one of the magicians unexpectedly demonstrates the power of flight, and their parents get phone calls.

Rowan introduces Tipko and Keeda, who have been staying at her house, to her mom and dad. Susie, whose prognosis is good, wakes up in the hospital. Kristi's sister comes home from college early and also learns the news, and Rowan receives an unwelcome visit from a reporter. Kristi steps in to take the publicity that neither of the other girls want.

Two weeks later, Susie's mother shows up with her boyfriend Claude. Susie's parents are divorced and her mother has been living in France, almost completely out of contact, for years, so this comes as a surprise. Susie eventually leaves to attend a meeting of the girls and Tipko and Keeda, where they are meant to be discussing strategy, but another magician attack disrupts these plans. This time there are three of them, and like the flier from earlier, they display unusual powers - which one uses to capture Kristi!

Kristi awakens in a cell in a magician's palace, where another paget, called Bid, tries to interrogate her on his owner's behalf. Kristi cuts a deal instead, enlisting Bid's help in her escape. Meanwhile, Rowan and Susie are trying to find her, but they're hampered by Rowan's poor facility with the local language. Back on Earth, a magician has Kristi's family. Kristi finally gets a bead in her possession and, with Bid in tow, makes it home. There, she drives away the magician and saves her family, as well as the magician's own paget, A'at. Bid and A'at have to be brought to Rowan's house due to Kristi's mother's distaste for them, and they are united with their fellows Tipko and Keeda there. After all the excitement, Susie goes home, only to hear that there are problems with the rent. She decides to resolve her father's money problems by taking up Claude on his earlier offer to do modeling work.

Rowan's grandmother dies of a stroke, which sends Rowan into such distress that she takes A'at's advice: go to Datékaln to take out her frustrations on magicians. Rowan runs right into a trap and is captured by not one, but three beads, working together. Meanwhile, Tipko comes to a conclusion about A'at: she's still working for her old owner, and led Rowan into danger deliberately. While Kristi, Susie, and Tipko discuss a rescue plan, one of Rowan's beads comes to Earth by itself. This allows them to follow it, finding where Rowan's being held. At the same time, Rowan works out A'at's true loyalties on her own.

Kristi and Susie defeat and collect the - strangely enough, unattended - enemy beads without too much trouble, and return Rowan's opal to let her join the fight. With A'at gone, the magician nowhere to be found, and all of the beady threats neutralized, Susie and Rowan head home - Kristi hangs back a moment to find that her new ruby grants her a set of wings of her own.

Back home, Susie makes an abortive attempt to leave the modeling industry, but Claude entices her to stay with promises of kitten-involving public service jobs. It comes up in conversation between Rowan and Tipko that he and Keeda never had a ritualized officiation of their wedding; Rowan convenes the other girls at her house and Susie performs a ceremony for them. After returning to her apartment, Susie attempts to alter her costume by magic, and gets more of a change than she bargained for. Susie's new look makes her unrecognizeable when Paula spots her at the site of her photo shoot.

Meanwhile, Rowan's feeling unmotivated, and a plan is proposed for the girls to mount a mission to rescue pagets from Datékaln. Susie proposes a place to put all the pagets when they're free, and without further ado, the rescue is underway. Tipko is subsequently elected president of the pagets. Soon enough, he's alerted to a problem by his new vice-president Papaki: in captivity, pagets were often coerced into breeding, meaning that a huge percentage of the population that's just been freed is rapists and rape victims. He goes to Rowan for help, and she uses some flashy magic to prevent recurrence.

When Rowan tries to teach the others the magic she's learned, they're not interested - apparently they don't read as much fantasy as she does. Rowan, however, takes to it with a vigor. Later, armed with her new powers, she returns to Datékaln in order to rescue one more paget.

Kristi goes to visit her friend Dinah. Dinah's little sisters, twins Kimaya and Keya, want to ride Kristi's bird, but the ride is interrupted. Kristi's investigation turns up a familiar face. Rowan saves the day, and then finds a peculiar object on A'at's tail. A'at is imprisoned.

Ittika makes a strange proposal; meanwhile, Susie discusses licensing with Claude. Rowan, in Datékaln, interacts with some Datékali. The project she signs up for there does not meet with Kristi's approval.

They receive an interesting communication from a magician named Kworil, who claims to be Dahar's prisoner. Rowan lets him into Earth (suitably restrained), and they hear him out: he wants to help them prevent portal travel between Earth and Datékaln. They learn that Kworil used to own Tipko.

Tipko balks at helping the girls learn to perform the sealing.

And that's it... so far.