Gemma Doyle Timeline and Summary

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• In the beginning, Gemma is in an Indian bizarre, walking with her mother and maidservant, Sarita.
• She argues with her mother about wanting to go to London, but her mother won't let her, which really ticks Gemma off, so she runs away on her own (big no-no) and gets lost down a side street.
• Then she is struck by a vision of a shadow creature, who eats a man (who is trying to protect her mother) and then her mother stabs herself to death to escape the creature. Egads.
• When Gemma wakes up, a strange man is there, asking her about what she saw—she runs away from him only to come upon her mother dead in the street; she's been stabbed to death.
• Two months later, Gemma's brother Tom takes a train with her to Spence in London, a finishing school to help girls become proper ladies. 
• She kind of builds a friendship with her roommate Ann, but doesn't care for her much. 
• When challenged by the popular girls though, Gemma sticks up for herself—and when they try to trick Ann into getting expelled, Gemma is trickier still and gets Ann out of trouble.
• The girls, including Felicity and Pippa, trick Gemma into stealing communion wine and lock her in the chapel at night, where she meets Kartik, a mysterious man working with the Rakshana.
• He tells her not have visions any more, but she has another one anyway and follows a little girl to a cave, where she finds Mary Dowd's diary. She reads it and learns that Mary was a witch long ago; the diary provides some answers to some of Gemma's questions about what is happening with her and her visions.
• Gemma dreams about her mother giving her the crescent eye amulet and telling her to run.
• To pay Felicity back for the chapel trick, Gemma one-ups her by leaving the wine on her seat. 
• Out by the lake, Gemma catches Felicity with a Gypsy man and decides to keep it a secret, which causes the blonde girl to kiss up to Gemma and become her new best friend.
• In the cave with Miss Moore's class, Gemma learns about the Order and witches, and then later sneaks out of Spence to meet Pippa, Felicity, and Ann.
• During dance class, Gemma accidentally begins to take Pippa with her into a vision, but is pulled back to reality by Pippa convulsing from an epileptic fit. 
• While sitting with Pippa, who's unconscious, Miss Moore befriends Gemma.
• After learning about Mary and Sarah's mysterious plot from Brigid, Gemma and her friends sneak out to the Gypsy camp to see Mother Elena; Gemma kisses Kartik.
• That night, she dreams about making out with Kartik. (Gemma and Kartik, sitting in a tree…)
• During a séance with Madam Romanoff, Gemma visits the dead in a vision and her mother tells how to access the realms—so she tells her friends about her magic powers and takes them into the realms with her, where she gets to talk to her mom. 
• In the realms, Gemma wants to touch the Runes of the Oracle, but it is dangerous.
• She fights with her mother (some things never change, whether you're in a magical land or the real world) over wanting to use the magic in the runes and her mother firmly forbids it.
• Gemma decides to take the magic out of the runes anyway to help her friends, and at Spence, they use the magic to play tricks on people and get into trouble with the satyrs. 
• Gemma figures out that her mother is Mary Dowd, and that Circe is still alive. When Gemma goes back to the realms, she senses something is wrong and wonders if evil has crept in and if Circe's creature has been there. 
• Gemma is angry that Pippa has gotten Miss Moore fired and doesn't want to take her friends back into the realms because she fought with her mother and senses evil stuff going on in there.
• When the girls decide to kill a deer to earn power from a dark creature in the realms, Gemma is scared to try to do anything to stop them and feels pressured to take them into the realms to protect Kartik. 
• When they return, the creature tricks them and almost kills them all—Pippa gets trapped in the realms under the river water, but Gemma gets the other girls out.
• Gemma decides to back into the realms by herself to rescue Pippa, who is unconscious in the real world, and back in the realms, the wraith tricks Gemma into sucking magic from the runes, but then she forgives her mother and smashes the runes, killing the creature. 
• After rescuing Pippa, Gemma is surprised when her friend eats some berries in order to stay in the realms forever (and avoid having to marry a boring old dude). 
• At the end, Gemma gives Kartik her father's cricket bat and chases a deer into the woods for fun.