The boggart is promised in return the blood of creatures in the home after dark, as well as any hostile creatures of the dark. It kills any visitors not invited in by the Spook (such as his apprentices), and as such potential clients wait outside and alert the Spook via a bell system. The contract states that as long as the roof is standing, the boggart must guard the home and kill intruders (as well as cook and clean for the Spook and his apprentices). This house is protected from unwanted visitors by a boggart, with whom the Spook has made a contract. Tom goes to live in the Spook's house in Chipenden. It is revealed that one of the deceased was Billy Bradley, who had his finger bitten off and died from loss of blood while fighting a particularly dangerous boggart.

The Spook tells Tom that most of his other apprentices have failed due to their being cowardly, disobedient, or unluckily killed.

Tom will have to learn how the Spook fights 'the Dark', so that he may one day become a Spook as well. Tom's mother, referred to as Mam, sent a letter to the Spook shortly after Tom's birth alerting him to his status as a seventh son of a seventh and promising that Tom would be 'the best apprentice also be last.' The Spook travels the County fighting troublesome creatures such as boggarts, ghosts, ghasts, and witches for the people who need these things gone. Because he is the seventh son of a seventh son and thus has the ability to see ghosts and fight other supernatural beings, his parents have apprenticed him to the Spook, a cloaked man named John Gregory (because only seventh sons of seventh sons have the aforementioned abilities, all spooks are seventh sons of seventh sons). Tom Ward has lived his whole life in the County (loosely based on the English county of Lancashire). As Tom is the seventh son of a seventh son, he is able to see things others cannot, such as boggarts, ghasts, ghosts and others. The plot centres on a 13-year-old farm boy named Tom who lives in the countryside of the county, loosely based on the English county of Lancashire, where the author resides with his large family. The Spook's Apprentice (American title: The Last Apprentice: Revenge of the Witch), written by Joseph Delaney, is the first story in The Wardstone Chronicles arc of the Spook's series.

The apprentice witch book