Julia Graham, an elderly wealthy widow and retired famous artist, decides to distribute some of her most prized possessions prior to her inevitable passing to avoid any potential bickering. She gives her beloved granddaughter, Chloe, whom she currently lives with, a beautiful vial laced with gold and has a red ruby in the center. When Chloe is unable to open the vial her grandmother gave her, she places the vial on her dresser and goes to sleep. Her cat, Goliath, however, decides to investigate things himself as all cats do. He jumps up on her dresser and knocks the vial off, shattering it. When he does, a red haze emerges and covers everyone in the house.

The next morning, everyone finds that they are in a completely different world, a very strange world. A world with an evil fairy and a good fairy. A world where unicorns fly above and pixies float around in bubbles. They have also transformed. Chloe now looks like an older woman; Julia is a seven-year-old; Julia's son, Winston, is a rat; his husband, Fidel, is a snake; and Goliath has become a man. Though they look different, they all think the same as they did before their transformation.

Trapped in a strange and confusing world, Chloe must work fast to find a way to get the group back to their world before Winston and Fidel, with the help of an evil fairy named Lonora, kill Julia in order to get their greedy hands on her fortune.

The Mystic Vial is a book with a murderous plot, tragedy, humor, a little romance, and a lot of magic.