“She’s gone,” Sally said in a small voice, as if the world had ended again, as it had when she and Gillian were little girls who had lost everything before they arrived on Magnolia Street.
“We need the person who can find her.” Franny held up Vincent’s letter. “Fortunately, we have him.”
Boulevard de la Madeleine. The man who could find what was lost.
Fate was what you made of it. You could make the best of it, or it would make the best of you.
The Grimoire was stowed in Franny’s bag, which made it quite heavy, but she had her trusty umbrella to lean on. Sally packed in under five minutes, then made certain to lock the door. Gillian stopped at home to retrieve her passport and let Ben know she had to leave town. Family business, by now he was used to that. As for Antonia, she was too far along in her pregnancy to travel, and so she was asked to pay a call on the Reverend once a week, for they couldn’t deny one of Jet’s last wishes. They might be gone for a while. They wouldn’t be back until they found what they were looking for.
PART TWO
The Book of Spells
I.
Vincent was waiting in the last of the pale sunlight on the Boulevard de la Madeleine. It was May and he was in the most beautiful city in the world, one he knew quite well, all the same he was anxious and had half a mind to disappear, just veer onto a crowded street and lose himself again. He had been missing for so long that he wondered if he would seem like another person entirely to his sister, if she would walk right past him, or, even worse, if she would face him straight on and be disappointed. This is who you’ve turned out to be? After all I did for you and how much I loved you, this is who you are? A lonely old man with a mongrel dog? What happened to the boy who was so brave, the one who would do anything for love?
The plane from Boston had been delayed, then the car service had made a wrong turn, but finally they were here at last, his family, dressed in black, looking as if they had arrived for a funeral, unloading their battered suitcases from the trunk of an old Peugeot. Two women in their forties, one pale, the other dark, who he assumed were the daughters of Regina, the child he’d had with April Owens, and a very old woman with red hair, waving a black umbrella at him. Could it be his sister? Impossible, he thought. Dodger raced over to greet the new arrivals, barking and wagging his tail. “Oh, hush, you foolish thing,” the old woman told the dog. It was then Vincent saw a vision of Franny as she’d been, his beautiful sister, willful as always. “Don’t just stand there!” she called to him.
When he went to embrace her, Vincent felt as if no time had passed, but it had and they stared at one another taking in all the transformations age had wrought, then laughed. Vincent was introduced to his granddaughters, which turned out to be an awkward situation; they were related by blood, yet were unknown to one another. Did they shake hands or hug? They did both, and yet there was a distance between them. Poor Sally, Vincent thought as he helped them carry in their bags. She looked shattered, but wasn’t that the Owens fate? Vincent knew what it was like to endure the curse; it twisted around you, a snake of despair, and forced you to do whatever was necessary to survive. He hoped they would forgive him for doing his best to escape it, even if it meant abandoning them. No one ever said he wasn’t single-minded; he’d been so since he was a boy, perhaps because Franny had always given in to him and protected him. Frankly, she’d babied him, and he hadn’t minded having a big sister who believed he was a gift to the world, albeit a troublesome one. Vincent knew that there was always a cost incurred to get what you wanted, and the price he’d paid was steep. He hoped his granddaughters understood there would be a bargain to be made. For whatever you did, and whatever you were yet to do, magic exacted a payment.
Agnes Durant had arranged a cold supper of salmon and asparagus. She welcomed them graciously, and her warm presence made the evening a bit less uncomfortable. Sally and Gillian had never fully understood Vincent’s relationship to their grandmother, April Owens, only that they were distant cousins, several times removed. When the sisters were young, their grandmother told them that Vincent was the most difficult man she’d ever met, and the most compelling. It was before he knew who he was. I always knew, but I wanted him anyway.