“I don’t know what makes you say that.” Franny took her brother’s hand, feeling fortunate to have him near. How had they managed to get so old? And yet, some things remained the same. She flicked her gaze over a man at the bar who was staring at Vincent, nearly swooning, though he was more than twenty years younger. It still happened, just as it had when they were young. People fell head over heels for Vincent and he didn’t even notice. How had he managed to remain so handsome? Franny supposed that wasn’t due to magic. It was simply who he was.
“I know you,” Vincent scolded Franny. “Nothing’s done by accident.”
“Do you think I can control a damned thing in this world?”
“I believe you can. Every now and then.” Vincent felt his deep love for his sister. She’d always been the one to rescue him when they were young. “I’ve always believed in you.”
Franny lowered her gaze so that he wouldn’t see the sting of tears in her eyes, as if she could trick him. She, who was known for her cool demeanor, had somehow become a person at the mercy of her emotions, which was not like her at all. Or at least it hadn’t been. The transformation had begun with Jet’s passing, and now she blamed Vincent for her complete undoing. Ever since spying him on the Boulevard de la Madeleine, her love for him had opened her heart. All the same, she rapped his hand as if he was still the wild, fearless boy who had never adhered to any rules. Still, it was no mistake that Sally would be the one to leave them behind. Franny knew that something awaited Sally if she went to seek out the professor. Something unexpected and rare. Something that happened only if a person followed her fate.
“Hush,” Franny told her brother. “It’s my last good deed.”
“You!” Vincent laughed. “Doing good? That’s rich.”
Gillian finally returned with three glasses of port and some chicken salad and tomato sandwiches. She’d enchanted the bartender without trying, having inherited a fair share of Vincent’s magnetism. “On me,” the bartender had told her, but she knew what he meant. I’ve fallen for you in an instant, I don’t know what’s happened to me, but I’ll leave my wife, my job, my home. It was the Owens charm. Some of them had it in overabundance, while others, such as Sally, hid their inner light. Gillian had always been a firefly, drawing men to her when she was young, and trouble along with it. By now she was used to rejecting men’s overtures. She grinned and said, “Taken.”
“Lucky bastard,” the bartender said gloomily about whoever had her hand.
Gillian wasn’t so certain of that. Ben expended considerable energy trying to make her happy, hiding their marriage, living apart, but it was a thankless task when only one thing could make her happy, the arrival of a child, and there seemed no magic strong enough for that.
“Don’t ever fall for a woman like me,” she’d advised the bartender.
She still had the urge to ruin things, and some inner neurosis made her consider gesturing for the bartender to follow her into the ladies’ room for some hot, insane, and ultimately disappointing sex for which she would hate herself afterward, but she had changed. Now she merely considered it and walked away. However, if she thought she was trouble, her great-aunt and grandfather were far worse. They didn’t just find trouble, they conjured it. Now as she observed them sitting near one another, she understood they were a closed circle. “What are you two plotting?”
“We don’t plot,” Vincent told his granddaughter. “We conspire.”
Franny threw back her head and laughed.
They ate their lunch of slightly stale sandwiches and chips, and soon half an hour had passed. Gillian turned to gaze through the window, unsettled. There was a violet sky now that the storm had passed, and yellow light pooled as it shone through the window. The world seemed incandescent to Gillian; she could see layers of time and space and possibilities that hadn’t been there before. As a girl Gillian couldn’t escape the petty jealousies she felt when it came to her sister’s talents. She’d wondered why she had nothing other than her beauty, which, frankly, she found boring and would have traded away in exchange for Sally’s abilities in a flash. The situation wasn’t helped by Sally’s pathetic longing to be normal. When they were young, Gillian would often stand alone in the wavering heat of summer, naked, deep in the woods where no one could find her; she would close her eyes and try her best to make magic, standing still as flickering dragonflies alit on her shoulders and arms. There was a shadow world, but she seemed the only one in her family who was refused entrance and she feared that beneath her fragile beauty, she was ordinary. She had tried and tried, appealing to the other world until she had throbbing headaches, all to no effect. In the end, Gillian would tread back to the house on muddy paths, her face hot with disappointment, unable to cast even the smallest enchantment.