Chapter One
GENEVIÈVE
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I put my hand on the door of theboulangerie, bracing myself for what awaited me. Then I mustered a friendly smile and stepped inside.
Ding-ding!The bell above the door chimed as I stepped from chilly November air into the warm, welcoming bakery.
Madame Martin, the baker, looked up from her conversation with Madame Fontaine, the retired schoolmistress. When they spotted me, they practically clapped with excitement, exactly as they had when I’d first arrived in town two weeks ago and every time in between.
Now I knew how endangered species felt.
“Ohbonjour, Geneviève! Look, Gérard. It’s Geneviève!” Madame Martin gushed to her husband.
Subtext:It’s her — the one who finally showed up after months of procrastinating.
I hadn’t been procrastinating, though. I’d been finishing my contract at the Children’s Theater of New England…and disentangling myself from another disastrous romance.
My shoulders sagged at the thought of all the head- and heartache Brandon had put me through. Correction — all the head- and heartache I had putmyselfthrough. Again.
But that was my past, and I’d learned from it. No more men. No more reckless flings. No more trusting my notoriously poor judgment.
I sighed. No more fun?
“Geneviève!” Madame Fontaine echoed Madame Martin’s surprise. “So good to see you again!”
Subtext:Good to see you haven’t abandoned us…yet.
“Bonjour,” I replied as sweetly as I could. I leaned left and waved to Monsieur Martin, who was pulling a rack of buns out of an oven in the back. “Bonjour,Monsieur Martin.”
He was just as surprised as the others. “Geneviève! You’re still in Auberre?”
“Why would anyone leave when the best éclairs in France are right here?”
He grinned proudly, while Madame Martin held her hand out for my shopping list, like she had ever since I was a kid. I’d spent every summer visiting my grandmother in France, and now, my sister, my cousin, and I had inherited her place.
A very big, very run-down place. Château Nocturne.
“I can’t get over how much you look like your sister,” Madame Martin said, though Madame Fontaine’s expression said,She sure doesn’t act like her.
I heaved an inner sigh. Similar packaging, very different interiors.
We shared the same blue eyes (our father’s) and the same long brown hair (our mother’s), though mine had a natural auburn tint. But while Mina was reserved and responsible, I was… Well, me. More outgoing. Slightly more reckless — er, spontaneous. And equally inconsistent when it came to using the little bit of magic that had trickled down to us through a very mixed family tree.Brushed by moonlight,some called it, though I preferredtouched by magic. Either way, it showed up in the weirdest way and at the damnedest times.
Not that we let on about that. Our human neighbors didn’t know about magic, and it was better to keep things that way.
“How is work going on the château?” Madame Martin asked while assembling my order. “I know your sister is delighted to have your help.”
Subtext:Finally helping her after months of shirking family duty.
“It’s going well, thank you,” I said, embellishing a bit.
We were all busting our asses to renovate the place on a shoestring budget — a very frayed shoestring — but sometimes, I felt we were rolling boulders uphill.
“We’re still looking for an electrician. Do you know any?” I asked.
