Twelve-year-old Garnet doesn't know her family. Her mother has done her best to keep it that way, living far from the rest of the magical Carrefour clan and their legendary mansion known as Crossroad House. But when Garnet finally gets summoned to the estate, it isn't quite what she hoped for. Her relatives are strange and quarrelsome, each room in Crossroad House is more dilapidated than the last, and she can't keep straight which dusty hallways and cobwebbed corners are forbidden. And then she learns a terrifying secret: the dying Carrefour patriarch fights to retain his life by stealing power from the others. Every household accident that isn't an accident, every unexpected illness and unexplained disappearance grants him a little more time. While the Carrefours squabble over who will inherit his role when (if) he dies, Garnet encounters evidence of an even deeper curse. Was she brought to Crossroad House as part of the curse ... or is she meant to break it?