Paris, 1894. Sandrine Salome flees New York and her treacherous husband to find shelter in Paris with her grandmother, but as she settles in and pursues new passions, it's unclear whether she or an infamous ancestral witch is driving the changes.

Nikki lives in cosmopolitan West London, where she tends bar at the local pub. The daughter of Indian immigrants, she's spent most of her twenty-odd years distancing herself from the traditional Sikh community of her childhood, preferring a more independent (that is, Western) life. When her father's death leaves the family financially strapped, Nikki, a law school dropout, impulsively takes a job teaching a "creative writing" course at the community...