The Scent Keeper(68)

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I could hear the tumbling waves of voices inside, the music low and bluesy. I opened the heavy door and slipped in. The room was dark and smelled of beer and bourbon. The occasional table candle illuminated old brick walls, the few overhead lights gleaming off a long expanse of mahogany that ran the length of the room.

Fisher was behind the bar, his back to me as I entered. I slipped into the darkness of the alcove by the door, watching him. The place was crowded, and he worked without stopping, never looking past the next order. His movements were quick and certain; when he finished pouring a beer he pushed it across the bar hard enough that it slid, requiring the recipient to put out a hand, absorb the movement. When he used the shaker, the ice cracked against the metal. If you didn’t know him, you might think it was confidence. You might not sense what was smoldering underneath.

He turned his back to the crowd, reaching up for a bottle on a high shelf, the movement suddenly, achingly familiar. I had seen that same motion so many times while we were cleaning the cabins. I used to secretly watch the way his muscles moved under his pale skin, as I did now. He turned back again and poured a stream of clear liquid, ending with a sharp twist of his wrist. I could see the length of his neck, the lines of his jawbone. I could feel the curves of them under my fingers. The longing I felt then made me furious. How could he work here, surrounded by smells and men destined to bring out the worst in him?

At the end of the bar, the busboy had stopped to talk to a young woman. Their faces were lit, happy. The glow seemed to catch Fisher’s attention.

“You going to work or not?” he asked, shooting the words down the length of the bar. I remembered us, standing in the clearing, the ax in Fisher’s hand, the way he had teased me.

You going to help with this, or not? There had been such joy in his face.

But this wasn’t that Fisher. This was how his father would have said it—digging in, searching for the weak spot. Making himself feel better at the expense of someone else.

Salmon always return to the same stream.

Fisher, too, it seemed.

But I didn’t have to. I refused to be Maridel, ignoring what was right in front of my eyes, forgiving everything.

I yanked open the door of The Island and thrust my way out into the street. I didn’t want to watch anymore.



* * *



After that, creating a new fragrance was all I could, or would, think about. I went to Inspire, Inc., each day on a mission. Every scent in Claudia’s bottles was a possible component, a potential magic key. What smell would make women want to buy things they didn’t actually need? I was so caught up in the combinations and implications that my reaction times slowed, faltered.

“Emmeline.” Claudia snapped her fingers. “Pay attention.”

But I was, more than she knew.



* * *



It was the scent of cardamom that finally did it. As Claudia opened the bottle, the smell seemed to yearn toward me. I inhaled and was back in Colette’s kitchen. Fisher and I were making coffee for the summer guests, the rolls turning golden in the oven. The longing in me blew past all my defenses.

I reached out and took the bottle from Claudia’s hand, held it to my nose.

“Don’t you know what it is?” she asked, shaking her head at my stupidity.

But I didn’t care what she thought. I wanted that scent. It didn’t matter that the coffee, the yeast, the melting sugar weren’t actually in it. I wanted the memory it evoked, and as I inhaled more deeply, I could feel it wanting me, too. Wanting the warmth of my skin. When Claudia wasn’t looking, I tipped the bottle, letting the opening touch the inside of my wrist. A drop of liquid sank into me.

And that’s when it hit me. I’d been going at this puzzle all wrong. I’d been following Claudia’s approach, treating the scents like component parts instead of the living things I knew they were. I’d been trying to come up with a fragrance that was a perfectly polished equation, but the fragrances I knew were never like that. They mingled and danced and whispered. Their scents slipped into yours, and each of you changed the other, became something new. We didn’t use each other. We needed each other.

And that need could make you do almost anything. I’d seen that.

Now I wondered—what if I left something out of the fragrance on purpose, something so elemental, so necessary, that a person’s own body would strive to fill that absence? And what if that missing thing could make a person need to buy the things around them?

“Emmeline?” It was Claudia, her impatience overflowing.

“Cardamom,” I said, and dove back into my thoughts.

I could do it. I knew I could. This was something I understood, something Claudia could never imagine. I couldn’t wait to see the expression on her face.



* * *



The missing element couldn’t be in the top notes. I figured that out quickly enough. Top notes were the ones that caught your attention, the glittering invitations that led you deeper into a fragrance.

It couldn’t be a middle note, either—those warm, round things, full and loving. Taking them out would induce the soft purple of wanting, but that was still too passive. Need lived in base notes. It was the difference between appetite and craving, a bruised heart and a broken one. Base notes were just that, base—subterranean and simmering, dirt and blood, grief and desire and memory.