A clump of damp hair flops into his eyes.
Stop staring. Talk. “Oh no, I didn’t lose anything.” Only mydignity. “Just harvesting lichen.” Does that sound weird? Yes.
A pair of dimples materializes on either side of his mouth. “Hm, okay.”
“Okay.” I begin to turn away. I’m a comet that briefly passed into his solar system but now must return to deep space where I belong.
“I’m Court Sawyer.”
I suppress a laugh. No kidding. Our eyes connect. Sure, he’s cute, even up close, but overrated-cute. His eyes squint and he has one of those Count Dracula hairlines that, like the economy, is one day headed for a recession. That said, I can see why he’s a photographer’s dream, with dark features against a naturally pale complexion, and a sweet curve to his lips.
“It’s Mimosa, right?”
“Just Mim.”
“I’ve seen you here before. You’re the famous love witch.”
“Infamous, you mean.”
“Is it true you can smell a person five miles away?”
People love to exaggerate. “No. Four miles, max, and only if the wind is right.”
He smiles. “How do you do that? I can barely smell my own sweat.”
Magic? Mutant genes that grew billions more scent receptors than the average person? Probably a bit of both. I give him the short answer. “Genetics. It’s no big deal.”
“Genetics, huh.” The trouty odor of doubt floats away fromhim. “People say your mother locked you away in a tower. No one ever saw you until you started school.” He shakes out one leg, then the other, seeming uncomfortable with standing still.
“My mother wanted to homeschool me.”
“What changed her mind?”
A year of begging. A couple of all-expense-paid guilt trips. “The math got too complicated.”
He laughs, though I wasn’t kidding. I fumble around my messenger bag for my plastic jar and collection tools, hoping he gets the hint. As good as he smells, I can’t be late.
His face grows serious. “Can you really make people fall in love?”
“We open their eyes to the possibility of love. But the decision is theirs.” Every few years, some journalist writes about us, giving logical explanations for our singular sniffers, like the journalist inScientific American, who said our genes hail from the Paleozoic era when humans still walked on all fours. Others call us frauds. Grandmother Narcissa, an anomaly even among aromateurs, put most fraud claims to rest when she scented out a rare prickly pear growing in Arizona, used to treat diabetes. She smelled it all the way from our home on Parrot Hill.
But still, we have our skeptics.
Court rubs the back of his neck. “So I’ve been wanting to ask, do you make potions to help people get over each other?”
I cough to cover my embarrassment.Him,needing our services? “We don’t work with minors.”
He flashes a smile, and my adrenaline spikes. “It’s not for me.”
“Oh.”
He doesn’t explain. Perhaps he’s talking about his mother. Last year, pictures of Court’s tech-millionaire father cavorting with scantily clad “models” surfaced on the internet. Even Mother knew about it, and she hates gossip.
I finally say, “It’s unethical.” It’s mostly true. We do make Potions to Undo Feelings, or PUFs, in extreme cases like aromateur error. Mother has never made a mistake, but she did make a PUF once before I was born.
“Making people fall in love isn’t unethical? I mean, opening their eyes to thepossibility.”
I square my hat. “We have rules. The client and the target—I mean, the love interest—must be of sound mind, impeccable personal history, an adult over eighteen; the list is long.” Some of my hair gets in my mouth and I blow it out. “Anyway, Mother says falling in love is the easy part. Things get complicated after that.”
