I cringe as I remember my boast to him about having a private jet. Why did I do that?
He walks away, then reverses course. “This is seriously jacked up. I thought you cared.”
“I do.”
“Right. You needed my help to fix your mistake.” He rakes a hand through his hair and some of it remains sticking up. “You know, I would have done it anyway. She is my mother.”
“It’s not like that.”
“Did you ever care about me?” His eyes plead with me to make it right.
“Not that way.” My voice sounds raspy and dry. I swallow hard. “I told you, love witches can’t love.”
He coughs in disbelief and his head draws back. His hurt eyes linger for a moment on mine, then with a muttered curse, he strides off.
I waver between laughter and tears as I stumble away. BBG was never the answer. All I had to do was lie.
THIRTY
“AMAZED, PLEASED, EVEN TICKLED, SOMETIMES.BUT NEVER
SURPRISED.NO, A GOOD AROMATEUR IS NEVER SURPRISED.”
—Anise, Aromateur, 1904
THE PIERCING WHOOSHof a plane like a Cloud Air jet rouses me from my slumber, and for a moment, a thrill of panic stabs through me. But it can’t be Mother. She won’t be here until Monday. I squint at the clock—almost eleven a.m. I haven’t slept this late in weeks. Sunlight streams through my windows, but today it doesn’t burn my eyes. Perhaps I am getting accustomed to my other senses. I sniff, but don’t detect any olfactory improvement.
I try calling Kali. With every ring, I’m filled with hope that this time she’ll answer. That she’ll be ready to get our friendship back on track. When the call goes to voicemail, I say, “Hi. Your poem—what you did—was amazing.” I stretch out the coil of my old-fashioned phone. “You’reamazing. If you feel like talking, call me.”
The bag of candy grams on the floor catches my eye. I shake myself free of my quilt and sort through the messages, one byone. The sight of Court’s neat printing squeezes my chest, making it hard to breathe. Twenty of the twenty-one are written by the same hand.
I read one:
I’m a veggie vampire,
Who does not suck on necks,
I only eat bean sprouts and peas,
And other healthy snacks.
I snivel a few times but won’t allow myself to cry. You’re not supposed to cry if you’re the cause of your own misery. Then it’s just pathetic.
I should throw them away, but I can’t. So I stick them in my nightstand drawer. The Rulebook falls over when I close the drawer. I pick it up and flip through the pages once again. Maybe there’s something about recovering your nose.
The book opens to Rule Eighteen, the rule on PUFs, probably because I’ve been reading that page a lot lately. My eyes stick on the Last Word penned at the top of the page:Love is revealed through sacrifice. —Shayla, Aromateur, 1633.
Shayla was Layla’s daughter, the one for whom Layla gave her life. Is there a reason her Last Word appears on this particular page? Last Words appear throughout the Rulebook in no particular order, though most aromateurs put them in the blank pages at the end.
My mind drifts back to the day I asked Mother about PUFs. She said,Sniff-matching.It wasn’t December, you know.
I grip the book too hard and leave a wrinkle on the page. Mother had said those words when describing how to make a PUF for Aunt Bryony. December is when Layla’s Sacrifice is in bloom, the plant with the scent so complex—over ten thousand notes—a single orchid can substitute for an elixir. Could it also substitute for a PUF?
I snap my fingers. That’s it. Even if I’m wrong, I have to try. I don’t know for sure if Alice and Mr. Frederics kissed, but maybe not, given his mother’s presence at the game. I pull on leggings and a tunic, and bobby pin my hair into submission.
Outside, I hurry to the workshop.
The twin buds of Layla’s Sacrifice are big as my thumbs and still closed. Harvesting the petals early kills the whole plant. My breath fogs up the glass as I wonder what Mother would do.
