Perfect Scents

by Heather Karn

I couldn’t skip church two weeks in a row. That would cause the gossip around me to skyrocket and everyone would have me in a psych ward by noon. Instead, I dragged my butt out of bed and into one of the few dresses that I owned, after I’d taken a long, hot shower to wash away last night’s sweat.

  I was finishing applying my makeup using an old, small mirror that was attached to my closet door when someone knocked on the bedroom door and walked in. It had taken a while to get used to Aunt Gwen and Gram doing that, but now it was almost expected, which was why I’d locked the door the night before.

  “Hey, sweetheart.” Her scent of copy paper and ink followed her into the room.

  I looked at her reflection in the mirror, not ready to turn around yet. There were heavy bags under her eyes, and her hair was a bit out of order. Even her dress was wrinkled, which she never allowed. Her biggest pet peeve was wrinkled clothes at church, especially the white button up shirts the men wore. Since I’d gotten here, I’d heard her tell no less than twelve men, of all ages, not to come back the following week unless their shirts were ironed. She even volunteered to iron them if they brought them over. Some had.

  “Hi, Aunt Gwen.”

  “I think you and I need to talk.”

  “Sure.”

  As I turned to face her, she walked into the room after shutting the door and took a seat on my bed. She patted the comforter next to her which was a signal for me to join her. With no excuse to avoid it, I did as she silently asked and hoped that this conversation wouldn’t turn out like last night. I wasn’t ready for digging all that back up again. It had already cost me a good night’s sleep.

  Before she could say whatever it was she’d come to say, I spoke first. “Does Gram think I’m a monster too?”

  “Oh, sweetheart, no. Gram doesn’t think you’re a monster. She loves you. You’re her grandbaby.”

  “But she thinks my father is a monster because he’s a weregal,” I argued back, making Aunt Gwen sigh.

  “Yes, Gram called him a monster, but she didn’t mean that you are too. This is bringing up a lot of hurt feelings and unresolved problems, but none of it is your fault or against you. Gram loves you, sweetheart, but she doesn’t like your dad. After Meg had introduced him to us, she and Gram got into a pretty heated argument. It took Gram a few weeks to forgive your mom, but she did. Gram was warming up to the idea of your dad being around when he up and disappeared. I don’t think she’s so upset because of what he is, but because he left your mom, and left you too.”

  “So when she says he’s a monster, it’s more because of what he did and less of what he is?”

  “I think so, but she also doesn’t like weregals. Tom’s a good friend of hers, and when his son was killed many people in town took it personally, including Gram.”

  “Kev’s not like that. He’d never hurt anyone.”

  “Well, Gram and I don’t know him, so we base our judgments on the past. Now, come on, I think there are some leftover waffles from yesterday we can warm up. How about that?” Aunt Gwen gently nudged my shoulder with her own. Her smile was supposed to make me smile, but it didn’t work.

  “I’m not really hungry.” My stomach took that moment to rat me out and growled loudly.

  Her eyes narrowed at my lie. “Uh huh. Want me to warm one up and bring it to you?”

  “No. I don’t feel like eating.”

  “All right. I’ll see you when it’s time to go then.” She stood to leave, but I stayed on the bed. When she got to the door, she hesitated with her hand on the knob before opening it. “Gram really does love you so much, Joey. Sometimes she doesn’t know how to show it or say it. I guess she’s like you that way, or you’re like her. She’s worried about you, and doesn’t want the same thing to happen to you like what happened to your mom.”

  “Kev is my friend, Aunt Gwen. That’s all. He’s just trying to teach me about what I am.”

  She nodded and left without any argument, and I didn’t leave my room until it was time to get in the car. Gram drove and didn’t say a word the whole ride. She didn’t even play her classical music CD, which she always played on the ride to church. The car was eerie in the dead silence, but I wasn’t going to break it. It was a blessed relief to pull into the small, crowded parking lot of the old church.

  As the pastor began the sermon, my mind wandered while replaying yesterday’s conversation with Kev like it was on a loop. There were a few things that stood out to me, besides my obvious crush on him.

  First was that I was not ready to start changing into a tiger. It wasn’t just the pain, but I didn’t want to be an animal. I liked me as a human. I didn’t want to be an animal too. From the way it sounded, I wasn’t going to have a choice. I only hoped I wouldn’t start changing at school where there was nowhere to hide. I’d have to prepare Gram and Aunt Gwen. They’d freak out if I randomly started to grow orange hair and if my bones shifted shape like Kev’s did.

  The second thing was the huge differences between Kev and me. He could hear so far away, and know exactly how far it was. That boggled my mind, but then again, I could do the same by smelling. All I had to do was take a deep breath in and know that Mrs. Jones was sitting twenty feet behind me and that she had three cats and a dog. The pastor had eaten strawberry pancakes for breakfast. Jake, the most annoying three-year-old I’d ever met, had colored with crayons sometime before church. My nose was freaky.

  When my nose scented a unique, sour scent that I’d never smelled before, my brain went into panic mode as my muscles stiffened. Taking a deep, fortifying breath, I sorted through what my senses told me as I clasped my hands in my lap to keep them from visibly shaking. I didn’t want the two women sitting on either side of me to start asking questions that I had no answers for yet.

  Standing thirty-two and a half feet behind me, barely inside the room’s doorway, stood a sour-scented man wearing enough cologne that Gram could probably smell it from where he stood. Taking a deeper breath, I found he’d moved five feet closer into the room. Continuing to breathe in steady breaths, I tracked him until he came into view on my left, walking up the aisle until he came to an empty pew. Before sitting, he turned, meeting my eyes briefly.

  My pulse jumped, watching him settle himself on the pew. For the rest of the service, I kept a wary eye on him without drawing attention to myself. His noxious aroma filled the room to capacity by the time the pastor ended his sermon, and the organ music filled the room as everyone stood to leave…or gossip with one another.

  As I stepped into the aisle to escape the room’s odor, Mr. Hobbs, one of the worst male gossips in town, cornered me. He was a spritely old man who moved quite fast for his age, or maybe he had the ability to teleport because one second he was on one side of the room and the next he was standing right beside me. Most men were taller than I was, but I found myself looking down on his little bald head wondering how he’d gotten there and how I could get out of the conversation in a polite manner. Even the lady gossipers weren’t as bad as he was. They knew when to leave.

  Gram had tried to set him up with Aunt Gwen shortly after Mom and I had moved to West Virginia, but Aunt Gwen had put her foot down, and that had been the end of that. If she’d dated him, nothing of our private business would have been private.

  “So, Joette, Edith tells me you’re writing an essay about weregals for one of your classes.”

  I glanced at Gram, who was deep in conversation with Mrs. Jones. Was she telling everyone that I had this essay? It needed to stop. This was just a stupid High School essay that I needed to complete to pass the class. It wasn’t like I was writing a dissertation.

  “Yeah, that’s right.”

  He nodded, cupping his chin with his hand. His expression had turned grave, so I waited for the inevitable reaction to my assignment. I wasn’t disappointed.

  “Weregals are a fierce breed of creature, cunning too. They played on our sympathies, got us to trust them, then they stabbed us in the back.”

  “So I’ve heard
.”

  His hand moved up his face so that he was tapping the tip of his nose with his index finger. We were blocking the aisle as he thought and I grew more awkward standing over him. All the while the scent of the stranger passed around the room.

  “As I recall some of them in tiger form were the size of Great Danes while others were the size of a large draft horse. I only ever saw one of those in person, and it gave me nightmares for weeks. It wouldn’t surprise me if he were the one who killed Tom’s son. Tore the poor boy to pieces.”

  My stomach revolted from that statement causing me to swallow hard and be grateful I hadn’t eaten breakfast after all. If I weren’t green, I would’ve been surprised.

  “TMI, Mr. Hobbs.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Too much information.”

  “You are writing about them aren’t you?”

  “Yeah, but I don’t need to know how Tom’s son died. They killed him. That’s good enough for me.”

  “I see. Well, let me think. Oh, and another thing I almost forgot, they have incredible hearing, like nothing I’ve ever seen.”

  After ten minutes of listening to weregal facts I already knew and incorrect facts and history, I was ready to throw in the towel, and my stomach was rolling from the stranger’s continuing presence. My pleading eyes scanned the room for Aunt Gwen, who caught my desperate stare as she finished her conversation and started toward me.

  Before she could reach me, a large, foreign hand settled on my shoulder as a tall, broad-shouldered man stepped into the aisle beside me. He appeared to be in his mid-twenties, and as he extended his hand to Mr. Hobbs, I noted his square jaw, coffee brown eyes, bald head, and five o’clock shadow covering his face. A white, button-down shirt hugged his body in a good way, drawing my attention to the massive biceps fighting to break free of the material covering his arms.

  It was his scent that kept me from going slack-jawed at his sudden appearance. He may have been good looking as far as men went, but it took everything in me not to scrunch my nose up at his smell. Mr. Hobbs didn’t flinch as the man took a step closer to him, so he obviously didn’t smell anything off.

  When the man’s attention turned to me, he squeezed my shoulder gently as he offered me his free hand. It was larger than Kev’s, and as I put my hand in his, I found that it was rough with calluses.

  “Hello, Miss, I’m Angus.”

  “Joette.”

  He nodded as I spoke, his eyes accessing, and I knew what he was going to say before he said it. It was what everyone said, that I had a unique and pretty name. What he said instead took me off guard.

  “I think you know my mother, Milly. She works at the library.”

  “Umm, yeah, I do. We met a week ago. She’s your mother?” It took my brain a few more seconds to catch up as it had been prepared to tell him that yes, I knew I had a pretty name, but since that wasn’t the correct response, I’d had to stutter through a new one.

  He chuckled as he turned himself toward me, blocking out Mr. Hobbs from our conversation. That was just as well because Clifton Jennings, one of the Sherriff’s Deputies, asked Mr. Hobbs if he could speak to him for a moment. As they walked away, a small shiver went through my body. Though we were in a room full of people, I felt completely helpless.

  Angus took a half step forward as his fingers twitched against my shoulder while he turned me more toward him. His stench grew stronger as he stared those coffee eyes down at me, their happy go lucky glisten gone.

  “Yes, she’s my mother. She’s older than she looks.”

  “Oh.”

  “She likes you. Apparently, you’re sweet, quiet, and uninformed about weregals.”

  “And what would you know about weregals?”

  He smirked as the fingers lying against my shoulder feathered up the side of my neck in what could have been considered a romantic move, and it left me breathless and unnerved as I narrowed my eyes. Angus needed to be careful. He was mere seconds and inches away from getting his hand bit by a tigress dressed as a human.

  His expression changed as he closed his eyes and inhaled a deep breath. When they opened, he frowned, watching me with cautious eyes before they scanned the room around us.

  “I was never here, do you understand? Tell no one you saw me. No one.”

  My mouth was open, ready to ask him who he was and what was going on, but he’d already turned and snaked his way through the remaining people at the end of our aisle and was out the door before I could utter a syllable.

  “Well, now that was a mighty fine looking young man if you ask me,” Aunt Gwen sighed, appearing next to me before I had a chance to close my mouth again from Angus’ speedy retreat. “What’d he want?”

  “Nothing. He was talking to Mr. Hobbs and had to say something to me to be polite.”

  “Uh huh. That’s why he had roaming fingers.”

  “Apparently, I have nice skin,” I lied, heeding his strange warning to keep quiet, although I didn’t have any idea what had just transpired. I’d have to ponder that later.

  Instead of staying for the potluck, which Gram had helped bake pies for, we opted to go home so we wouldn’t affect anyone with our awkward bad moods. Gram still wasn’t talking to me, and I wasn’t talking to her either. Not that I was still that mad, hurt mostly, but she needed to be the one to break the ice. And now I had more to think about than my feud with Gram.

  When we got home, I went straight to my room to change out of my dress. I hated dresses, and today was windier than yesterday, so it had taken all of my concentration outside to keep my skirt from flying up and giving everyone around me a show. They did not need to see that. Heck, neither did I.

  Pulling on a pair of jeans and a heavy hoodie, I left my room to help with lunch. It was easy as we were having leftover pepperoni rolls. My stomach had growled through all of church earning me several dirty looks from those around me. You’d think I’d have stood up and started making a speech, interrupting the sermon or something. Gram went to take a nap once she’d finished eating, leaving without saying anything to me or Aunt Gwen. At least I wasn’t the only one being ignored.

  “I think I’m going to go on a walk.”

  I’d just finished the lunch dishes and was drying my hands on a towel. Aunt Gwen sat at the table peeling potatoes for dinner, but when I’d spoken her hands had stilled mid-peel. I hadn’t thought she’d like my announcement, and I’d been right.

  “You’re going to meet that weregal aren’t you?”

  “I just want to talk to him.”

  The sound of the peeler working again loosened my tense muscles. If she’d continued to be upset, she would have put the potato down.

  “Be careful, and don’t do anything stupid. You’re only seventeen.”

  It wasn’t rocket science to catch the meaning behind her words. “No worries, Aunt Gwen. First, he’s a good man, and second, I am so not going there and not interested.”

  “I hope not because your grandmother will probably kill you…and him.”

  For the first time that day I felt like laughing, and it was a real belly laugh.

  “I think I’ll be safe then. I won’t be gone too long.”

  “You’d better not be, or Gram will be out there to find you, and you’re not going to like that. She’ll probably bring the rifle. Just in case, where will you be?” She turned to me, the naked potato in her hand.

  “Up the trail to the bench by the river. I’m going to take a book with me so I might do some reading too.”

  “Just be careful, Joey. We love you.”

  I shoved the hood of my sweatshirt over my head and nabbed a book from the bookshelf in my room and headed out the door. The sun was warm, and if I were lucky, I’d be able to use Kev as a back rest again. He had been pretty comfortable and warm to lean against.

  When I got to the trailhead he wasn’t there, nor did I see him anywhere along the trail to the bench. His scent wasn’t in the air either. My nerves and ears were working ove
rtime trying to catch every sound they could since I was back again in the woods, without Kev, and I still had a stalker, some strange female and Angus hanging around. It took a few minutes to convince myself I was safe since I didn’t smell anything sour in the air.

  Deciding to wait for Kev and see if he’d show up at all, I sat on our bench and opened my copy of The Hobbit. Since learning of the existence of weregals, none of the creatures in the book seemed that far-fetched anymore. Settling back, I lost myself to Middle Earth.