Page 105 of Persephone's Curse
It stopped snowing, but it was so cold outside that the world remained covered up in a white, unmelting blanket all week.
The city seemed paused; time seemed to stand still. We had fires, watched movies, read books.
It was easy to forget about the tear in the sky, even as it continued to get bigger, even as it continued to weigh more heavily upon our shoulders.
Aunt Bea paused one morning before Christmas (who knew what day it was, all days melting together in that no-man’s-land of snow), and smelled at the air near the front door, her nose crinkling in sensory concentration.
“Do you smell something… floral?” she asked my father, who happened to be closest, dusting the mantelpiece (boredom leading to household chores; he’d finished three books in three days and didn’t know what to do with himself anymore).
“Floral?” he questioned. “I sprayed some Fabulosa earlier.”
“No, it’s definitely not that,” she said. “It’s flowers, a specific flower, a creamy, rich, heady, earthy—Bernadette, what am I thinking of, you’re the flower expert.” Because Bernadette had just come down the stairs to the first floor and even though I was there, I was practicing not moving, the art of becoming invisible in clear view of others.
Bernadette hesitated a moment, shot a look at me (invisibility cloaks rarely worked on sisters), weighed the pros and cons, decided it was harmless to tell her—
“It’s jasmine,” she said.
“Jasmine! That’s it!” said Aunt Bea. “But where is it coming from?”
“It’s Evelyn’s perfume,” Bernadette said, and this made me snort, and this made my father look over at me, his eyes widening in pleasant surprise.
“Oh, I didn’t know you were here,” he said.
That was the point,I wanted to say, but instead I said, “Ta-da,” rather lackluster.
“It doesn’tsmelllike perfume,” Aunt Bea persisted. “It doesn’t smell artificial at all.”
“It’s a very expensive perfume,” Bernadette said. “Like, you know. An essential oil.”
“I mean, okay,” Aunt Bea said, very obviously not convinced. “If you say so.”
Henry himself didn’t materialize all that much, but I smelled jasmine everywhere, so he was a constant presence, anyway. I did catch him once, the night before Christmas, sitting by himself at the kitchen table in the middle of the night. I’d woken up to Clara elbowing me in the ribs (Aunt Bea was sleeping in her bed) and I’d gone downstairs for a glass of water. When I turned the kitchen light on, it took everything in me not to scream out in fright.
“Henry, holy crap, what are you doing sitting here in the dark?” I hiss-whispered.
“You don’t really notice it,” he said in this super dramatic, low voice. “The dark, the light. It makes no difference when you’re dead.”
“Okay,” I said, my heart still beating like a timpani drum. “Creepy.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m glad it’s you. Your aunt came down a little while ago and just stood here in the dark, sniffing.”
“She has a great sense of smell, apparently.”
“I used to love the smell of jasmine. I can’t smell it anymore.”
“You can’t?”
“I can’t smell anything,” Henry admitted sadly.
“They’re my favorite flower. All my life, walking into a room, I’d know if you were there or if I’d just missed you or if you hadn’t been around in a while.”
“If I wasn’t a ghost, your favorite flower might have been… I don’t know. Lilies. Bluebells. Amaranthus.”
“Sure, maybe? What’s going on?”
“The tear is too big now. If I wait any longer… I won’t be strong enough to close it. And I still haven’t told her. I’m scared to tell her. And now it’s here. It has to happen tomorrow. I’ve waited too long already; I can’t wait any longer.”
“But tomorrow’s Christmas,” I said.
