Season of the Dragonflies (5 page)

Jennifer wrapped her arms around herself and said, “I'll expose myself before I ever let you do it.” She turned to Willow. “I want this role, but if I can't have it and she stays in the business, then I don't want our careers to cross like this again or I'll give it up completely and agree to a tell-all, I swear. Just go back and talk to Mya. I don't want an altered formula. Only Zoe does. Would one alteration really hurt?”

Willow's jaw moved from side to side before she forced herself to lie. “I'll consider it.”

“That's all we want,” Zoe said before she stood up. She straightened her tight tank top and walked to the other end of the room to suit up in her disguise.

Jennifer waited for Zoe to leave before she said, “The both of us can't make it; we can't both be at the top.”

Willow nodded and said, “I'll call you in the next few days. Try not to worry.” Jennifer gave her a small, sad smile and then met the entourage awaiting her outside the door.

Willow leaned back in her chair and looked for her leather purse—the one Mya called beef jerky—but it wasn't beside her and her phone was inside it. She needed to call home but she couldn't remember where her stupid purse had gone. Willow wished that she could scream and scream and scream until her scream reached their cabin in Virginia and flattened Mya. She loved her daughter so much, but how dare she? Willow would've never crossed her mother, spoken with clients directly without telling her, and then sent her out here without so much as a warning. Not in a million years could she imagine doing a thing like that, and for the first time she felt grateful her mother wasn't alive. What would she say about this wrong turn in their company?

And those absolutely ungrateful actresses. What more could they possibly think they deserved? Neither woman could deny that her career had grown exponentially since her first application of the perfume. As with all of her clients no matter the industry, an aging starlet of the previous generation had guided each young woman to Willow. After just a few months of using the perfume, most of Willow's actress clients skipped the usual commercials, voice-overs, kid's shows, and indie films to land major supporting-actress roles in movies that just happened to go on to receive big Oscar nods.

Zoe's interview had been memorable because Willow had allowed Mya to control the proceedings and because Zoe didn't hesitate. Most women asked for time to think the proposition over, and Willow appreciated this quality, as it gave her time to consider whether the potential client had the most important trait for being selected: the self-discipline to never utter a word about Lenore Incorporated to anyone, not even her mother. But the promise of the right agent, simple financing for the product, and instant success had been enough for Zoe Bennett. She signed on the spot, and Willow remembered feeling wary at the time. But still she had agreed to sell to her. Mya had been convinced of Zoe's potential as a pop star, and Zoe did well at that for the first few years. She wasn't satisfied, however, and began contacting directors. When Willow found out, she hadn't considered this a threat to her existing client, as the perfume guaranteed success only for innate talent. But they had missed that Zoe's was acting, not singing and dancing, and now the public adored Zoe, which gave her bargaining power.

Willow's driver and an assistant returned to the room. The assistant, a waif of a girl with glittering sapphire eye shadow, leaned down and said, “More coffee, Ms. Lenore?” Her eyelashes were so long Willow thought they might reach out and touch her. Both of the girl's wrists clanked with a cadre of silver bracelets. “No, I'm fine,” Willow said, and looked out through the glass panels at the dry and patchy mountains. They looked like they had a case of mange. The view of the Hollywood sign in the distance was tinged by smog.

The assistant brought Willow her purse. It had been hanging from a gold hook on the wall all this time, her cell phone peeping out of the side like a pocket square.

“Thank you,” Willow said, and the girl swished her hips as she left the room, recycling a stack of papers on her way out.

“I'll be just a minute,” Willow told her driver. She placed her chin in her hand and wondered how much longer she could continue this way, conducting business alone like this. Who'd be there? It could only be one of her two daughters, but both of Willow's girls existed far outside these glass walls. Lucia never called home. And how could Willow trust Mya to take over? Sometimes she felt like Mya and Lucia didn't love her. Irrational, maybe, but Willow couldn't help thinking that if her daughters loved her, they'd be here for her when she needed them most.

Willow tapped Mya's name on her phone. The line rang but she didn't answer. Of course not. Her daughter had better not do anything stupid before Willow had the chance to fly home.

Grandmother Serena had known what Willow knew, that there's no such thing as
one
alteration. Compromise yourself once, and you'll do it again. That's why Grandmother Serena had promised a curse on any variation of her formula. The potential for error and malice had existed from the perfume's inception, and Serena had always insisted the product be used for the empowerment of women and not for ill. Her formula was foolproof. Apparently, Mya didn't have sufficient fear of Grandmother Serena. She had also never witnessed how Serena's presence made the plants bend to her feet. Serena's power had terrified Willow when she was a little girl, just like the thought of a massive reveal scared her now.

What would happen if the public knew that Lenore Incorporated was responsible for the careers of the female entertainers they most adored, the politicians they voted for, the lawyers and judges who enforced the law, the doctors who cared for them, and, more often, the IT entrepreneurs who made their lives convenient? Never had there been more competition to be famous and wealthy in America, and Lenore Incorporated had simplified the process and immeasurably amplified women's talents for almost a century.

What viable option did she have? The company was Willow's entire life, and Zoe's threat against it was a threat against the Lenore family, past, present, and future.

T
HE VEGETABLE STOCK
simmered all afternoon until the bouquet garni exited the pot looking like a drenched pile of compost. The flavors of rosemary and sage blended evenly with the carrots and onions and potatoes, and Mya had plenty of stock for that evening's dinner and a grand surplus to freeze. Cooking stock soothed her nerves.

From one glance at the kitchen an onlooker would have expected a dinner party of twelve to knock at the door, but it was a dinner for two—at least it would be if she decided to invite Luke. Despite his feverish texting, she hadn't yet responded. The crescent moon had risen before dusk—a waxing phase, a sure sign of developing events to come—and Mya decided to cook what she and Luke loved most: braised short ribs in a mustard sauce; quinoa with morel mushrooms picked that day in the forest and topped with fresh feta from their goats; and an arugula salad with local bacon from Blue Boone's farm, ripe summer tomatoes from the garden, and a vinaigrette with chopped cherries from the tree up near the fields. Mya left the kitchen smelling of beef drippings and retreated to the workshop in the back of the cabin to begin the real work.

She slid open the wooden door and walked down two steps into a dark room lit by seven white candles. Two red candles hung from brass fixtures on the ceiling—a fire hazard by anyone's standards. Sometimes the full moon provided enough light to navigate the cabin, but not this evening; the moon was the shape of a nail clipping. The left wall of the workshop contained different shelves with glass doors and locks, and behind those doors sat hundreds of amber-colored bottles: every base, middle, and top note a perfumer could want. Not that she'd admit it to anybody, but Mya considered herself a genius. She captured honey more perfectly than honey itself by submerging buckets of honeysuckles in the purest cow fat from a neighboring farm; she accidentally captured a note of summer rain by soaking sweet olive stalks in oak barrels before distillation. Her only pastime and her only passion, the workshop was her playground all grown up.

In the center of her workshop stood a large butcher's table, and Mya perched on her wooden stool and peered over the Bunsen burner glowing blue in the dim light. She placed a flat crystal as wide as a grapefruit on a plate above the flame. The rock warmed, and on it she centered the deer musk pod, a gift from one of her favorite animals in the forest. Mya had been tracking him since she was eight years old. This deer resembled the musk breed of Russia or China, except he had antlers
and
the long teeth in the front. And just yesterday she had found him dead in a meadow clearing inside the forest. This morning they had gone for him, and Luke draped a scarlet cloth on his body and Mya wrapped a ring of wild tea roses around his head before they removed the hairy pod from the shaft of the deer's penis. And then they buried his body underneath Mya's favorite weeping willow tree.

An hour later the musk pod had shriveled to the size of a kiwi. Mya slid the oven mitts onto her hands and removed the pod from the crystal. She tied the shrunken skin around the pod with a piece of hemp rope, walked over to the side of her workshop, and lifted the sheer white curtain that barricaded her collection of yarrow, bloodroot, and rosemary gathered from the landscape around the cabin. Mya hung the pod on the wall to dry next to a bundle of wild mint hanging upside down, and then she shielded the wall again with the curtains.

With this rarest of musks, she would make a perfume more potent than Zoe Bennett could've ever wanted. Mya had asked Zoe what she could do to fix this problem, and she promised Zoe that she would do anything for her. All Zoe desired was “more sex appeal, a respectable Marilyn Monroe kind,” and Mya said, “That can be done.”

But she wouldn't give Zoe exactly what she wanted. She had broken her contract, if not in letter, then certainly in spirit. The Lenores carefully timed and calculated whom they offered the perfume to, ensuring there would be only one or two superstars, depending on the industry. Zoe had abused her privilege, and Mya had no intention of letting anything happen to Lenore Incorporated. The business mattered more to her than anything else in her life. No, what Mya intended to make for Zoe was the ultimate in repulsion. Once Zoe used Mya's new formula, she'd be done in Hollywood. Forever.

The smell of her mustard sauce entered the workshop, and Mya tossed her gloves on the table and hustled into the kitchen, where the short ribs had already been removed and positioned on top of the stove. A duffel bag had been placed on the kitchen table. Mya froze and said, “Luke?”

She looked over her shoulder, her heart pounding, and repeated his name without reply. Then she walked over to the window above the kitchen sink to see if his truck was parked out there. And the only person she didn't want coming to dinner ascended the front steps. She wore all black and it didn't flatter her. Mya opened the door and said, “Lucia?”

“Someone's home, that's a relief,” Lucia said, and stopped at the top porch step. “Still trying to burn down the house?”

“I was in the workshop,” Mya said defensively. Neither Lucia nor Willow would ever let Mya live down the one time she started a grease fire by leaving olive oil in the cast-iron skillet. She'd been distracted by distilling irises. “The dragonflies,” Mya said, and stood firmly in the center of the doorway.

“They were here too?” Lucia said. “Is Willow home?”

“Tomorrow.”

A firefly crossed in front of Lucia's face, and she swatted like it might sting her. She took a deep breath and said, “The air's so clean. I've forgotten air like this even existed.”

Mya said, “Why're you here? What happened?”

Lucia said, “Can we continue this interrogation tomorrow? I'm tired.” She tilted her head to the side and said, “Aren't you going to let me in?”

Mya moved to the side to let her pass.

“Smells good,” Lucia said. She picked up one short rib from the pan and made her way to the back of the cabin. Mya stood still and waited for Lucia to return to the kitchen, but instead she heard the flush of a toilet and the whoosh of the curtain on Lucia's old bedroom doorframe, then the sound of the springs retracting on her mattress. Mya waited a few minutes longer in case Lucia decided to come out, but she heard only the cicadas outside. The short ribs looked tender and juicy, not a degree overcooked, but Mya had officially lost her appetite.

W
ILLOW WALKED SLOWLY
out of the room, failing at first to notice a man with silver-flecked hair standing at the threshold. He crossed his arms in front of him, without a single piece of technology in his hand. All of his attention zeroed in on Willow. The pause between them lasted so long that she had enough time to convince herself he was looking for someone else. This man, with his wide jaw and solid chest and glowing black Oxford shoes, wouldn't be waiting for Willow.

Without meaning to, she let her eyes glance down to his left hand, just to check for a twinkle of gold. Not one piece of jewelry adorned him, not even a Rolex, a men's fashion statement she'd come to consider part of the uniform out here. He continued to stare at her, like he was expecting her to speak first, and then he moved away from the bamboo planting next to the door. He said, “Ms. Lenore.”

She accepted his outstretched hand, his palm radiating more heat than she'd felt from someone's skin in many years. “How do you do?” she said, wishing she didn't always sound so formal when she was nervous.

“James Stein,” he said like she should already know that name.