Scent of Magic (2 page)

Having been blamed for every unfortunate incident in every town they'd ever lived, the three Duchesne sisters had lived a rather nomadic existence over the years.

At the age of sixteen each woman had developed a unique and unusual gift.

Francesca Duchesne, the eldest, had the ability to read people by the sense of smell. With one whiff, she instantly saw what a person's soul desired and what made their heart sing with joy. Francesca intuitively knew the perfect scent for a person and her nose had never let her down. Francesca was the romantic sister.

Juliette Duchesne, the middle sister, had the gift of touch. With a single touch, Juliette was able to read a person, and knew if they were off balance in some way. She knew exactly the right scent to help align a person's body align with their spirit. She was the healer of the family. Juliette was the practical sister.

Starley Duchesne, the baby of the family, turned sixteen a month ago and she was still waiting for her gift to mature. She had begun to worry maybe she was the oddball Duchesne girl and that her special gift was seeing people's true form.

Juliette and Francesca advised Starley not to worry; her magic would develop in its own time. Secretly, however, they were worried. Their gifts had arrived like clockwork on the morning of their sixteenth birthdays.

It had been Juliette's idea for Francesca to open up their first shop.

"You love perfume. You've always loved mixing and creating different scents. Between your sense of smell and my sense of touch, how could we possibly go wrong?" Juliette said to Francesca.

At first, Francesca had laughed it off. A few times, she'd even been irritated by Juliette's nagging. Luckily, Juliette hadn't been easily swayed by Francesca's wrath. One night, as fate would have it, Francesca had a dream about a magical store called The Perfumery. When she awoke bright and early the next morning, she got dressed and immediately headed downtown to the bank.

Because of Juliette's coaxing and the seemingly random, yet extremely vivid dream, Francesca withdrew her entire savings and rented a newly vacated building in their hometown.

Francesca was ten years older than Juliette. Juliette was ten years older than Starley. The elder sisters were beautiful women with dark hair and eyes. Starley was pretty in her own way, with her blonde hair, blue eyes, and fair skin. Each woman bore a birthmark in the shape of an infinity sign on the back of their neck. Since Starley didn't look anything like her sisters, she decided the birthmark was the one thing that tied them all together, proving she hadn't been adopted.

Francesca was a hopeless romantic. Though she had yet to marry, she knew her Mr. Right was out there somewhere, and that he'd show up in her life regardless of where in the world she lived at the time.

When she wasn't creating perfume, Francesca wrote short stories. Romance, of course. When people asked her why she never wrote a full-length novel she smiled and said when the time was right, she would. So far, her love life had been a series of short stories, so it was only logical that her writing should follow suit.

Juliette was romantic in her own way, but she tended to be much more grounded than Francesca. She had a mind for numbers and managed the financial side of the business. You might say she had the magic touch when it came to money.

Starley felt like a failure after her sixteenth birthday came and went. About the only inkling that there was anything going on were the strange electrical anomalies that seemed to follow her around. Lights turned on and off of their own accord. Her cell phone battery was forever dying, so she just stopped carrying it with her. She couldn't wear a watch for more than a few days without the damn thing running backwards.

Strange, non-electrical things happened, too. At the most inopportune time, glasses randomly levitated off the counter and crashed unceremoniously to the floor.

Starley did her best to avoid the company of strangers because it gave her sensory overload and she felt like she was trying to listen to five different radio stations at the same time. That's why Starley preferred the company of animals.

Francesca had had to put her foot down several times over the years to keep Starley from taking in every stray animal that wandered by. Starley had been lucky she'd been allowed to keep Poe the Crow and Larry the Terrier.

Starley had yet to grow into the beautiful swans that her sisters had grown to be. It didn't matter much to Starley. She'd never been in one place long enough to notice boys, and being plain kept them from noticing her. She found it easier to blend in with the woodwork that way.

Juliette and Francesca did their best to encourage Starley to wear a little makeup and stop dressing like a boy. The women constantly offered to take her shopping for more flattering clothes. Clothes that fit. Or maybe get her to visit the optometrist for contacts. The elder sisters had offered numerous times to show her how to apply makeup or style her hair.

Each time, Starley silently replied with her patented eye roll and went back to reading her book of choice.

No one expected things to be any different in Prosperity than they had been in any of the previous towns where they'd lived.

The first perfumery might have been Juliette's brainchild, but it was Francesca's hard work and creative touches that had made it successful. Each subsequent store brought in more money than the one before it. With that kind of success rate, maybe moving wasn't such a bad idea after all.

The empty building that would become the latest perfumery sat on Main Street at the end of the block. Conveniently located, it was within walking distance to the Duchesne's house. It was also close to the church, too close in Juliette's opinion. Sometimes, people from small towns, especially small towns in the Bible Belt, tended to get spooked when magical things started happening. Juliette hoped the people of Prosperity were at least somewhat open-minded because the unexplainable followed the women wherever they put down roots.

"Please tell me you didn't pay a lot of money for this dump," Starley grumbled as she pushed her glasses up for the umpteenth time.

"Give your big sis some credit, kiddo," Francesca said. "The first month's rent was free because I offered to provide my own elbow grease."

"Ahem, excuse me?
Who's
elbow grease?" Starley said.

Juliette propped the front door open to let in some fresh air. "Starley's right. I think you should have demanded
two
months free. It might take us that long to get the place ready for business."

Francesca thought her sisters were too glass-half-empty about things. Sure, the place needed some tender loving care. Apparently, they didn't all share the same rose-colored glasses. Where Juliette and Starley saw a front window layered with years of grime, she envisioned large block letters announcing The Perfumery to the whole world.

Francesca refused to let Starley and Juliette rain on her parade and hummed to herself while scrubbing the grease coated interior with pine cleaner.

Starley volunteered to clean the front window. Her reasons were two-fold. She could sit while she worked, and she could also people watch. People watching had become one of her favorite things to do. She liked making up stories about the strangers as they walked by.

Since the store was the last business on the block, Starley giggled to herself as several curiosity seekers passed the window more than once, craning their necks to peek inside. Some of them were so bold as to stop to take a rock out of their shoe or scratch the back of their neck, gawking, for as long as they dared under her watchful eyes.

Just before noon a man came right up to the window and cupped his hands on the glass to get a better look inside. He was tall, thin and dressed in paint-splattered coveralls. Starley knew he had to be the man Francesca had hired to paint the letters on the front window. She resisted the urge to stick out her tongue at him because he looked like he might be afraid of his own shadow and she decided that scaring him away before he painted the sign would royally piss off Francesca.

"Frank, I think this guy's looking for you," Starley called out over her shoulder.

Francesca spun around to see what Starley was talking about. She grinned when she recognized the man, and stuck her head out the door.

"Simon, come on in. We don't bite," Francesca said.

"Speak for yourself," Juliette whispered.

"Simon's here to letter the front window for us," Francesca said.

Simon nodded at the women and gave Starley a pointed look, silently telling her she was in
his
space.

Starley unfolded her legs and climbed from the window. She bowed and said, "It's all yours Picasso."

Juliette bit her lip to keep from snickering and elbowed Starley after Francesca gave them a withering glare.

"Okay then," Starley said quietly. She walked behind the counter and opened the Styrofoam cooler. "On that note, I think I'll just help myself to something to eat."

Francesca had packed a few bologna and mustard sandwiches and cans of soda for lunch. It was nearly noon, and they'd already been working for several hours. "That's a good idea. Why don't we go across the street to that little park?"

Juliette's eyes darted to Simon, who was busy setting up his painting supplies in the front window. Not that she didn't trust him, but it didn't hurt to be cautious in a strange town. "I'm not that hungry right now. You two go on without me."

"Starley and I'll be right over there," Francesca said nodding in the direction of the park, which was nothing more than a picnic table and a trash can. "Holler if you need us."

By the end of the day, the sisters had made a great deal of progress with the cleaning of the shop. Simon had painted a perfect sign that spanned the entire width, and nearly the total height of the front window. The lettering declared that the name of the business was "The Perfumery." Not very original, but Francesca was superstitious, so wherever they went the name always remained the same.

At dusk, the sisters linked arms and with a satisfied sigh, turned and headed toward home.

Prosperity, Arkansas was a small town way down in the southeastern tip of the state. A small dot on the map that time seemed to have forgotten after the new highway had been rerouted through larger cities. That their town had been lost in time didn't seem to bother the residents of Prosperity. To the contrary, they liked their sleepy little town and went out of their way to keep it that way.

The women referred to it as quaint, and the men likened it to a lazy day spent doing nothing while still earning a living. Everyone knew everyone, and any newcomers were either deemed an international spy or regarded highly suspicious until it was determined that they didn't have ulterior motives for being in Prosperity and most likely weren't a threat.

Prosperity had one mom and pop grocery store. Droste's prices were higher than supermarkets in bigger cities. One time, the citizens got wind of a chain grocery wanting to build in town, and everyone shut that idea down in a hurry.

Outside companies might bring more crime and undesirables into town. Not to mention what it would do to traffic. In the end, the chain store decided on its own that the location for the new branch wouldn't work, and no one spoke of it again.

Of course, that annoyed the good people of Prosperity. Why wasn't their town good enough for the grocery store? They took it as a personal insult. The population of Prosperity had pitched a fit about the possibility of an outside business moving in, but they wanted the decision to be on their terms, not the other way around.

There was one church in town and every citizen of Prosperity belonged to that church. Everyone got married or buried there. Pastor Sullivan Byrd was worse than Santa Claus when it came to knowing who was naughty and who was nice, and you could bet if you missed Sunday service, he'd stop by your house later to find out just what disease you were suffering from that had kept you from attending church that morning.

Pastor Byrd was thick. Thick around his middle. Thick hair, thick mustache, Coke-bottle-thick glasses, and more thick-headed than one man ought to be. No wonder his wife Donna was seen more often than heard. Donna always stood around wringing her hands and staring at her feet whenever Sullivan was near.

The name Byrd suited them both. She was as nervous as a little sparrow, afraid she might land on the wrong branch, and he was a big bully vulture with eagle-eye vision, watching and waiting for some no account heathen to step out of line. Sullivan Byrd carried a lot of weight in the town of Prosperity. In more ways than one.

Sullivan and Donna Byrd had one child. Seventeen-year-old Beau Byrd could do no wrong, and he was always right. Even when he was wrong. All the girls loved Beau Byrd and all the boys wanted to be like him. If you didn't believe that, just ask Beau.

Other than the solitary grocery store and church, there wasn't much more to Prosperity. A greasy spoon diner, a bank, one gas station, a flower shop, a health clinic that was only open three days a week, a dentist office, and a veterinary. There was also a school. Three separate brick buildings housed all of the students from kindergarten through twelfth grade.

Of all the places on the United States map for Francesca to stick her pin, Juliette and Starley had serious reservations as to whether or not she'd made a monumental boo-boo when she declared Prosperity their new home.