Chapter 7
PANDORA’S DIARY
Dabs of sample perfume: All of them
I once told Deja that she should’ve named her shop “Déjà Vu,” and she said that’d be like me calling my boutique “Pandora’s Box.” Then she and Gabe had an entire hilarious conversation about me running a sex shop with that name. Ha. Ha.
Anyway, her shop is called “Essence,” and it’s a tiny jewel of a store with lilac walls and jade green cases displaying salves and tinctures.
A funky antique chandelier hangs over a wooden table which holds candles and lotions, crystals and dried flowers, and creates the moody atmosphere her customers prefer.
Deja’s gift helps her create healing aromatherapy oils and candles, but she also buys medicinal items from other faerie-kin, then strengthens them by adding her scents.
She does well in the summer, though the lure of expensive ingredients, both rare and magical, cuts into her profits.
I’ve encouraged her to start an online business, but she hates the idea of selling her potions to faceless strangers.
Essence is an oasis of calm, so the morning after the chaos of the lobster bake, I dropped by her shop with bagels and cream cheese.
I sort of wanted to talk about what happened at the boathouse, but mostly I wanted to ignore it. But also, I wanted to talk about it. Well, I didn’t know what I wanted so I figured at least I could beat my hangover with calories.
The shop wasn’t open yet, but the door was unlocked, so I went inside and found Deja ticking off inventory items on her tablet while Shrig stacked candles into a pyramid.
Deja wore her summer work uniform of a black tank dress with a white linen jacket, which made her look somewhat like a lab professional.
“There she is!” Deja boomed at me. “The Belle of the Bake!”
I winced at the volume. “My head is pounding.”
“Hah!” she barked, before lowering her voice to a dull roar. “C’mere and stick out your tongue.”
“Come here,” Shrig enunciated to himself, as he added another layer of candles. Because of his gift, he can’t stand misused language such as “C’mere.”
I stuck my tongue out at Deja and said, “Wha’ we doin’?”
“Fixing you.” She grabbed a sample tonic from one of the shelves. “Now lift.”
I lifted my tongue, and she squeezed three drops of the tonic into my mouth.
“That’ll help with your puffy face.” She looked at the bag in my hand. “Bagels? Did you get chive cream cheese?”
“Of course. And smoked salmon for Shrig.”
We gathered around the check-out desk. Shrig tucked a napkin into his button-up batik shirt and said, “I discovered something unconscionable yesterday.”
“Unconscionable,” I said, mocking his word choice. “What happened?”
“Someone posted a ‘No Trespassing’ sign at Diamond Cove. And as if that weren’t bad enough, they misspelled ‘Trespassing.’”
I smeared cream cheese on my bagel. “Did you ignore it?”
“Of course not! I returned with a black sharpie to cross out the superfluous ‘s.’”
Deja’s laugh sounded like an amused avalanche. “She means, did you ignore the sign, dum-dum!”
“I just told you—”
“Did you trespass?” I asked.
“Oh! Yes, of course. In fact…” He leaned closer. “My paramour and I enjoyed the beach quite thoroughly.”
“Man or woman?” Deja asked.
“Neither. Both. Well, I’m not quite sure how they identify,” Shrig said, as the bell on the front door jangled, “except as ‘delectable.’”
I glanced at the entrance and whispered, “Shit.”
In walked Leo, wearing a navy blue button-down, khaki shorts, and OG Birkenstocks.
Leo has always been a little preppy—I mean, in addition to being a prick.
Still, two buttons on his shirt were undone and his collarbone was nice and his chest hair was blond so maybe preppy wasn’t so bad after all.
And we do share a fondness for Birkenstocks, the lovechild of bohemian chic and old-school preppy.
“Leo Carter!” I announced, to cover my dismay. “Welcome to Essence!”
“Morning, Pan,” he said, then looked quickly away. “Deja. Hey, Shrig, I thought you were overseas somewhere?”
I focused on my bagel while they caught up.
Deja and Shrig know Leo, because everyone knows everyone on the island, but Leo had never been part of our crew in high school on the mainland.
He’d played sports, while we’d dabbled in performing arts.
That was why he and Gabe were closer—they’d been on the same teams for years.
“You need more pills?” Deja finally asked.
Leo nodded. “They’re the only thing that helps.”
“I’ll tell my supplier,” Deja said. “He’ll love to hear that. Of course, I won’t mention that I change the scent. When he ships them, they smell like moth balls.”
“How can you smell moths’ balls?” I said. “They’re so tiny.”
“Anyway,” Deja told Leo, ignoring me completely. “Hold on a second and I’ll grab them.”
She headed through the purple curtain to the back room—more of a lounge, really—where she keeps her magic stuff. Then Shrig started checking the signs and labels for typos, which left me and Leo standing there awkwardly.
“What pills?” I asked.
“They help with the itching,” Leo said.
“Do I even want to know?”
“From my gift!” he said. “It’s a side effect of my gift.”
“Oh, right. Your skin gets scratchy when there’s a book you need.”
“Itchy,” Shrig called, from across the shop. “Not scratchy.”
“I don’t know how you get laid,” I told him. “You’re such a pendant.”
Shrig gritted his teeth but didn’t correct me that time, because he knew I said “pendant” instead of “pedant” to torment him. Leo opened his mouth, then caught the dynamic and shut it again, his eyes twinkling as he gazed at me.
I definitely didn’t blush. I just focused on my breakfast, taking a messy bite of bagel as Deja returned with a bottle of hand-pressed pills.
“You see anything else you need?” she asked Leo.
I licked cream cheese off my lip and noticed Leo staring at me.
“Leo?” she said.
Leo shifted his gaze from me. “Hm? Oh! No—sorry, I was thinking about this, uh, book I need.”
“You’re sure it’s on the island?”
“Yeah, and my parents told me to start at the library,” he told her. “Apparently someone made a donation.”
“Is that the stuff from Gabe’s grandfather?” Deja asked. “He died this spring and Gabe’s cleaning out the house.”
Shrig sniffed a bottle of Lavender and Spruce Beard Oil. “It’s difficult to believe that his grandfather possessed a book you wouldn’t have already sensed.”
“I guess I didn’t need it before. When I bought my apartment in Boston, my gift led me to Barnes & Noble for a copy of Real Estate for Dummies.”
“We don’t need to hear about the amazing apartment you own,” I told him.
Leo frowned as he paid for the pills. “I just follow where my gift leads me. Oh!”
“Oh what?” Deja asked.
“You have pills for everything. Pills and lotions and, uh, whatever those are.”
“Infusions,” Shrig told him.
“Right. So do you have anything that’ll help Pan find her gift?”
Diary, it’s possible I lost my temper just the teensiest amount.
In retrospect, I’ll admit that he might’ve been trying to gently tease me.
Anyway, I will gloss over the next few moments and only mention that they ended with Leo beating a strategic retreat, after I yelled, “I need a gift about as much as I need a boyfriend!” Which didn’t have nearly the amount of sting I intended.
After he left, Shrig and Deja shared a very sibling look. I don’t have siblings, but I’ve been around them enough to know when they’re being silently opinionated at each other.
“What?” I demanded.
“Nothing,” Deja said.
“Looks like I’m not the only pan-sexual,” Shrig told his sister. “Pan-sexual. Do you take my meaning? Because Leo is enamored with Pandora.”
“He is not,” I said. “Especially after I yelled at him like that.”
“That’s how you know he’s warm for you,” Deja said. “He just stood there and weathered the storm.”
“Oh, bullshit. You know what he said about me in high school.”
“Then what’s going on with you two?” Deja asked.
“Nothing.”
“That was a pretty passionate denunciation of everything Leo represents for ‘nothing,’” Shrig said.
“This is all your fault!” I snapped, at Deja. “That salve you gave me last night was some kind of aphrodisiac.”
“Ha!” she barked. “Ha ha!”
“I knew it. Not funny, Deja.”
“That’s not why I laughed. That salve relaxes you, it doesn’t make you ride Leo like a rented unicorn.”
“We didn’t sleep together! We kissed for two seconds because I thought he was Gabe—because you slipped me an aphrodisiac.”
“I give that stuff to my dad, Pandora.”
“Gross.”
“So he can nap!”
“Oh.” I fidgeted with the waistband of my skirt. “Well, maybe it works differently on me. Can you believe that asshole is still hoping I’ll get gifted?”
Deja gazed at me with big innocent eyes. “What a jerk.”
“You don’t have anything that’ll help her, though, right?” Shrig asked her.
“I wish.”
“I hate you both,” I said.
“Is my taste changing,” Shrig asked, “or has Leo become absolutely dazzling?”
“He turned dreamy years ago,” Deja told him. “You stay away from him.”
Shrig raised his hands in surrender. “Fair enough, you saw him first.”
“Not for me! You saw how he looked at Pandora.”
“Like she’s smoked salmon.”
“First,” I said, “let’s never call me that again. And second—”
“He’s in love with your beautiful flowing lox.” Shrig is a word nerd who loves puns, but hates malapropisms.
“And second,” I repeated, louder, “both of you stay away from him. We still hate him!”
“Oh, right! Of course,” they said, like the loyal friends they are.
But Diary, I sensed that none of us meant it. Most of all me.