Page 19 of Strawberry Moon

“Can you justtrybefore you go dismissing every one?”

I clenched my teeth against a snappish retort. “Fine.” I pulled the cork out of the top, leaned in, and a wave of nausea clenched my gut. “This one’s out.”

14

Archer

Nothing.

There didn’t seem to be a thing in the world that Ford McKesson liked the smell of.

Except, I supposed, farm animals.

Not that I was too good for farm animals. They were fine. They were whatever. I’d hatched a chick once. Rather, my third-grade teacher had done it, because entrusting children with any kind of babies was a terrible idea, bound to end in heartbreak. But still, she’d done the work, and we’d watched, day by day, with bated breath, for the chick to hatch.

Hatching, as it turned out, was a long and arduous process. Most of my fellow students had lost interest after a little while and run off to recess, but I’d begged to be allowed to stay. To watch. Convinced that having her own little cheering section would help the chick succeed, I’d refused to leave her side all afternoon.

Slowly, ever so slowly, a slimy, disgusting creature had emerged after pecking away at the shell, one piece at a time. It had made it. None of my fellow students had been much interested in touching the disgusting thing that had come from our class egg.

But then, something magical had happened. The next day when we’d returned to class, it had been an adorable little ball of fluff, not a hint of slime or viscera in sight. Just a baby chicken.

The teacher had given it to a friend of hers who had a chicken coop, and for most of my fellow eight-year-olds, that had been the end of it. For me, I’d been hooked. It had been the beginning of my obsession with science.

Grandfather had pushed me in the direction of chemistry instead of biology, but either way, I’d been set on course.

Only now, my skills were failing me. I sat there watching Ford smelling vial after vial, making disgusted faces at each one. The first few, I’d been convinced he was going to actually throw up, he’d gone so green.

Halfway through, though, a hit. Not pure joy or calm or anything so amazing, but he stopped at number thirteen and sniffed it again. “You sure there’s something in here? Just smells like water.”

I opened my notes and checked, despite knowing that none of them were a placebo. Heck, if they had been, I’d have still put some kind of scent in there.

It was a good idea, come to think of it. A placebo, to make sure Ford wasn’t deliberately telling me all my work was terrible.

But no. Number thirteen was a synthetic pheromone mix, just like all the others.

Truth told, they were all relatively similar. Slightly different makeups, but somehow, those alpha noses seemed to be able to pick up the synthetic the second it got near them. Except this.

I nodded to him. “Set that one aside, please?”

He nodded and put it down, farther away from him. Like it was a snake.

The rest of the lot, again, were a no-go. He opened and sniffed one after another, and made the most disgusted faces I thought possible on such a strong, steady sort of man.

Finally, we were left with a pile of “definitely not”s and that one vial. I pointed to it with my pencil. “Could you try it again?”

He narrowed his eyes in my direction, but picked the vial up and unstoppered it. “’S’not poison, is it?”

“No,” I groaned, rolling my eyes. “I’m not trying to poison you. How ridiculous do you think I am? I’m trying to stop the damage, not make it worse.”

He dropped his hands to, I dunno, give himself more room to glare at me, and some of the liquid in the vial splashed out onto his fingers. He scowled at that, almost dropping the vial, but taking a moment to put the stopper back in.

I tossed him my handkerchief, and he wiped his hands on it, leaving a big dirty smear on one side that definitely wasn’t from the vial. His jaw clenched as he looked at the mark, so I ignored it completely.

“Still smell like water?”

He lifted his hand to his nose, then recoiled and turned away, muttering, “Can’t tell anymore. It all stinks of you.”

I was about to retort something about how he could tell something smelled like me over the smell of farm everywhere, when I realized two things.

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