Chapter 1

I smelled the lie before I was through the door.

I stopped at the top of the marble steps and breathed the room in. Champagne. Cut lilies. And under it, thin and wrong, the perfume they'd built the whole night around -- Ombre, drifting out of vents hidden in the pillars.

Four seconds. That was all it took me.

The real Ombre had Calabrian bergamot at its heart. I'd spent two winters getting that note right. What I smelled now was the cheap copy -- flat, dull, the kind you reach for once you've decided the customer won't notice.

They'd swapped my formula. Again. And thrown a party to celebrate it.

"Iris." Adrian Sable came across the floor with both hands out. Four years had put silver in his hair and made him better-looking. I held it against him. "You came. God. You actually came."

"You sent a car," I said. "And a lawyer. You wanted something signed."

His smile held, but his eyes flicked to the guests nearby. "Tonight's not about paperwork. It's about us being in a room together again." He lowered his voice. "The city needs to see there's nothing left between us. Helps you as much as me."

Behind him stood Celeste Adair. Slate silk, glass angled for the cameras. The House's creative director now. Her face was on the relaunch of the perfume I'd made.

"Iris." Celeste's voice did its little catch. "I know how hard this is. After everything that happened."

Everything that happened. Four years of it, folded into two soft words. The bad batch. Eleven women in the hospital. The difficult perfumer who got careless and had to go.

"It was hard," I said. I looked up at the vent in the pillar. "You changed the top notes again. Since the recall."

Adrian's jaw tightened. "We refined it."

"You cut it." I said it like I was reading a receipt. "You run a fragrance house, Adrian, and you still can't tell real from fake on a paper strip." I slid the invitation into my coat, next to something small and cold he couldn't see. "That's going to be a problem for you."

"What problem?" Celeste's voice cracked -- the first honest sound she'd made.