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“I can spray things,” I said. “I’m practically overqualified.” The words left my mouth and immediately made me want to crawl into a display fridge. Once upon a time, I’d argued motions in courtrooms and drafted briefs that made grown men sweat. Now I was pep-talking myself over a spray bottle.

How had I gone from practicing law to feeling nervous about misting flowers?

David. That was how. He’d effectively turned my life into a before and after.

I straightened my shoulders, refusing to let the absurdity take me down.

Morton’s smile widened. “Wonderful. Let’s do a quick trial. Consider it a working interview.” He gestured toward a line of spray bottles on the shelf near the register, all of them filled with clear liquid, labels facing backward. “Give those roses a spritz for me. Short bursts, please. The customers love it.”

I nodded eagerly and walked over to where he’d been pointing. I wasn’t entirely sure why roses needed help smelling like roses, but at this point I was committed to the bit. If misting flowers was what stood between me and gainful employment, then misting flowers it was.

“Okay, Sienna,” I whispered. “You’ve got this. Mist the roses, impress the funeral florist, and resist the urge to apologize to the flowers for existing.”

I reached for a bottle at random, intent on getting this right, when my foot slid out from under me. “Oh—shit.”

Water slicked the floor beneath my shoe, and I windmilled, my arms flailing as I tried to regain balance.

I didn’t.

Instead, I crashed into a nearby table, knocking over a precarious stack of plastic containers that clattered to the floor like dominos in hell.

Lids popped. Liquid sloshed.

Something cold splashed up my arm, soaked my shirt, and pooled across the tile.

The smell hit a second later.

And it wasn’t rosewater…not even close.

It was chemical and sickly sweet all at once, a smell that burned the inside of my nose, like antiseptic layered over metal and decay, as if something meant to stay dead had been scrubbed clean and preserved anyway.

My stomach lurched, and I gagged. “What the hell is that?”

Morton looked up from behind the counter, took one look at the spreading puddle, and went white.

“Oh dear,” he said faintly.

I pushed myself upright, grimacing at the fact that my hands were soaked in…whatever that was. “I spilled a few things. I’m so sorry. I didn’t see the water, and then everything just⁠—”

Morton was already rushing toward me, skidding to a stop when he saw the overturned containers. He bent, picked one up with shaking hands, and turned it so the label faced us.

Preserving Fluid.

I stared at it. “That’s…bad, isn’t it?”

Morton swallowed hard. “Yes.”

“How bad?”

“That’s embalming fluid,” he said weakly. “For downstairs clients only. I was about to put those bottles away right before you walked in.”

I closed my eyes. “I just baptized your entire shop in professional-grade afterlife chemicals, didn’t I?”

“You embalmed the store,” he corrected. Then he looked at the floor and my shirt. “And yourself. And…most of the entryway.”

We stared at each other awkwardly.

“Well,” I said hoarsely as I peeled my sticky sleeve away from my arm, “on the bright side, nothing in here is going to decompose. Ever.”