Leon melded with the darkness, he and the shadows blending until they became a single creation, a single entity that stalked with feline eyes. The dim lights of Paris cast elongated shadows on the walls of the façades and on the city’s foul-smelling streets, which seemed like infernal beings, born of malice and visible only to those who knew the night.

The young man was not very different from those shadows, but with blue, sweet, and deceptive eyes. He was not very different from the other celebrated and sinister men of the time. The disparity? Leon practiced his immorality and questionable judgment in an ephemeral, fleeting world: scents.

He was an apprentice perfumer when the fragrance of a certain young woman drew him in, like the scent of fresh meat to a starving animal. He salivated with excitement, his pupils dilated to adjust to the darkness, though his only guide was his sense of smell.

He wanted to preserve that scent, the fragrance of life contained in a vessel that would perish at the slightest illness. That would be a crime worse than murder.

The best he could do was to disturb that essence, so that the essence of fear would seep from every pore of her skin.

The alleys grew long, but he never lost sight of his muse, until she sat by one of the few Parisian fountains, gazing at her reflection. Then he stopped, the grotesque shadows on the walls becoming delicate on her features, and she was the closest thing to the personification of delicacy, calm, and life.

The heart of his perfume. The tranquility that would need to turn into panic