“THE BRIDE!” is set in the 1930s, an era of clandestine glamour when solid perfumes were objects of secrecy and seduction—small mirrored compacts tucked into clutches and applied by fingertip to pulse points. Now, Heretic reanimates that tradition for a story about reanimation itself. ’Til Death is poured by hand into a blackened silver compact. It is not sprayed. It is touched. Anointed. Brought to life.

On a shadowed table, a creature is assembled: petal by petal, resin by resin. “I thought about the ingredients as parts of her body. Jasmine and rose stitched together as flesh. Cedarwood as bone. Frankincense as breath or spirit. Each one necessary, each one inert on its own.” -DL