Well, this thing is going a lot more slowly than I would have figured. It's in my head, but won't come out. As a character sketch, this is rather lacking, but it's all I got for the moment.

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I thought about doing a little more work after dinner, but it was already after nine and I was exhausted. Instead, I took a bath in Mom’s luxurious clean bathroom followed by correspondence with colleagues in the field. I wanted to do a little reading in bed after that, but my eyes closed after the first paragraph and didn’t open until morning.

It was interesting to have gotten a good night’s sleep. I lounged in bed a full fifteen minutes thinking about it. I concluded that the spirits were sufficiently satisfied with my progress that they were willing to give me the night off. I hoped they remained in a good mood.

I went downstairs hoping that the kitchen would remained more or less as I’d left it the night before. It wasn’t. Bob’s workroom had relocated back downstairs. It smelled like Paraguay had died, compressed itself into one rotting mass and moved in. 

“What is that smell?” I coughed. My eyes stung. I wanted to close the door, but it was missing. Not sure it would have helped much anyway.

“Why don’t you go check it out?” Bob sat at the kitchen table reading the newspaper and drinking an imaginary cup of coffee. He wasn’t bothered by the stench coming from the workroom.

That seemed like a very bad idea. Instead, I crafted a quick membrane to trap the offensive molecules. I used it to mop the smell out of the kitchen air, then sent it into workroom to find and trap the culprit. After a few minutes, it came to rest on a table. Beneath it was another pink rose.

“Honestly, Bob, what’s with the roses?”

“Your mother’s favorite. But I never did get them quite right.” The newspaper, which was as ephemeral as he, dissolved when he put it down.

“How many of them did you make?” 

“Not so many that it would be worth a cleansing spell to get rid of them all.”

“If there is another one like that, I’ll beg to disagree.”

“From the youngest age, you were always great with plants. Even when crafted by the best magician, you could always tell the difference. A talent like yours is more than rare.”

“And so I became a horticulturalist.”

“You studied horticulture because you didn’t know what else to do. Your mother made me promise to never push you into anything. She always knew that you were too exceptional.”

“Why all this misdirection?” According to Mom, almost without exception, spirits wanted to move on. To achieve the next realm. Dad was not acting like a normal spirit. Which in some respects was seemed right. He was never normal as a person.

The spirit folded his hands and set them on the table as if about to engage in a heart-to-heart conversation.

“Tell your mother that the kurlurs made their first attempt last night. But they blew off before ever getting close. I don’t think I’m ripe enough for them yet.” Then he disappeared.

I thought about making a spirit magnet to keep Bob around. But it probably wasn’t worth it. Having him too close would probably be more annoying than helpful. I trudged back up to the third floor. There were still two more doors to explore and who knew how many roses to discover. My recollection was that Bob purchased cleansing spells rather than crafting them. So there could be a lot more bad smelling flowers to find.