13. Scarlet Sage
Scarlet Sage
The drive through town feels different today. People look for longer now. A pack outside the bakery stops talking entirely when Wes’s SUV rolls past. Two older betas near the courthouse glance toward me through the windshield before leaning toward each other in quick whispers.
Roman nods toward the window. “The locals continue to be welcoming.”
“They think I stole the stone.”
Wes keeps his eyes on the road. “No. They fear you know why it was taken.”
I find the distinction matters, mostly because he’s right. Part of me has been wondering the same thing since the museum yesterday.
Dupree’s roadside stand sits twenty minutes outside town, along the marsh highway beneath a faded blue tarp stretched crooked between wooden poles.
Folding tables overflow with peaches, tomatoes, jars of tupelo honey, river stones, swamp herbs, and little mesh bundles tied with ribbon and labeled Protection Kits in black marker.
Citronella candles burn inside rusted coffee tins near the cash box.
Earl Dupree rocks slowly in a chair beside the produce crates when we pull in. Suspenders. Straw hat. Permanent expression of somebody deeply unimpressed by modern civilization.
“Well,” he drawls as we approach, “either the town finally formed a committee to arrest witches, or Scarlet brought company.”
I snort. “Morning, Earl.”
Roman steps out and gets distracted by a crate of peaches the size of softballs. “This place is incredible.”
Earl eyes him sideways. “You one of them federal boys?”
“Sort of,” Roman says.
Earl makes a deep throaty sound full of censure. “That sounds suspicious.”
“It usually does.” Roman shrugs.
I laugh before I can stop myself.
Roman grins at me like he won a prize.
This beta is dangerous to my control.
Wes circles around the truck toward us while Earl starts bagging peaches without being asked.
“Town’s gone half-crazy since the stone disappeared,” Earl mutters. “Folks buying protection charms like a cat-five hurricane’s coming.”
I lean against the folding table. “People are scared.”
“They outa be.”
The words settle heavily between us.
“You sell swamp lilies recently?” Wes folds his arms.
Earl pauses briefly. “Can’t say I have.”
Roman picks up one of the chalk bundles from the table. “People still use this?”
“Not for years, till this last week or so.” Earl spits into the grass. “Sold plenty of protective bundles lately. It makes people feel safer when they think the apocalypse is coming.”
“Any ritual herbs, besides these premade bundles?” I ask.
“Somebody asked for old rite materials a couple days ago,” Earl replies. “Didn’t browse. Knew exactly what they wanted. White ribbon. Cypress ash. Spring chalk.”
Roman exchanges a quick glance with Wes.
“Did you recognize them?” Wes asks.
Earl scratches his jaw slowly. “Couldn’t tell much. Hat low. Gloves on.”
“Gloves on? Is that typical?”
“When it’s a biker stopping.”
Wes and Roman exchange another look.
“Male or female?” Roman asks.
“Male.”
My gift of sight flickers and a tight feeling pulls in my chest. This doesn’t sound like someone panic-buying.
The connection between the stone and the roadside stand feels heavy in my mind.
To me, it looks like someone is being deliberate, assembling ritual components from multiple sources, carefully, across multiple days.
A truck pulls up behind Wes’s. Pepper Vines, my oldest friend besides Honey, climbs out carrying two plastic coolers.
Dark curls spill halfway down her back in complete defiance of humidity while safety goggles rest crooked on top of her head. Her T-shirt reads Swamp Science is Real Science. Her scent is still faint and neutral, the dormant omega scent she’s carried long past the age most of us perfumed.
Pepper freezes halfway toward the stand when she spots Wes and Roman standing beside me. Her dark-brown eyes narrow first with suspicion, then widen with delight, which is never good for me. “Oh,” she says slowly.
“No,” I reply.
Pepper ignores me. “Honey said you were hanging around with two attractive investigators, but I assumed she was exaggerating.”
“She never exaggerates,” Roman says solemnly.
Pepper points at him. “Oh, this one is good.”
Wes rubs one hand down his jaw like he regrets this stop already.
Pepper sets the coolers beside Earl’s produce tables. “Earl, I need those marsh samples we talked about for my AP biology seniors. Hurry. If I get back late from my planning period, the freshman may burn down the lab.” She glances toward me again. “Why do you look flushed?”
“It’s ninety degrees.”
“Your pupils are huge.”
I hope the swamp swallows me alive.
Roman bites the inside of his cheek hard enough to visibly stop himself from laughing.
Wes looks directly at my face. Then my mouth. Then away again, fast enough to confirm he didn’t mean to do it.
Heat flashes through me so quickly, my fingers tighten around my coffee cup.
Pepper watches the entire exchange unfold with open delight. “This is so much more fun than Honey let on.”
“Pepper.”
“No, continue. I’m emotionally invested now.”
Earl spits a wad of chew on the ground that somehow feels like a snort of amusement.
Wes’s phone buzzes before I can commit murder. He steps a few feet toward the truck and answers, while Roman helps Earl move crates beneath the shade tarp and load them into Pepper’s truck.
I watch Wes without meaning to. Sunlight catches along the edge of his throat when he tilts his head, his mouth flattening gradually as the conversation continues. He looks up suddenly and catches me staring.
My pulse trips.
Wes’s gaze drops briefly toward my mouth before he looks away again.
God. This man is becoming a legitimate health concern.
Pepper appears beside me, carrying a peach. “You know you’re practically glowing, right?”
I elbow her before I think better of it. She grins.
“I will drown you in marsh water.”
“You’d miss me.”
Unfortunately true.
Wes returns a minute later. “Lab confirmed overlap between the residue compounds and GatorX processing agents.”
Everything inside me sharpens. “Confirmed?”
“Partial confirmation,” he says. “The compounds occur naturally in the swamp ecosystem, so we can’t isolate whether the springs are connected to production or just environmental.”
“So we learned almost nothing,” I mutter.
“We learned enough,” Wes says.
“We still can’t prove whether the springs are the source or a contamination.”
“No,” Wes admits. “But now we know the overlap is real.”
A heavy silence settles over the roadside stand. Even Earl looks unsettled.
Pepper crosses her arms slowly. “You think somebody’s making the drug here?”
“I think,” I say carefully, “someone is using older sweetheart rites for a reason. The why is less clear.”
Nobody argues.
Earl points toward the marsh road. “You heading toward the old springs?”
I blink. “How’d you know?”
“You ask about old rite materials and start talking about lilies, I can guess.” He narrows his eyes. “Be careful out there. Folks have been visiting after dark again.”
Roman’s expression sharpens. “Tourists?”
Earl shakes his head slowly. “Tourists don’t know enough to be quiet.”
The old springs sit beyond the newer sweetheart paths, where tourists photograph carved heart signs and painted docks. The swamp presses closer to the waterline here, and the boardwalk narrows into weathered planks aged by storms. Cypress roots twist through black water beneath us.
The air feels denser here, layered with old stories the town polished smooth. It’s like the ground remembers more than the town built on top of it does. My sight catches on the place the same way it catches on a story that has been told too neatly.
I step carefully across the old wooden walkway, toward the original ritual stones. Wes stays close behind me whenever the boards shift underfoot. His awareness settles along my back with a patient consistency that brings a layer of warmth to my skin.
Roman watches the two of us with interest. The man is intolerably observant.
“People used to leave offerings here before the town commercialized the ceremonies,” I explain, keeping my voice low. “Flowers. River stones. Chalk markings.”
“Binding bond rituals?” Roman asks.
“Originally.” I brush my fingers lightly over one weathered carving. “Later, there were release rites too.”
Wes looks toward me. “To weaken bonds?”
“To survive them.”
“What do you mean?”
“When a bond became dangerous or someone needed to leave, the old rites gave them another option besides simply enduring it. Breaking a bond can destabilize the body, and modern surgical cutting carries its own risks. The release rites were supposed to make letting go of a bond survivable.”
A breeze moves across the water, and nobody speaks for a moment.
Then Roman stops walking. “Scarlet.”
I turn.
A white ribbon flutters beneath the far railing tied in a careful knot. Fresh.
My stomach drops.
Wes reaches it first, crouching near the dock supports while Roman photographs the scene beside him.
I move closer carefully.
Chalk marks stain the boards near the ribbon. They’re faint and half washed by afternoon rain. The symbols are old.
“What is it?” Wes asks.
I kneel beside him, close enough that heat rolls steadily from his body through the air between us. “Release markings,” I say softly. “Not complete ones but fragments.”
Roman looks up from the camera. “Meaning?”
I stare at the chalk lines and the ribbon. “Whoever’s doing this knows stuff from the old records, the real rituals people used to use.”
Wes straightens beside me, and his shoulder brushes mine. It doesn’t feel accidental. It feels like the purposeful claim of someone choosing to stay close.
My breath catches before I can stop it.
The look that passes between us is full of heat.
“Let’s finish up and take this back to the house. See if we can start to make some sense of all this,” Wes says.
The house. The way he said house implies a shared home. Despite what I’ve been telling myself, the idea of them belonging in my home feels more right than it should.