Page 20 of The Case of the Missing Love Stone

Roman coughs into his hand.

Tom exhales, his patience visibly thinning. “People saw you examining the offerings near the fountain.”

Those damn swamp lilies.

Pressure curls beneath my breastbone, lower and sharper than it was this morning. The stress layers over the familiar ache in my chest until they are difficult to separate. My fingers find the inside of my opposite wrist beneath the sweater and press lightly, an old habit. It is the closest thing to steadying contact I have available most of the time.

Wes’s hands curl once at his sides.

I release my wrist and stand straighter.

A crash comes from the back bedroom. The deputy reappears, carrying one of my storage boxes and apologizing without sounding particularly sorry. Inside sit stacks of handwritten notes, old maps, and several wrapped bundles of dried flowers.

Tom’s eyes go to the bundles. “Ritual bundles?”

My stomach drops, though I keep my expression even. “Sample drying. For my books.”

He walks toward the box but his eyes narrow in on me. “Funny coincidence to have ritual bundles on a day when a ritual stone goes missing.”

“It’s botany.”

Wes steps forward before Tom can respond. “Sheriff, unless possession of regional plant life recently became illegal–”

“You don’t know this town.” Tom’s voice cuts quiet and final across the room. He looks between all three of us. “You didn’t grow up watching what happens around this girl.”

My pulse slows into the familiar rhythm of an old hurt. I’ve heard versions of that sentence for most of my adult life. It doesn’t get easier. It becomes expected, which is its own category of worse.

Wes folds his arms across his chest, broad shoulders tightening beneath his black shirt. “Meaning what, exactly?”

Tom looks at him steadily. “Every major bond collapse in the last five years connects to Scarlet Sage. Her warnings and predictions, never proven but always rumored. She tells people a bond feels wrong, and three days later, someone is moving out of a pack’s house.”

I hate the word predictions. I never tell anyone what will happen. I only know when what I’m looking at has already stopped being true.

“That doesn’t mean she caused anything,” Roman says.

“No,” Tom agrees, and the restraint in his voice is almost worse than the accusation. “But people remember.”

The whole house feels exposed, every private coping mechanism of my life laid out for strangers to interpret however serves them. I keep my hands loose at my sides and my breathing even, my gaze fixed on a point between Tom and the hallway, my expression carefully blank. I’ve been perfecting it since age nine, when I learned composure was the only armor I was going to get.

Tom rubs a hand across his mouth. “The festival starts soon. If word gets out that the original Love Stone is missing while bonds are already destabilizing during sweetheart season⁠—”

“The town loses money,” I say.

He meets my eyes. “The town loses control.”

Nobody in Sweetheart Haven fears broken hearts half as much as they fear broken mythology. The entire town survives on the belief that bonds hold stronger here than anywhere else, and right now, I’m the most available explanation for why that belief might be failing.

The first deputy appears from the hallway. “Nothing in the bedrooms.”

The second shakes his head from the back door. “Property’s clear.”

Tom’s mouth flattens. He folds the warrant papers and returns them to his jacket pocket. “Don’t leave town.”

I stare at him. “Tom, I live here.”

“That wasn’t a joke, Scarlet.”

“No,” I admit. “I noticed.”