Page 51

“What was in them?” Theo asks.

“Dried swamp lilies, white thread, and a stone contaminated with GatorX.”

Theo’s expression hardens.

Pepper keeps the explanation steady. “The people distributing it used the swamp.”

“The Hollow Saints,” Theo says.

Pepper nods. “Yes.”

His paddle rests across his knees. The name settles over the canoe with more weight than the rest of the story.

I shift slightly against the rough canoe seat. “Theo, aren’t those similar to the ingredients from the house? I think we have some in a jar somewhere from the previous owners?”

The idea of materials used to cause bond distress sitting in my house makes my skin crawl. Could something so simple be the solution? Could the fading stop if we removed dusty swamp lilies from our cabinet?

Theo’s jaw tics. “We’ll check.”

I look at the current running beneath us, my mind racing with possibilities.

Theo’s gaze shifts toward the channel ahead.

“There’s more,” Pepper says. “Some contaminated material also reached the old water channels. That means people may have been exposed without buying a bundle or knowingly taking anything.” Pepper gestures toward the white cloth. “The modern bundles copied pieces of older ritual language, but they changed the purpose.”

I study the loose knot. “So you think this could be part of the original practice.”

“Part of it,” Pepper says. She studies the cloth’s placement above the waterline.

“This reads like a route marker to me. Scarlet’s grandmother had maps separating protection points from release routes. The white thread in the newer bundles looked decorative, but this cloth is positioned where someone traveling the channel would see it. If those new ones were copying old rituals, then GatorX may not be the whole system. It may be interference. A chemical shoved into a route language that already affected bonds. There.” Pepper leans toward the root. “See?”

A pale trace curves beneath the overhanging cypress root where rain can’t reach. Chalk, almost gone. The line doesn’t close. It opens toward the channel.

She writes without speaking.

Farther along, dried fibers cling to an old square nail driven into a rotting post. Pepper uses tweezers to lift one loose strand into an envelope.

“Swamp lily,” she says. “Local. Old. No chemical smell.”

“Why does that matter? We’re chasing flowers because they’re dosed with GatorX?”

“No. We’re chasing them because the same symbols and materials keep appearing in places where your fading changes.”

Theo glances at the sample. “Which means?”

“The contaminated bundles carried a faint sweet synthetic odor from the drug. This has none of that.” She looks from the ribbon to the chalk and lily. “The stone reacts to Ezra without the drug, and these older markers use the same materials and symbols along the same water routes. He changes around water, touch, scent, and that stone. These old markers are arranged along water. The newer bundles copied their materials, and that means the flowers and ribbons aren’t separate from what’s happening to Ezra. They may be part of the map for whatever his body is reacting to.”

The water moves beneath us.

A soft knock answers from somewhere below the canoe. One tap against the hull.

Pepper freezes. Theo’s hand stops on the paddle. I feel the sound through the bench.

“Not me,” I say.

“I believe you.”

Pepper jerks her hand toward the field bag. “The stone’s warm.”