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Honey leans against me. “She called me while she was packing it. She cried through half the conversation.”
Scarlet sits on the floor beside my knees and rests her head against my leg.
I run my thumb over the rosemary. “‘The Vines omegas have always kept notes on plants, water, and people.’”
Something about that fact hooks beneath my skin. I’ve always been the girl with too many questions. Too many lists. Too many pockets full of sample tubes, hair ties, and snacks. I used to worry that I was collecting observations because I didn’t know how to trust feelings without labeling them first. Maybe I came by that honestly too.
Honey wraps around me from one side. Junie takes the other. Scarlet rises enough to join us, and we collapse into another soft pile of arms and damp cheeks. When the crying finally quiets, Junie lifts her face from my shoulder. Her gaze passes the couch.
Then she goes completely still. “Pepper.”
I wipe beneath my eyes. “What?”
“There’s a ghost in your boyfriend’s house.”
Ezra stands near the kitchen doorway, one hand holding my freshly refilled water bottle. His shoulder is pale enough that the wallpaper shows faintly through it.
He looks down at himself. “I’m Ezra, and I prefer fading man.”
Junie grips my arm. “That’s Ezra?”
“That’s Ezra.”
Honey turns carefully, taking him in without staring. “The one who refills your water bottle?”
Ezra raises it slightly. “That’s me.”
“Every time it’s full again, it feels like magic,” I say.
His smile returns. Not all the way, but enough.
Scarlet gets to her feet. Her attention moves over Ezra’s blurred shoulder, his solid hand, the bite scar near his collar, and then to Theo. Theo has stopped near the kitchen counter.
The bond between them is invisible to me, but Scarlet’s gaze follows it as though she sees a cracked seam running through the room.
Her face softens into grief. “How long?”
Ezra’s humor dims. “The first visible episode was about eight months ago. Smaller things happened before that.”
“And the bond?”
Theo’s shoulders pull tight. “What about it?”
Scarlet looks from him to Ezra again. “There are fissures through it.”
The observation lands like an earthquake through the room.
Honey’s hand closes around mine.
Ezra’s fingers tighten around the bottle. “Fissures?”
“The bond is intact,” Scarlet says gently. “I can feel the connection between you. But parts of it are stretched thin, almost as if pressure keeps pulling in opposite directions.”
Theo crosses the room and stops beside Ezra. His palm settles at the back of Ezra’s neck. Ezra becomes clearer where Theo touches him. Scarlet watches that too.
“What does that mean?” Theo’s voice stays low, but fear roughens every word. “Is it breaking?”
“I don’t know.” Scarlet doesn’t soften the truth. “It doesn’t feel like a natural bond break. There is strain and distortion, but the bond is still trying to hold.”
