Scarlett Wilde's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Scarlett Wilde walked into the tavern with a guitar on her back and a name she needed to find. The place still smelled like spilled beer and cheap smoke. A neon sign above the stage buzzed the same wrong note it had buzzed two years ago, the night her drummer walked out the back door and never wrote. Scarlett had come to fix that. She had to. The curse was three towns west now, eating voices. The capital still had sound. The festival on the highest peak was in six weeks. She could not headline it alone, and she would not headline it without Riley Crash. The bartender knew her face. He set down a glass she hadn't ordered and said Riley hadn't played here in months. Scarlett flexed her fingers on the bar. They ached the way they always ached when she wasn't holding strings. She asked who else might know. He tipped his chin at a booth in the back. Luna Meridian sat under a dead bulb with a boot on the bench and a cigarette she wasn't smoking. Scarlett had opened for her once, in a barn outside a town neither of them named anymore. Luna looked up and didn't smile. "Wilde. You look like hell." "I'm looking for Riley." "Figured." Luna tapped ash that wasn't there. "She went into the Thornwood. Three days back. Sticks, a spare head, no phone signal since." Scarlett sat down hard. "Alone?" "Alone. She's chasing the Resonance Vaults. Says sound has weight there." Luna's eyes moved to Scarlett's hands. "You drove her out. You know that." "I know." "Then don't waste the trip apologizing. She won't want it." Scarlett asked about Jade. Luna's mouth pulled tight. She said Jade Riff had followed Riley in yesterday morning, guitar case strapped across her back, and hadn't come out either. Two of them in the trees now. One of them Scarlett's fault. Scarlett stood. Her chair scraped loud enough that the room glanced over and went back to its drinks. She asked Luna if she'd come. "No." Luna picked up her glass. "I've got a court to play. Solstice is nine days. You go get your drummer. Bring her back loud." Outside, Scarlett tightened the strap across her chest and turned toward the tree line. The Thornwood started at the edge of the lot, black and close. She could hear wind in the branches. That was something. Wind was still wind here. She stepped off the boards and onto the dirt. Six weeks to the peak stage. Two bandmates in the woods. One curse coming east. She started walking before she could think about any of it too long. Her hands stopped aching the moment she pictured the guitar coming off her back.