Sam gullapple stood in the empty spot where his bass should have been. The runed instrument had vanished the night his shadow first peeled off the wall and moved on its own. Someone took it while he stared at the thing wearing his shape. Now he had a stolen bass, a grudge, and no idea who carried it off. He needed a lead. He had none. He went to the purple punk club because thieves in Scary Applesville drank there. Violet light buzzed over cracked walls. Spikes jutted from the doorframe. Inside, the bartender shrugged at every question. Sam described the bass. The glowing core. The yellow runes down the neck. No one admitted seeing it. He left with nothing but a headache and the sick certainty that the hunt was over before it started. Bobby Smithapple sat on the curb outside. Sam knew him by reputation only. Bobby had torn his own life apart chasing a lease with his father's name on it. The job gone. The friends gone. The investigation all he had left. He looked up with black-rimmed eyes. "You're the bass player," Bobby said. "The one who quit Nona's band." "Rejoined it," Sam said. "Someone stole my bass." Bobby nodded slow. He pulled a folded paper from his jacket. "I've been reading leases for months. Addresses. Who pays who." He smoothed the paper on his knee. "There's a collector working the orchards. Takes things people owe. Instruments, sometimes. He logs every piece." Sam crouched. "You've seen a bass on his list?" "No." Bobby met his eyes. "But I saw an entry three nights ago. 'Runed bass. Glowing. Claimed from a man with a loose shadow.'" He tapped the line. "I didn't understand it. Now I do." Sam's heart kicked. "Where's the list kept?" "The orchards. A cottage past the twisted trees." Bobby folded the paper again. "Granny Smith says nothing grows clean out there. She's right. I've been. I know the way." "Then take me." Bobby stood. He did not offer his hand. "I'm not doing you a favor. The collector runs the same operation that stole my father's name. You want your bass. I want the man who built the whole thing." He stated it flat and started walking. Sam followed him out past the last streetlight. The trees ahead stood black and bent. One of them had a trunk split like a face, its bark mouth frozen wide. Bobby walked straight for it without slowing. "That's the marker," Bobby said. "Cottage is behind it." Sam stopped under the screaming tree. He had a lead now. A name he didn't know, a cottage he'd never seen, and a man who logged his stolen bass like a debt. The empty hunt was over. The real one had just begun. "How well guarded is it?" Sam asked. Bobby kept walking. "You'll find out."