Walten Files: Rosemary Novels & Stories

he said and tried to walk fast ahead of me but I held him down. “You know you can’t abandon me Marvin” I didn’t notice the flower at first, Marvin was rambling about some story that he read on Reddit or something...he was strange like that. Another one. I blinked, then sighed. Marvin’s words trailed off as he followed my gaze. “Again?” he asked, already grinning. I walked to the desk slowly. The rose was deep crimson, almost velvet to the eye. A small cream-colored card was tucked beneath its stem. I picked it up and read it.

Then she uttered a word that had my blood running cold. "Wolfsbane." "What?" I asked, wanting to make sure I had heard her properly. She nodded. "Yes, it is the only way your link can be weakened. Even broken. Whoever took Rosaline doesn't want you to find her." And that was when I saw it. At first, I was confused, but the closer I got, the stronger the scent was. I picked up the discarded object and inhaled its chemical contents. It was a gallon of gasoline.

But there was something horribly wrong with the picture, something Alina had been noticing a lot with the objects residing within the smothering walls of her home; the rose wasn't where she had last put it. There was no mistaking it this time; Alina knew for a fact that she had put the rose on her bathroom counter last night. She had even gone out of her way to mark the spot she had placed it with a damn dry erase marker, as if to prove to herself she really wasn't losing her mind. And lo and behold, there it sat on her nightstand instead, the red petals seeming to perk in excitement when her attention was locked onto its presence. The moon itself was glittering so profoundly.

Enough to fill the space with color and scent, the deep red catching against the dim light of the bar. They moved straight to the counter. “Delivery for Rose Rainer,” the first one said. “Can you sign?” Rose stared at them for half a second. “Yeah. That’s me.” She signed. “Where do you want them?” She glanced at the growing mass of roses, then gave a small shake of her head. “Anywhere they fit.” A card was placed in her hand. She opened it. Wild Rose. See you tonight. K. Vivian let out a sound somewhere between a squeal and a gasp.

Rosemary switched on her phone flashlight, its beam cutting through the darkness to reveal rows of metal shelves and stacks of yellowed files. “Be quick,” Damien whispered. “I’ll watch the door.” Rosemary made her way down the narrow corridor toward the old server room. Her fingers trembled as she pressed the power button. After several tense seconds, the screen flickered to life. “It’s still running…” she murmured. She opened one folder after another, her pulse quickening — until she found it. Project_AdriCorp_Confidential_Manipulation.avi Her heart pounded. “This is it.” But just as she copied the file onto her flash drive, the heavy sound of footsteps echoed from the entrance. Damien’s he

Rosa felt her body sway and before everything turned dark, she had heard someone yell, “Sir Wade!“ And then her body went still. That moment….the desperation in her eyes, the tremor in her voice, clung to him like a gum, refusing to let go. As Rosa was lifted into the ambulance, a piece of paper fluttered against his shoe. He bent to pick it up. It was her résumé. Rosa Hamon. Age 23……… He stared at the name for a long moment, then folded the paper neatly and slipped it into his coat pocket.

Just an older man with silver hair and eyes like oil; slick, dark, unreadable. They called him consigliere. Advisor. Manipulator. He smiled at her like he knew everything. Including why she was here. She avoided him for the rest of the day. But that night, as she cleaned the study, she found something. A black notebook, half-buried under a pile of folders. Inside, dates. Payments. Names. Including her father’s. One name was underlined in red. "Project 5B : Initiated by A.D." She blinked. Her breath caught.

I padded softly toward the doorway and peeked in. Rosemary had just stepped out of her bathroom. She was completely bare, save for a small white towel wrapped tightly around her wet hair and another strapped precariously across her chest. Droplets of water glistened on her smooth, golden skin, tracing down the slope of her collarbone and disappearing into the cloth. Inside my mind, my wolf let out a wild, territorial howl. *Ours. Claim her now.*

Danielle paused at the herb section. She crouched down. In the dark she put her hand in the soil around the base of the rosemary — Dante's rosemary, from the nursery he had recently discovered, planted on a Saturday in October with both their hands in the dirt. The soil was cold. The plant was there. Small and dark in the November night, alive against the evidence. She pressed her fingers into the soil around its base. "It made it," she told him. "The rosemary. It made it through the winter."