The Seed Lady

Every town has a place people avoid without quite knowing why.

When Sergei Darkholm returns to Yucaipa, he expects heat, dust, and the quiet unraveling of a place that has already begun to forget itself. Instead, he finds a town unnaturally alive. Gardens flourish in impossible soil. Water never seems to run dry. The harvest is always good.

Too good.

At first, the changes feel like luck-until pets start disappearing. Then people. The ground shifts where it shouldn't. Roots press through concre...