Page 110 of A Witchy Spell Ride
“Reaper,” I said.
“On him,” he answered, voice the weight that pins a man to his choices.
I slid to the wall by the blue door and pressed my ear to paint. Inside: fluorescent hum. A scrape of a chair. A voice, not Selene’s. Male. Softer than I expected. And under it, the sound I’d been reaching for since the heel on the tile:
Her breath.
Shallow.
Angry.
Alive.
“Ready?” Bones mouthed.
I nodded.
“On three,” Reaper said into my ear, but my hands were already moving. I counted anyway because rituals matter when gods are listening.
Three.
Two.
One.
Vex — because of course he’d caught up — reached up and popped the security light with a gloved fist. The world tilted a shade darker. I slid the pry bar into the latch and levered once, twice. The door gave with a whisper like a secret changing sides.
We went in low and left. The first thing I saw was her.
Selene. Tied to a metal chair. Crown crooked. Lip bitten. Eyes open and clear.
The second thing was the man across from her.
Briggs.
Our quiet. Our average. Our ghost we’d taught ourselves not to see.
He turned too slow for survival. I closed the distance and took his wrist the way you take a blade from a drunk — decisive, unkind. His elbow cracked. He went to his knees with a sound that proved he wasn’t a myth after all.
“Stay,” I told him, voice calm as a new grave.
Selene’s mouth lifted at one corner. “Took you long enough.”
I didn’t laugh. Couldn’t. “You leave sharp edges everywhere,” I said.
“Good,” she said. “I meant to.”
Behind me, Reaper pulled the driver from the van by the collar of his hoodie and introduced him to a wall. Bones pinned him with a knee and a quiet promise. Vex zip-tied Briggs with the kind of efficiency that saysI’ve been waiting for this.
I cut Selene free. The nylon had burned grooves into her wrists; she’d already half-sawn one herself. Proud doesn’t cover it.
“You hurt?” I asked.
“Annoyed,” she said. “Hydration would help.”
I handed her the bottle from my back pocket. She drank, winced, smiled like a knife. “He thinks I’m a church,” she said. “He brought me chloroform and a sermon.”
“We brought you home,” I said.
