Page 79 of A Witchy Spell Ride
“You good?” he asked, voice stripped of everything but the question.
“I am,” I said.
He nodded, acceptance without argument. “Party stays on,” he said. It wasn’t a question.
“Party stays on,” I echoed.
“Ghost on you all night,” he added, a formality neither of us needed.
“Wouldn’t have it any other way.”
He studied me for a beat longer, something easing in his shoulders like he’d been carrying the world and just remembered he had help. “You tell me if anything changes.”
“I will,” I said, and this time it wasn’t a lie.
He started to walk, then paused, mouth twisting. “Daisy’s bats are a fire hazard,” he said grudgingly. “But they’re… festive.”
“Don’t let her hear you say that,” I said, dead serious. “She’ll make you wear one.”
“I’d rather fight a cartel,” he muttered, and I let myself laugh because it felt good and because Briar was around the corner with her phone out pretending not to film him admitting he liked decorations.
Back in the kitchen, Ghost slid a plate toward me, eggs, toast, bacon done exactly the way I insist on when I’m not pretending to be low-maintenance. He didn’t say he’d noticed. He just fed me, and that alone could’ve undone a lesser woman.
“Don’t get ideas,” I said around a bite. “I’m still dangerous.”
“Good,” he said, sipping his coffee. “I prefer dangerous.”
We ate leaning against opposite counters like a standoff where both sides were winning. Between bites, we mapped routes and contingencies. Where I’d stand if the back door became a funnel. What hand signal meantget me out quietly andwhich one meantstart a fight and make it look organic. Who would be two steps behind me and who would be two blocks out, and how I’d pivot if the music lifted, because Cross swore by using the band as cover and Reaper loved a practical cue.
I placed a last charm at the threshold to the main room, a loop of thread and a clove bud tucked under the molding. Ghost watched my fingers and shook his head, half fond, half feral.
“What?” I asked.
“Just cataloguing the ways no one ever had a chance,” he said.
It should’ve sounded like a line. It sounded like truth.
By noon, the Quarter boiled toward afternoon. Sun hammered the pavement; humidity took a lazy bite out of every breath. Briar dragged me outside for ten minutes with adoctor’s orderstone. We stood on the clubhouse steps like queens reviewing a parade: vendors arguing with tourists, music stitching a messy seam down the block, a brass laugh rolling from someone’s open door.
I thought of the mirror again, the way it had shown me back to myself. I thought of the petal and of the hand that had fed it through a vent like a child with a cruel secret. I thought of the ductwork, the crawl space, the narrow places men choose when they want to feel powerful.
I reached for Briar’s hand and squeezed. “I’m not afraid,” I said, mostly to test the shape of it out loud.
“I know,” she said. “Me either.”
We went back in. Cross had a print. Not a full one, but a partial that matched the earlier footage’s maybe-Elliot/Adam man’s DMV record. He tossed the result on the table like a card he’d been saving. “He was here,” Cross said, calm and lethal. “Which means he’ll be back.”
“Good,” Ghost said, stepping up behind me. “We like repeat customers.”
“Less paperwork,” Vex added.
The day stretched toward dusk. Daisy stapled bats with Reaper’s reluctant blessing. Bones found his worm pants and a crushed beer in the crawl space dating from a year before I was born. Ash hung lights and swore at every third bulb that refused tocooperate. Bray taped down cords that wanted to trip ankles. Thorne installed a second lock on the roof access and welded it for good measure. The place tightened around us, a circle of hands and wire and will.
I changed before sunset. Black silk slip, velvet jacket. The coin pendant lay against my sternum, warm and sure. Briar dusted my shoulders with the barest shimmer and painted my mouth the color of audacity. She whispered a tiny glamour spell that would make me easier to see from across a room. It wasn’t magic that overwrote reality. It was magic that underlined it.
Ghost met me at the threshold like a man arriving at a truth. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to. He adjusted my collar like he always did and, because he’s him, slid a blade into the seam I’d left open for it, the weight of it an anchor and a kiss.
“You ready?” he asked.
