Page 23 of A Witchy Spell Ride (31 Days of Trick or Treat, Bikers and Mobsters #15)

Chapter Seventeen

Ghost

Cross and I had narrowed it down to three.

Three possible names tied to three burner email accounts and one prepaid card used to buy a crystal pendant from a shop two doors down from Selene’s.

All three used the same fake last name: Lane.

Only one of them matched the time stamp and camera angle from the footage Cross scraped off a neighboring antique shop’s grainy security feed.

Adam Lane.

Square jaw, too-clean sneakers, khaki fucking cargo pants.

The man who didn’t belong in the Quarter.

The man who watched my girl like he’d bought her.

We were close.

Too close.

Which meant something was coming.

And I could feel it.

Selene was in the main room of the clubhouse, seated on the old leather couch with one of her knees pulled up under her, picking at a chipped polish spot on her fingernail.

She hadn’t slept much. Wasn’t eating right either.

Briar had tried stuffing her with beignets earlier, but Selene just picked at them, lips pressed tight.

I stepped in, closed the door behind me, and leaned against the wall. “You ready for the party plan?”

She didn’t look up. “Is there a plan where I get to throw a drink in someone’s face and pretend this whole nightmare never happened?”

“Not yet.”

She huffed. “Then no. Not ready.”

I crossed the room, crouched in front of her. “Selene.”

Her eyes snapped to mine.

And that’s when I saw it.

The breaking point.

The wall starting to crack.

“I want my life back,” she said, too fast, too sharp. “I want to wake up and not wonder if someone’s watching me brush my fucking teeth. I want to light sage in my shop without wondering if I’m marking myself. I want to walk down my own street and not feel like prey.”

I reached for her hand.

She didn’t pull away.

“I want to sleep without knives in my head,” she whispered. “And I want to laugh at stupid Halloween decorations and flirt with the guy I’ve wanted since I was twenty without thinking it’ll get someone killed.”

That last part froze the air.

I didn’t speak.

Couldn’t.

Because if I did, I’d lose control.

She swallowed hard. “Ghost, I—”

I kissed her.

Hard.

One hand to her jaw, the other fisting in her shirt like I was afraid she’d vanish if I didn’t anchor her there.

She gasped against my mouth.

Then kissed me back.

It wasn’t soft.

It wasn’t sweet.

It was desperate.

Pent-up.

The kiss of someone who’d almost broken and the man who refused to let her fall.

She clung to me like I was her air.

And I kissed her like I didn’t care if the whole fucking world burned around us.

Because in that moment?

I didn’t.

All I cared about was her.

When I finally pulled back, we were both breathing hard. Her fingers curled in my cut. My hand still gripped her waist like she was the last thing tethering me to sanity.

We didn’t speak. Not yet.

Not because we didn’t have words.

But because we finally had something better.

Truth.

And it tasted like gasoline and longing on my tongue.

Selene blinked first, a slow recalibration. She searched my face like a map she’d traveled blind and just found north.

“We can’t do this because of him,” she said, voice wrecked and steady at once.

“We’re not,” I said. “We’re doing this because of us.”

A soft knock hit the frame. Briar, of course, a human firework in a silver hoodie. “Hate to interrupt your life-affirming smooch, but Cross just got something new on Adam Lane and Reaper’s about to put it through a blender.”

Selene’s hand tightened on my cut; mine didn’t leave her. I stood and offered my other palm. She took it and rose with me. It felt like an oath.

War room. Different kind of church.

Cross had the board up: a mess of printed stills, timestamp ribbons, transaction logs, and a Google-street-view still with a red circle around a two-story shotgun house across the river.

“Adam Lane is an alias,” Cross said without preamble.

“Real name’s likely Elliot Adair. Birth record matches jawline and ear notch.

Two misdemeanors in Baton Rouge. No violent felonies.

Delivery gigs. A six-month stint at a security company that installs consumer-grade cameras. Hence, avoidance of fields.”

Reaper’s hands were flat on the table like he could crush wood to dust without moving. “Where.”

“Gretna,” Cross said, tapping the photo. “Rents a room. Cash. Landlord’s a slumlord with a theology degree and six shell LLCs.”

Bones leaned in, crowbar balanced against his shoulder like a saint’s relic. “You want a meet-and-greet?”

“Not yet,” I said.

Reaper’s look said explain.

“He’s planning something around the party,” I said. “If we vacuum him now, we get screaming and denials. If we let him step, we get proof. We get who helped him. We make it clean.”

Briar clicked her tongue. “Clean-ish.”

Cross pointed to three printouts. “Three burner emails. laneadam, justlane, and aplanefor2. All created within thirty minutes at a café on Royal. The café cam got the top of a cap and the curve of a jaw. Same cap from the sedan pass. The prepaid card used to buy the pendant two doors down from Selene? Loaded with cash at a bodega on Chartres at 9:06 p.m. Night of the lilies.”

Selene’s arms folded across her chest. “So, he’s local enough to learn my patterns and stupid enough to think a fake last name makes him a ghost.”

“Not ghost,” Briar said cheerfully. “We already have one of those.”

I didn’t smile. Reaper almost did.

Cross flipped a page. “He’s got a second vehicle. Not registered to him, registered to a cousin in Metairie. Work van. Ladders. Magnets for a made-up company. He used it twice near the shop, early mornings. Parked over the drain so the camera’s lower angle was a bad teacher.”

Reaper’s fingers tapped once, the only tell he had when he was pleased and furious at the same time. “We box him at the party.”

“He won’t come through the front,” I said. “Not with our guys at the door. He’ll try the side, or the roof, or he’ll use an invite. Daisy’s handing those out like candy.”

“Daisy’s invites are coded now,” Briar said. “I stamped them with sigils. If a counterfeiter tries, the ink smears like sin.”

Selene’s mouth curved despite itself. “Church girl magic.”

“Church girl with a switchblade,” Briar said, preening.

Reaper cut us all back to the point. “Layout.”

I took a grease pencil to the laminated floor plan Cross had printed. “Selene stays center main room, never more than ten feet from me. Vex runs the door with Ash. Bones floats. Bray and Thorne anchor the back hallway and courtyards. Cross in the office with eyes on all feeds. Briar acts normal.”

“Impossible,” Vex muttered from the doorway.

“And keeps selkie energy,” I finished.

“Selkie?” Briar perked up.

“Shiny and slippery,” I said.

Selene hooked a knuckle against my elbow, just once, a quiet I’m here. I felt it everywhere.

Reaper pointed at the roof access. “He likes elevation.”

“Already chained,” Vex said. “Welded today. I kissed the padlock for luck.”

“Gross,” Briar said.

Cross slid me a small black box with a loop. “Ear. Discreet. Encrypted. Tap twice to open mic, once to close. If you go hands-on, leave it open.”

“Rules of engagement,” Reaper said.

“Simple,” I answered. “If he steps inside, we extract him alive. If he goes for her, he loses a hand.”

No one laughed. Good.

Selene finally spoke, voice low but not small. “What do you want me to do?”

I faced her. “Breathe. Walk like you own the room because you do. If you see him, you do not approach. You mark him with your eyes, and you let me move.”

She held my stare a beat, then nodded. “Okay.”

Briar nudged her hip to hip. “And look hot.”

“Professional requirement,” Cross said dryly.

Reaper’s phone buzzed. He glanced at it, jaw easing a degree. “Our eyes on Gretna say he left the house an hour ago. Back road, toward the bridge. He’s in play.”

Good. I wanted him where I could read him.

The hour before a fight stretches thin. Every minute rings.

I found Selene in the quiet back hall fixing the clasp on a delicate chain.

Her hair shorter now, bared the line of her throat.

She wore the black silk slip and the velvet jacket she’d chosen, knives tucked where only I would be allowed to touch.

She looked like a sin a man would invent a religion for.

I adjusted the inside seam of her jacket and slid the flat blade into the pocket I’d sewn there myself. “Here,” I said. “And a second in the boot.”

“Overkill?” she asked.

“Insurance.”

“You always carry two?” she asked, teasing the edge of humor without stepping on it.

“Four,” I said. “Two you can see, two you never will.”

Her mouth did that small almost-smile again. “Show-off.”

I didn’t say for you. I didn’t have to.

She fastened the chain and held the pendant in her palm, the old silver coin her mother gave her, worn smooth by time and fingers. “For luck,” she said.

“For leverage,” I answered.

I cupped the back of her neck for half a second, thumb pressing the tendons there like a blessing. “Stay where I put you,” I said.

“Bossy.”

“Alive.”

Her breath caught. “Ghost.”

“Yeah.”

“I meant what I said.”

“I know.”

She swallowed and lowered her voice like it belonged only to me. “Then—after—if we get through—”

“We will,” I said, because there was no other acceptable tense.

“Then we don’t pretend it was about him.”

“Not for a second.”

She nodded and looked taller.

Noise arrived with the first wave. Costumes, laughter, the crackle of vinyl capes and cheap witch hats.

Daisy’s webbing hung like bad snow. Ash wore devil horns and the expression of a man who’d fight God for making him hot.

Vex wore a butcher’s apron as a joke; the blood looked real because the apron was old.

The band set up in the corner, tuning, the bass a heartbeat the building remembered.