Page 28 of A Witchy Spell Ride (31 Days of Trick or Treat, Bikers and Mobsters #15)

Because I wasn’t the girl being acted upon anymore. I was in it. Hands dirty. Voice steady. Fear present but not the loudest thing in the room.

Back in Ghost’s doorway, I paused. He was a step behind me, heat a respectful distance from my spine.

“You really, okay?” he asked.

I turned. “Better than okay.”

His eyes flicked to the shirt hanging on me like a crime. “That’s mine.”

“I noticed,” I said. “Fits.”

He looked like he wanted to kiss me and didn’t because we had a hallway and a camera and a club to run. Instead, he took my hand, flipped my palm up, and pressed a kiss to the center of it, quick, discreet, devastating.

“Shower,” he said. “Food. Then we set charms where Cross can’t.”

“Yes, sir,” I said just to watch him pretend not to react to sir. It worked too well. He cleared his throat, eyes amused and not.

“Go, witch,” he said, softly smug. “I’ll make the coffee that doesn’t taste like Vex’s motor oil.”

I showered with the door cracked and Briar on the other side narrating an article about haunted dolls. “Apparently, Annabelle was a raggedy—”

“Don’t care,” I said through toothpaste.

“Fine,” she said cheerfully. “I will simply bring one home.”

“Briar.”

“Kidding.” A beat. “Mostly.”

After, I dressed for the day like a small, private ritual.

Black jeans. Tank. The coin pendant under my shirt where it could warm against my skin.

Knives in familiar spots. I braided my shorter hair back from my face and drew a small protection sigil behind each ear with eyeliner.

When I stepped out, Briar looked me up and down and nodded. “Sharp.”

“Always.”

We laid charms in the places Cross’s cameras couldn’t see: the inside of a lamp base, the underside of the stair rail, the third tile in the hall that always wobbled.

Little things. Bells on invisible lines.

Chalk where only a thumb would smudge it.

Stories, really, you tell the building what you need from it and sometimes it listens.

By midmorning, the clubhouse woke all the way.

The band texted to confirm load-in times for the party; Daisy announced a glitter emergency; Ash threatened to set the glitter on fire and Daisy threatened to set Ash on fire and Reaper didn’t threaten anything because his eyebrow did it for him.

The air felt… normal. Not the normal from before, maybe, but a normal we’d chosen.

When Reaper finally cornered me in the hallway because of course he did, I was ready. He glanced at the security camera and then at the crushed petal in the little plastic bag Cross had given me.

“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 meant get me out quietly and which one meant start 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 a doctor’s orders tone.

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 to cooperate.

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.

“No,” I said. “Go anyway.”

He held my gaze. “Good.”

On my way into the main room, I passed the hallway camera. I paused, looked up again, and let the lens take me in. Not a taunt, not a plea. A notice.

You wanted to see me. See me.

The music kicked. The door opened. The night began to do what nights do: stretch, test, reveal.

I felt the petal ghost in my fist again, felt the crush and the decision hidden inside it, and walked into my own party like I owned it.

Because I did.