Page 29 of A Witchy Spell Ride (31 Days of Trick or Treat, Bikers and Mobsters #15)

Chapter Twenty-One

Ghost

Cross sent the footage to my phone while I was stripping down one of the garage bikes, a rebuilt chopper we’d been patching since Thorne laid it down last spring.

The frame was a quilt of old decisions and new welds, stubborn in the way machines get when they know you’re not going to give up on them.

No words. Just the file.

I thumbed it open without thinking.

Then stopped cold.

Selene.

Standing outside my room.

Hair messy. One of my shirts hanging off her like sin. Barefoot and proud.

She bent, picked up the rose petal, held it like a knife in disguise. Then she looked directly into the camera lens tucked up in the corner where Cross likes to play God and spoke.

“Get ready,” she said. “Because I’m not scared anymore.”

And I swear to God, I felt my heart break and rebuild in the same breath.

She wasn’t hiding.

She was rising.

And it was the sexiest goddamn thing I’d ever seen.

I played it again. And again. Until the file burned into my brain like a war cry.

That’s my girl.

Mine.

And nobody, not some punk with a camera, not some stalker with twisted fantasies, was going to take that fire from her.

“Something good?” Bones asked from under a different bike, boots sticking out like a crime scene.

“Yeah,” I said, pocketing the phone. “Something good.”

He slid out, grease stripe on his cheek like a badge. “You look like a man who just remembered why he likes breathing.”

“I did,” I said, and went back to work because I was doing a lot of remembering lately and most of it had her name on it.

Cross called five minutes later. He didn’t bother with hello. “Vent drop,” he said. “He fed the petal through the duct. I’ve got a partial print on the inner lip and oil that matches the earlier trace.”

“I’ll check the crawl,” I said.

“Bones already volunteered his worm pants,” Cross replied, dry.

“Good,” I said. “He loves spelunking.”

I hung up and took a breath that tasted like oil and threat. The Quarter can scent your mood; it knows when you’re hunting.

On my way out of the garage, I caught sight of Selene through the open doors to the main room.

Briar had her cornered with a coffee and a story; Selene was curled on the arm of Reaper’s old chair, smiling like she wasn’t performing, the kind of smile that happens when you forget to be afraid.

Her hair was shorter now; it made her look like a blade.

Then Banks slid into my peripheral.

He leaned near the end of the hallway, talking to Ash, pretending to scroll his phone but his eyes kept drifting. To her.

I stepped into his line of sight without a word. The kid jerked like he’d been slapped by air.

“Everything alright, brother?” I asked, too low for anyone else to hear.

He swallowed. “Yeah. Just standing here.”

“Try standing somewhere else.”

“Ghost—”

I got close enough that the lesson wouldn’t need a review. “You forget who the fuck she is?”

Color drained out of his face.

“She’s Reaper’s sister,” I said. “Vex’s family. Mine.”

“I didn’t—”

“You didn’t touch her,” I said. “And that’s the only reason you’re still breathing.”

His jaw clenched. He nodded.

“Good,” I added, stepping back like I believed in mercy. “Go be useful somewhere far away from my eyesight.”

He left fast, head down, the walk of a man who knew he’d wandered too near a cliff. I watched him go and felt the itch between my shoulders that means I’ve got two problems instead of one.

Because Banks wasn’t just looking. He was watching. Not with predator heat, not with danger like our mystery genius. With longing. The kind that grows in dark corners and eats good sense. That alone didn’t make him our stalker.

But it made him dangerous.

And dangerous men?

They always show their hand, eventually.

I just needed to be ready when he did.

The war room had a smell I liked: coffee, paper, Cross’s smug competence. He had the hallway footage paused on the frame where the vent louvers twitched, the petal floating down like a blood-red lie.

“Partial print,” he said, tapping a bagged swab. “And the oil traces play nice with our Elliot-Adam theory. He handled the petal too long because he likes props. Ego gets sweaty.”

“Crawl space?” I asked.

“Bones is in it, hissing show tunes. If he finds a raccoon I’m moving.”

Reaper stood at the table, arms folded, eyes flat. He watched the screen like it owed him rent. “He used the vent to get inside the circle,” he said. “That means he’s feeling the edges.”

“Then we make the edges sharper,” I said.

Briar drifted in, glitter like a crime scene on her cheekbone. She clocked the petal bag and didn’t say a word. Her hand slid into Selene’s when Selene appeared in the doorway.

Selene’s chin lifted as she looked at the paused frame. Calm. Not calm. Something better: resolved.

“He wanted me to find it,” she said. “He wanted to prove he could still get close.”

“And you told him to get ready,” I said. “Good.”

A ghost of a smile crossed her mouth. “You saw.”

“I saved it,” I said.

She didn’t blush; she didn’t have to. The warmth choked me anyway.

Reaper broke our line with a look. “Tonight, we test him,” he said. “He comes in? He doesn’t leave the way he came.”

I nodded once. “He won’t expect a crowd that knows how to move.”

“Briar,” Reaper said, “you stay sticky. If Selene breathes, you count it.”

“Already do,” she chirped, then sobered. “I’m not letting her out of my shadow.”

“Cross,” Reaper went on, “add another eye to the western vent. Anyone touches a grate; I want an alarm in my teeth.”

“Done,” Cross said, already typing.

Selene’s gaze found me again. “We’re still doing Halloween.”

It wasn’t a question; it was a declaration. I gave it the only answer it deserved.

“Yeah,” I said. “We are.”

The day turned like a crank. I took a walk I didn’t call a patrol, past the shop, past the café where the burner emails were born, past the antique store that gave us our first real angle.

The Quarter wore morning well. Delivery trucks hissed.

A busker tuned a trumpet with the patience of a priest. A white van idled two blocks over, ladders on top, logo magnetic and forgettable.

I gave it a second longer than casual. The driver scratched his beard, not looking at me the exact way a man looks when he’s trying to not look at me. His partner stared at his phone like it owed him a future.

I filed faces, gaits, plates. The van pulled out. I let it go. Not the time. Not yet.

Back at the clubhouse, I found Vex on a ladder stapling up Daisy’s bats with the care of a surgeon and the disgust of a man doing community service. “Tell me if these catch fire,” he said without looking down.

“They will,” I said. “And you’ll live.”

“Fair.” He shot his staple gun. “You tell Banks to stop being an idiot?”

“Once,” I said. “I won’t repeat myself.”

“Good,” Vex said. “I hate mopping blood.”

“You love mopping blood,” Briar called from nowhere.

“Not on Thursdays,” Vex called back.

I went looking for Selene because that’s what I do now: check my exits, check my edges, check my center.

I found her in the quiet back hall with sunlight pooling around her boots, head bent as she drew a small sigil on the underside of the stair rail with eyeliner.

Protection. Attention. Her mother’s hand in hers.

“You missed a spot,” I said, and pointed to a knot in the wood. “There.”

She finished the line, blew on the chalk, looked up at me through lashes that should be illegal. “You’re bossy when you’re anxious.”

“I’m always bossy,” I said.

She smiled, not performative, not armor. “True.”

I took her hand. Not the way a man takes a prize. The way a sailor takes a rope. “You did good this morning.”

She squeezed back. “So did you.”

I wanted to put my mouth on her and forgot how to want anything else. Instead, I kissed the center of her palm, quick, like a promise I wasn’t ready to speak out loud.

“You ready?” I asked.

“Not even a little,” she said. “Go anyway.”

“Good girl,” I said before I could stop myself, and she sent me a look that landed low and dangerous.

“Later,” she said. “Focus.”

I grinned. Couldn’t help it. “Trying.”

Bones emerged from the crawl space a while later with his worm pants and a grin like he’d found the last cookie.

“We got scuffs,” he said, holding up his phone with photos of the duct interior: fresh scratches where a screwdriver had slipped, a smear of oil too new for this old building, a twist of lint that looked like it had been eaten by roses.

“Your boy’s not a ghost. He’s just careful. ”

“Careful’s a mask,” I said. “Masks crack.”

Reaper nodded. “Tonight, we bring a hammer.”

Cross printed a floor map, and I drew circles on it with a grease pencil until it looked like a target.

“Selene stays here,” I said, pointing to center.

“Briar shadows. Vex on door. Ash plays red light/green light with the bar traffic, he’ll move bodies without anyone thinking he’s moving bodies.

Bones roams. Bray and Thorne hold the back.

Cross in the office. Reaper floats where shadows go to get nervous.

” I tapped my earbud. “Everyone calls a color before they move. We use the band as cover for shifts.”

“And you?” Reaper asked.

“I’m the tide,” I said. “He moves; I take him.”

Reaper’s mouth did that almost-approval, almost-threat I’ve known since I had knuckles. “Alive,” he reminded me.

“I heard you,” I said.

“Good.”

Selene tracked all of it without flinching. When I finished, she lifted her chin. “What do you want me to do if he gets close?”

“Breathe,” I said. “Look him in the face and let me cut the space between you.”

“And if you can’t?”

“I can,” I said, and made sure she saw I believed it. “But if I trip, you go left. Briar will already be moving you. Don’t look back.”

She nodded once. “Okay.”

Briar draped herself over Selene’s shoulders like a cat and bared her teeth at me. “If she trips, you catch her.”

“I already did,” I said, and I don’t know which of the three of us believed it most.

By midafternoon the building thrummed. Daisy leveled a fake raven at a speaker and declared it art.

Ash tested the fog machine and made the main room look like a bad dream; Vex opened a door to clear it and glared at the fog like it had insulted his mother.

Cross did unholy things to the feeds and gave me a backup black box for my ear like he didn’t trust electricity to be loyal.

Reaper walked the perimeter with the patience of a storm.

Bones taught Bray how to palm a blade and pick a pocket as if he were teaching him to foxtrot.

Banks reappeared, quieter. He didn’t look toward Selene, and I decided to let that be his good deed for the day.

I took ten minutes where no one could see me and watched Selene from the doorway like a sinner at confession.

She moved through the room differently now, not small, not loud, just certain.

The petal hadn’t shrunk her; it had brought her spine into focus.

She caught me looking and didn’t look away.

The corner of her mouth kicked up, private. I pushed off the jamb and went to her.

“You keep staring,” she said sotto voce, “people will talk.”

“Let them,” I said.

She bumped her shoulder into my chest, casual and intimate. “We’re going to be okay.”

“We are,” I said, because I’d chosen the only version of the story I could live with.

Then I pulled my phone and replayed the file Cross had sent me, one more time. Selene in my shirt. Barefoot. Barefaced. Picking up a petal and turning her chin up to a lens like it owed her an apology.

“Get ready,” she said, straight to the man who’d tried to script her.

Because I’m not scared anymore.

I slid the phone back into my pocket and felt something settle where the drum had been beating.

Later, I’d take positions and call colors and walk a man into his mistake. Later, I’d do what I was made to do.

Right now, I touched her wrist with two fingers and felt the steady thrum that matched mine.

“Ready?” I asked again because the ritual mattered.

“No,” she said. “Go anyway.”

So, we did.