Page 33 of A Witchy Spell Ride (31 Days of Trick or Treat, Bikers and Mobsters #15)

Chapter Twenty-Four

Selene

I dressed like a goddamn goddess.

Because why not?

Let the bastard see exactly what he’d never have.

A deep red corset cinched at my waist, black lace gloves to the elbow, a velvet skirt with a slit so high it made grown men stutter. I painted my mouth blood-red, dusted my collarbones with a whisper of glitter, and slipped a small golden crown into my hair like a final fuck-you to fear.

“Damn,” Briar breathed from behind me, adjusting her skull choker. “You’re gonna cause heart attacks in a three-mile radius.”

“That’s the plan,” I said, popping my lips once to set the stain.

“You want the witch blade in your boot?”

“Already there.” I hiked the slit and flashed the hilt. “Left side. And the backup in the jacket seam Ghost insisted on.”

She grinned, all teeth and loyalty. “Proud of you, babe.”

“Don’t make me cry, I just did my liner.”

She flicked a silver charm against my crown, a ward we both pretended did nothing and knew did something. “Queen it is.”

When we stepped into the main room of the clubhouse, it was chaos. Exactly how it should be.

Skulls, chains, neon lights dripping from the rafters.

The bar was decked with glowing bottles and fake blood shots Daisy labeled Type O(mazing).

Vex was already three drinks deep and trying to convince Firefly to let him DJ.

Bones was body-blocking the pumpkin-smashing contest with the solemnity of a bouncer at a church.

Ash was judging costumes like a pageant mom.

Reaper was… brooding. As usual. Though his eyes cut to Briar every few seconds like she might combust if left unattended.

But Ghost?

Ghost was waiting for me at the bottom of the stairs.

And the look he gave me—

Like I was a burning building, and he planned to walk straight through the flames.

He didn’t speak. Just reached out and pulled me in. His hand splayed low on my back, mouth brushing my ear.

“You’re trouble, Red.”

“And you’re late.”

He hummed in a way that said I’m exactly on time, then let me feel the shape of safety pressed to my spine.

We danced.

Old-school rock slid into dirty brass, and somewhere in there my feet forgot to be careful. We moved the way we’d practiced breathing—square and steady until the edges softened. He didn’t crowd. He surrounded. An orbit. I let myself be a planet because it felt like power, not surrender.

We drank.

Briar fed me something dark and sweet; Daisy handed me a shot that set my tongue on fire and then apologized to my ancestors.

Vex tried to spin a record, failed, and then spun himself until Firefly yanked the cord.

Bones got glittered and refused to acknowledge it.

Cross popped in just long enough to adjust a camera and scowl in a satisfied way.

Reaper, statue-still, kept counting exits with his eyes.

I laughed more in an hour than I had in months. My cheeks hurt. My shoulders dropped. Every time I glanced at the glass behind the bar and caught my reflection, I looked like a woman I recognized again.

For a while, it felt like the curse was broken. Like the night was ours.

Until it wasn’t.

I don’t remember what pulled me away.

A drink. A bathroom break. A club girl asking for help finding a lost earring. Maybe all three. Parties do that—nudge you sideways until you’re not where you were a minute ago.

I slipped away from the main room for five minutes.

Five minutes.

That’s all it took.

The hallway was too quiet. Not the cozy quiet of a home catching its breath. The tense quiet right before a door slams or a gunshot cracks.

The lights flickered, nothing new, the generator got shy on party nights but something else shifted. The air, like a room exhaling to make space for a stranger. Instinct crawled up my spine and tugged my hair. Ghost’s voice threaded my head: Breathe. Square. In for four—

I slowed. Adjusted my grip on the slit of my skirt so I could move fast if I had to. Warded rings sat heavy on my fingers. The coin pendant lay warm against my sternum. The tiny bell on a trip line we’d strung earlier, silent.

I reached the bend that led to the bathroom and paused.

A shadow moved at the edge of sight. Small. Too small to be Bones, too smooth to be Vex. Footfall soft, trained. The scent hit next: drugstore cologne trying too hard, the bitter bite of something chemical underneath.

I turned to go back—

A hand.

Over my mouth.

From behind. A cloth with a sweet, rotten smell. Chloroform. Fucking chloroform.

A forearm locked across my ribs, pinning arms I’d kept loose on purpose.

I bit the palm hard enough to taste iron.

He grunted but didn’t loosen. My heel shot back, found shin, connected.

He stumbled, recovered. I went for the blade in my boot, my leg was already trapped between his, thigh pinned to thigh, angle punished.

Square breath, Selene.

I took the breath I could and did what Ghost taught me when the plan breaks: go ugly.

I raked my ring across whatever skin I found. Felt flesh give. I twisted with hips the way he’d shown me, not arms. The grip at my ribs slid a fraction; I made a slit of space and shoved a sound out around the cloth, ugly, animal, hoping someone would hear anything over the music.

He tightened. The cloth pressed harder. Black at the edges of my vision.

I dropped my weight, became a problem. My free hand stabbed backward, thumb hunting soft, eye, throat, caught cheek instead.

I felt stubble scrape my palm. Faint cologne.

Heat. And eyes—God. A pair of eyes I almost recognized in the sliver of reflection from the glass on the wall as he hauled me around the bend.

Not Adam’s cool vacancy. Not Banks’s dangerous softness.

Someone else’s. Familiar in a way that made my stomach ice and rage.

My boot heel scraped metal. The emergency bell line we’d strung at ankle height—there. I hooked it with the toe and dragged.

It skittered. Jangled. Once.

Not loud enough.

He hissed, adjusted, jammed the cloth harder. The scent turned thick and cotton-candy wrong. My limbs went syrupy. The world tunneled.

The last thought I had before the black took me?

Ghost is going to burn the world down for this.

—

It didn’t go full dark. Not yet. I drifted in a mean, slow sea, surfacing in slivers long enough to catalog anchors.

Cold air on my thighs where the slit gaped.

The rasp of carpet on my calves—no, van trunk carpet.

A wire bite at my wrists, zip ties, not rope.

Worse. A thud-thud under me, wheels. The smell of rubber and stale fries and the chloroform ghosting my sinuses.

A radio in the distance, muffled bass. The metallic clink of a tool rolling somewhere near my head.

And voices. Two.

One the man who grabbed me, breath steady, unbothered. The other thin and nervous, runner cadence. “You sure—”

“Drive,” the first one said, and the word wasn’t loud, but it shut the other man down.

I let my body go heavy like I’d learned to do when a fight wasn’t the fight I wanted. Counted the bumps, the turns. Right. Straight for a while. Left. The van paused at a light; I felt the weight shift and the heat of a sun I couldn’t see.

I wasn’t out. I wasn’t in. I was hovering in a place that let me choose where to put my teeth.

So, I left a trail.

I spit glitter—literal, from the collarbones Briar had dusted—onto the carpet and rubbed my cheek there.

The shimmer would stick. If Cross found this van, he’d find me.

I twisted my right wrist, found the zip-tie ridge, and dragged my ring against it until my skin burned and plastic warmed.

Not enough. I bent my left leg, found the blade in my boot.

He’d missed it because he’d pinned my right.

Bless the paranoia that made me carry two.

The blade was small, two inches, flat, meant for seams and secrets. I sawed slowly, careful, every breath a measurement. The van turned and my blade nicked my own skin. I didn’t stop. The tie gave a fraction. Plastic sang under steel.

“You hear that?” the thin voice asked.

“It’s the road,” the other said.

I pushed until the tie bit deeper, then took the breath I had left and shoved the blade through the last strand. Snap. My right hand slid. Blood slicked my palm. I rolled my shoulder and kept my left wrist still, tie intact, angle innocent. If he checked, I needed one to show.

A pothole hit and the blade jumped from my boot and skittered. I caught it with my fingertips and slid it under my thigh. The van slowed. Turned. Gravel now, not asphalt. We were leaving the Quarter.

I let my head loll and made myself small. He wanted me a doll. I could do doll. For a while.

The van doors yawned, and light knifed the dark. I shut my eyes to slits and watched shadows move. The nervous one, skinny, cheap sneakers. The other, gloves, jeans that tried to be anonymous. Not Adam. Not Banks. The almost-recognized eyes were hidden by a cap tugged low.

They hauled me out by my arms and legs like I was laundry. I let everything hang until a boot hit dirt and threw a heel out, catching shin again. He cursed. I smiled into the black.

“Careful,” the nervous one hissed.

“Shut up,” said the other.

They dragged me into a room that smelled like bleach and old regret—the kind of abandoned storage unit landlords call flex space and cops call nothing to see here.

Concrete under my thighs. A hum somewhere, fluorescents.

A chair. Metal. My body kissed cold, and I made it go slack one second more, two, while I slid the blade to the back seam of my corset and tucked it high against the lacing.

If I got one more chance, I wanted steel where hands wouldn’t grope first.

Zip ties hit the back of the chair. Ankles, too.

Too tight. I made a noise and let my head roll.

I felt his fingers on my throat, checking pulse like he was a doctor and not a monster and breathed shallow.

He didn’t strip me, didn’t search thoroughly.

That told me he wanted a scene he’d written already, one he thought he could control.

He peeled the cloth away. The room tilted, straightened. I coughed sweet chemical and air. The nervous one shifted from foot to foot. I opened my eyes slow.

Concrete. One grimy window with bars and cardboard taped haphazard.

A naked bulb. A table with a knife laid just so.

Another table with… I catalogued. Rope. Tape.

A cheap camera with a long-dead battery light; he hadn’t even charged it.

On the wall, someone had hung a print of The Lovers, the same cheap knockoff from the shop, a black X over the man’s face.

“Hi, Selene,” the man with the gloves said softly, like I should thank him for the consideration.

His eyes, those almost familiar eyes, went warm and flat and wrong.

Not Adam. Not Banks. Someone who’d been around.

The parking lot guy? The handyman who fixed nothing?

The cousin in Metairie Cross had muttered about?

Recognition danced just out of my reach and the not-knowing made me want to scream.

“You made it hard for me,” he went on, and his tone held reproach, as if I’d failed an appointment. “Running to them. Cluttering the space.”

“Which one are you,” I asked, voice rough and steady. “The coward who watched from the car? The one who sold him prepaid cards? Or just the errand boy who thinks he deserves a seat at the table.”

His mouth tightened. The nervous one’s sneaker squeaked. Good. Make it ugly. Spread the crack.

“You don’t need them,” he said, stepping closer. “I’ve been with you. I’ve seen you, before the makeup, before the noise. The real you.”

“Sweetheart,” I said, tasting blood and sugar at once, “you haven’t met the real me.”

He smiled. “I will.”

He reached out. I leaned forward and let my crown catch the light. His hand paused, hovering over my hair like a benediction he hadn’t been given permission to offer.

Back at the clubhouse, a version of me was dancing with a man who’d calculated doorways and escape routes and the color of my breath.

Back in that hallway, a bell had jangled once.

Cross would hear it. Or Briar would notice my drink still sweating where I left it.

Or Vex would realize the bathroom break took too long.

Or Reaper would feel the weather change because that’s what big brothers do, hoard lightning.

I met the almost-familiar eyes and let him see my decision.

“I’m not afraid of you,” I said. “I’m furious.”

He blinked, confused, like no one had ever named the emotion in his presence before.

I smiled. Small. Sharp. “And I leave sharp edges everywhere.”

He tilted his head. “You’ll learn.”

“Promise?” I said sweetly.

He reached for my face.

In the same breath, I made my wrists small, slipped the half-sawn zip tie off my right hand, and went for the blade tucked in my corset seam.

I didn’t get free. Not yet.

But I stopped being the story he thought he was telling.

And somewhere, in a room full of skulls and bats and men who love me in teeth and steel, a hunter was lifting his head because the world had gone too still again.

Get ready, I’d told the camera.

I meant it.