Page 35 of A Witchy Spell Ride (31 Days of Trick or Treat, Bikers and Mobsters #15)

Selene

I came to in the dark.

The air was thick. Dust. Gasoline. Motor oil. Old sweat. The kind of stale that sticks to your tongue and makes you think of basements that never learned the word sun.

Concrete under my thighs. Candlelight flickering somewhere behind my eyelids. My wrists ached, bound in nylon cord. Ankles too. Not tight enough to numb just tight enough to remind me somebody planned for squirming.

It was cold.

But I wasn’t scared.

I was focused.

My mind was clear in that way it gets when the world narrows to two things: you, and the choice you make next. This wasn’t some stranger who took a wrong turn into nightmare. This was someone who’d watched me for weeks. Who knew my patterns. My routines.

This was personal.

And I knew something else now, too:

It wasn’t Adam.

Not the dating app prophet with the fake name and real vacancy.

This?

This was someone closer.

Footsteps creaked behind me. Wood grain complaint over concrete quiet. Not heavy. Measured. The kind of walk men practice when they want to look like they’re not hurrying toward the thing they can’t wait to touch.

I didn’t look.

Not yet.

Let him think I was foggy. Let him talk.

“Did you like the card?”

That voice.

Familiar in the way a background hum is familiar, there long enough that your brain taught itself to ignore it. The hair along my arms lifted like a forest waking.

I turned my head, slow. Took him in like evidence.

Briggs.

A hangaround. Always in the periphery, running errands, fixing ice machines that refuse to fix, hauling crates from Cross’s van like a man who understands leverage. The kind of man you don’t bother learning the last name of because he never seems important enough to keep.

Average height. Average everything. The face of a man you hand change to and forget before the next step.

Nobody paid him much attention.

That was the point.

Right now, he looked like a magician playing priest. Grinning behind a makeshift altar of candles, Polaroids, and little thefts that turned my stomach.

My lipstick, the shade Briar calls Homicide, rolled on its side.

A broken keychain from my purse. A copy of The Lovers tarot card with the man’s face scratched out in jagged black like a wound that wouldn’t heal.

And Ghost—his face cut from a flyer, X’ed out with a fury that had dented the paper.

“You were never supposed to be with him,” Briggs said softly, as if we were having a conversation in a kitchen at three a.m. “He doesn’t see you the way I do.”

I kept my face calm. I kept my voice flat. “My brother’s going to kill you.”

“No, he won’t,” he said, stepping closer. “Because I’m going to make you see. I’m going to fix this. Once you stop letting them poison you… you’ll remember.”

“I don’t even know you.”

That made him flinch. A small, human crack. Good. Cracks widen.

“I’m the one who leaves the notes,” he said quickly, patching his own hole with words. “The roses. I followed you home, Selene. I watched you before he ever came back.”

I swallowed bile and gave him a look that said oh honey without moving my mouth. “You’re insane.”

“No,” he said, crouching so we were near eye-level, hand brushing my ankle like a benediction he had no right to give. I kept my face still while the urge to bite rose like a second tide. “I’m the one who loves you.”

I stared him dead in the eye. “You’re the one who dies.”

He froze.

Then smiled.

“We’ll see.”

He expected the threat in my words, not the boredom. That bored tone, the one I use when men mistake obsession for fate put a hairline crack in his confidence. He covered it with ritual.

“Okay,” he murmured, exhale shaping into something he’d rehearsed. “Okay, we’ll start. We’ll make it right.”

He stood and began arranging his altar the way Cross arranges data—like patterns could save him.

He lit three more candles. Their light crawled across the concrete and showed me more of the room: cinderblock walls sweating old damp, a naked bulb that hummed like a fly, a single high window with bars and warped cardboard.

A metal chair bolted to the floor under me.

Zip ties at my wrists. Ankles. Nylon, not plastic.

Stouter. Rougher. Easier to saw once warmed.

A camera sat on the far table. Cheap. Battery light dead. Amateur hour. He’d planned to film a revelation and forgot to bring electricity.

He wasn’t Adam. He wasn’t Cross. He was a man who mistook watching for knowing.

Good.

He moved to the far side, and I let my head list like I was still catching up, while my fingers did what they could out of sight, rolling, testing, making my wrists small, small, smaller. Nylon warmed under skin. Skin burned under nylon. Pain became a plan.

“Why me?” I asked, casual. Not a plea. An ask.

He smiled without eyes. “Because you’re the only one who isn’t pretending.”

I let the silence sit. Sometimes men fill it with confession.

He did.

“You pretend to be mean, but you’re soft with the old men who come in for their wives.

You pretend to be wild, but you fold your receipts and tuck your hair behind your left ear when you’re tired.

You pretend to need them—” his mouth twisted at the word “But you don’t.

And it scares them. So, they try to own you. ”

He looked proud of himself. Like he’d passed a test I hadn’t given.

“Tell me about the clubhouse,” I said, rolling my shoulders, cataloguing range of motion. “About how you got in and out so easy.”

He swayed, pleased. “Doors open when you know where to look.”

“The vents,” I said.

He smiled bigger. “You, see? We understand each other.”

“We don’t,” I said, and I kept my eyes on his face while I flicked my gaze for a heartbeat to his hands.

Gloves. Thin, cheap, fingerprints tucked under latex.

He wasn’t completely stupid. The nervous accomplice was nowhere; a mutter in the hallway earlier, male, younger, jittery, now replaced by empty quiet.

Maybe driver boy ran. Maybe Reaper didn’t give him the chance.

Briggs reached for my throat again. Pulse-checking like a doctor who learned medicine from movies. I tilted my chin, so his fingers slid over the ridge of my collarbone and found glitter instead. He froze, expression going reverent.

“You shouldn’t wear this for them,” he murmured, thumb smudging shine. “It’s for me.”

“It’s for me,” I said, and I didn’t hide the blade in my voice.

He blinked rapidly, recalibrating. Ritual again. He shuffled the cheap tarot deck beside the altar. The box said Mystic Visions in a font that had never seen mysticism. He cut the pack like a man who’d learned to shuffle yesterday. Drew a card without looking and held it up, crooked.

The Tower.

Of course.

He misread my smile. “Yes,” he said, breathless. “Destruction before rebirth.”

“Funny,” I said. “That’s exactly how Ghost kisses.”

The candle nearest his elbow sputtered. He slammed the card down so hard the table jumped.

“Don’t say his name,” he hissed. “He doesn’t matter here.”

“Everything about this is about him,” I said softly. “The Xs where his face should be. The way you talk about me like I’m an object you’re moving away from him and not a person walking toward myself. You don’t love me, Briggs. You love a version of me that makes you feel chosen.”

“I chose you,” he shot back, almost childlike in his insistence.

“And I didn’t,” I said.

He rocked back like I’d slapped him. Then, mercifully, pride cuffed his tantrum. He smoothed the Lovers card with two fingers and folded his voice back into soft. “It’s just the poison talking. When I cleanse you, you’ll remember.”

“You brought chloroform to a cleansing,” I said. “If you’re going to pretend to be a priest, at least Google first.”

His jaw tightened, then loosened as if he remembered priests get angry too. He walked behind me. I stilled my shoulders so he wouldn’t feel the heat the nylon had gathered under my wrists. The knot on my right side was sloppy. The man didn’t tie boats.

“Water,” I said abruptly.

He hesitated.

“Ritual without water?” I turned my head just enough to catch his eyes again. “You brought candles. You brought symbols. You think you don’t need the element that carries memory?”

He faltered. He hadn’t planned for requirements he didn’t understand. His need to be right warred with his need to be in control, and pride chose the one that let him keep talking.

“Fine,” he said. “I’ll get it.”

He turned. A tap ran somewhere, pipes old. In the seconds he walked away, I bent my whole mind to the nylon. Small wrists. Smaller. Roll bone. Exhale. Saw. The cord warmed, then softened. Pain went bright. My ring dug a groove along a single strand. One more pull and—

He came back.

I went still, let the nylon bite settle into a quiet throb. He set the plastic cup on the table and hovered again, a man faking tenderness with hands that only knew possession.

“I’ll untie one,” he said piously, as if he were granting me a sacrament. “We need your palm free.”

He reached for my left wrist. I willed him to pick the right. He didn’t. Of course he didn’t. I needed him to feel like the generous one if I wanted leverage.

“You need both,” I said, and made my voice a teacher’s, patient, condescending. “Cleansing requires taking and giving. Altar rules. Two hands or none.”

Briggs hesitated, eyes flicking to the altar like it might whisper answers. He didn’t want to ask me. He also didn’t want to be wrong. Vanity is a lever all its own.

He cut the left. Then the right.

The nylon fell away, and blood rushed back with pins.

I didn’t flex. Didn’t give him fear. I kept my hands still in my lap, palms up.

He placed the cup in them like a communion.

The water smelled like a pipe that hadn’t been run in a decade.

I raised it to my mouth and let a sip slide over a tongue that tasted like chemicals and iron.

“See?” he breathed, relief making his voice soft again. “See? Better.”

“Sure,” I said, and spilled the rest over my bound ankles.

He flinched, confused. “What are you—”

“Memory,” I said. And I twisted, slid my now-wet ankle ties against cold metal, and let friction do what friction does when it meets a woman who refuses to be held.

He grabbed for me. I let him. His thumb pressed into the tender spot near the hinge of my jaw, and I leaned into it like I was leaning into a kiss. His balance shifted, weight forward. His belly brushed my knuckles.

My right hand slid to the seam of my corset where I’d tucked the flat blade, two inches of insurance that had already nicked me once. I palmed it. He didn’t notice. He was busy pretending to be a god.

“Look at me,” he whispered.

“I am,” I said. “I just don’t see what you want me to.”

He smiled sadly. “You will.”

I smiled back and made my wrists small one more time, because when I moved, I needed the distance to count.

“Briggs,” I said conversationally. “Who helped you.”

He blinked. “What?”

“You looped Cross’s feed for ten seconds,” I went on, as if we were sharing kitchen gossip. “You knew the vent slats to pop. You knew the blind pocket by the back door. You don’t get that good by watching me buy candles.”

His pride preened. His paranoia flinched. The tug-of-war inside him made him careless.

“People like me always see what’s ignored,” he said. “Some of the boys never deserved the cut.”

Not a name. Not a denial.

“People like you,” I echoed, sliding the blade under the cord at my ankles and letting the wet nylon sing. “Which ones.”

“You don’t need to know,” he said, almost fond.

“Oh baby,” I said softly, “I already do.”

The cord gave. It didn’t pop; it sighed. The sound was small enough to hide under candle hum. I kept my ankles together, kept the illusion of restraint, and moved my right foot a fraction so the blade could tuck under the chair seat, invisible if he checked.

He lifted his hand to my face again, thumb hovering over my mouth like he thought he might wipe the lipstick away and find his property underneath.

“Don’t,” I said.

He thought I was pleading. He smiled and leaned in anyway.

Outside, far away, and close, a night sound changed, subtle as a held breath. The kind of stillness that means the world has noticed a wrong note and is tuning to fix it. I knew that quiet. Ghost had taught me to listen for it the way wolves teach their young to hear fresh snow.

I let Briggs touch the edge of my mouth, because sometimes you let the monster get exactly one thing he wants so you can take everything else from him after.

“Last chance,” I said.

His eyes softened with pity I didn’t request. “I forgive you,” he whispered.

“Don’t,” I repeated. “You won’t have time.”

He didn’t understand. That’s the thing about men who script your life in their heads, they never believe you when you tell them the ending.

He reached for the crown in my hair, like he meant to lift it and set it somewhere he could bless. His fingers brushed the ward Briar had hidden in the metal. It sparked, a tiny sting, nothing more and he hissed, yanking his hand back.

“Careful,” I said, and I smiled like a blade. “She bites.”

He stared at his fingers, offended. The candles guttered in a draft that came from nowhere—and everywhere.

Because somewhere close, a door was opening. Not loud. Not dramatic. Just enough to change the pressure in the room.

Briggs looked up, suspicion finally beating ritual. His head cocked toward the hall. He didn’t move away from me. He didn’t move toward the sound either. He stayed poised between a choice he hadn’t prepared for and a woman who had.

“Stay,” he told me, like I was a dog.

“I’m not the one who’s going to run,” I said.

He smiled one last time, indulgent. “We’ll see.”

His hand left my face.

I flexed my fingers. Felt blood return. Felt rage settle into something surgical.

The candles trembled again.

So did he.