Page 36 of A Witchy Spell Ride (31 Days of Trick or Treat, Bikers and Mobsters #15)

Ghost

The tires were still warm when we got to the motel.

Reaper rode up beside me, silent. Bones was already off his bike, gun drawn.

“Let’s move.”

We breached the door like we’d done it a thousand times because we had.

But the smell hit first.

Copper.

Decay.

Mildew.

Then the sight.

Adam Lane — or whoever the fuck he really was — slumped back against the dingy mattress, eyes wide open, mouth frozen mid-scream. A pool of blood soaked through his shirt. Slit from gut to chest, clean and efficient.

“No fuckin’ way,” Bones muttered.

Cross moved in, scanning the room. “Looks like he didn’t even have time to stand up.”

Reaper checked the window. “No sign of a struggle. One blow.”

“One professional blow,” I muttered.

Because whoever killed Adam wasn’t sloppy.

This wasn’t rage.

This was silencing.

I stepped back, heart hammering.

Selene wasn’t here.

And now the only suspect we had was cooling on a cheap mattress, mouth open like he’d died with her name still on his lips.

“She’s not here,” I growled. “This was never about him.”

Reaper turned toward me, fists clenched. “Then who the fuck was it?”

“I don’t know.” The words burned. “But they’re close. Closer than we thought.”

Bones kicked the side table. “Could be someone inside.”

The room went quiet.

Because that thought?

Was worse than a stalker.

Worse than a stranger.

It meant we’d been looking the wrong way the whole time.

“Don’t touch anything else,” Cross snapped, already sliding nitrile gloves on like he was dressing for church. “Let me have it clean.”

He moved like a surgeon in a field hospital, swift, precise, contemptuous of the setting.

He photographed first: blood pool, blade angle, the way Adam’s left sneaker still pressed a crease into the bedspread like his reflex had tried to stand him and failed.

The motel Bible sat on the nightstand like a punchline.

The TV was still on, volume low, blue light washing the room in a funeral.

I scanned the corners the way I was trained. Trash can. Sink. A single red petal in the basin, stuck to porcelain by a bead of pink water.

“Cross.” I pointed with my chin.

He bagged it. “He wants us to know he was here,” Cross said, voice flat. “But this? This feels… off-brand.”

“How.”

“Our petal boy loves theater,” Cross said. “Roses on counters. In doorways. On clean surfaces you can’t miss. Sink petal that could slide down the drain? That’s either rushed, or not his style.”

“So, there were two,” Bones said. “One who kills quiet. One who leaves pretty.”

“Or,” Reaper said, “One man with an audience in his head.”

I moved to the bathroom doorway and leaned in without crossing the threshold.

There — lower hinge, fresh scuff. Door had been blocked open.

Killer wanted sightlines. On the laminate counter near the sink: a ghost of citrus and solvent.

Not motel cleaner. Shop degreaser. The kind we keep by the garage sink.

“Smell that?” I asked.

Bones sniffed. “Citrus-and-lie. Shop brand.”

“Someone’s hands aren’t office-soft,” I said. “This wasn’t an accountant who bought a knife.”

Cross crouched by Adam’s feet. “Look at the left trouser leg,” he said. “Fine black grit. Asphalt dust. Not from this room.” He bagged that too. “And the cut.” He tilted the camera for me. “Upward, fast, left-to-right. Killer’s right-handed. Strong.”

“Everyone we know is right-handed,” Bones said. “Except Vex when he’s drunk.”

I drifted to the window, pulled the curtain with one knuckle. View of the lot. Half dozen cars. The river of neon beyond. A ladder shadow crossed the asphalt, from a work truck two slots over with a magnet stuck on the door: River Grove Heating. We’ve seen that magnet on more vans than I liked.

“Plate?”

“Swapped,” Cross said, already two moves ahead. “Again.”

Reaper touched the wall with two fingers, as if he could listen through paint to what happened minutes ago. “He never made it to Selene tonight,” he said. “He was cut out of his own show.”

I looked down at Adam’s face and felt nothing. Not pity. Not relief. Just the cold understanding that our map had been wrong.

My phone buzzed.

A text from Cross’s secondary line, the one he sets to alert on strange events without having to be asked.

Ghost. Security feed just went down at the clubhouse. Only in the west wing. Back hallway.

West wing.

My room.

Selene’s temporary room.

The hallway where I first noticed the rose.

I didn’t wait.

I was already running for my bike.

“She’s still close,” I shouted over the roar of the engine. “And someone’s playing us like fools.”

Reaper’s throttle snarled behind me. Bones took point with us. Cross’s voice hit our ears over comms. “I’m re-routing power to the west bank camera. Give me sixty.”

“You have thirty,” Reaper said.

I took the river road like I owned it, torn between wanting to get there and wanting not to see. The Quarter rose up in front of us, all teeth and song and rust, and I threaded it like a man who knew where the holes were. People jumped. Horns cursed. We didn’t stop.

“Lockdown now,” I barked.

“Already dropping,” Cross said. “Everything but the west wing is green.”

“Who’s on that hall?”

“Briar was last seen moving toward the bar with Daisy. Ash at the door. Vex floating. Banks—” Cross hesitated. “Banks isn’t pinging.”

“He won’t be,” Reaper said, ice-cold. “He’s gone.”

“He’s not our primary,” I said, not for Cross, for myself. The smell of citrus degreaser back at the motel sat under my tongue. Banks wasn’t a shop rat. He was eager, not patient. He didn’t have that careful. Our killer had careful.

“Someone’s inside,” Bones said, what we were all thinking out loud.

“Then we take our house back,” Reaper said.

We cut into the lot hot. The gate slammed behind us on Cross’s command. Steel shutters rattled down like a promise. I left my bike angled wrong and didn’t care. We entered through the side where the cameras feed to Cross’s office first.

“West wing feed?” I snapped, taking the stairs two at a time.

“Dark,” Cross said. “No loop. Power cut at the junction, not at the panel.”

“In-house knowledge,” Reaper said behind me.

We hit the hall. Too quiet. The sound of a party bleeding in from the main room like music under water. Then, faint, a bell jingle. One. The ankle-high trip bell Selene and I had rigged.

I moved. The first turn: clear. Second: a rag on the floor that smelled like sweet rot. Chloroform. Fucking chloroform. Third: a heel. Red strap snapped. A drop of blood like a punctuation mark.

“Selene!” Briar’s voice cracked the hall like a thrown glass as she skidded in, eyes wild. She saw the heel and bit her fist. “No— “

“Briar,” Reaper said, catching her one-handed. “Eyes for me. Breathe.”

She dragged air into her lungs, feral and fast, then forced it slow. Her finger jabbed at the baseboard. “Dust.”

Good. She saw it too: a smear under the vent where fingers had dragged or a shoulder had bumped. Bones went low with a light. “Scuff at hip height. He hugged the wall with her.”

“Back door,” I said.

We sprinted and hit steel. Cross had already sealed it. I set my palm to it anyway, as if heat could tell me how many seconds, I was behind. Cold. Too cold.

“Lot cam,” I said.

“Up,” Cross answered, voice carved out of calm. “White van. Magnet swapped again. Passenger side opened for three beats. Closed. They’re gone.”

“Direction.”

“South then west. I can’t track plates, they’re stolen. I’m following speed cameras by shadow. Give me a minute.”

“You have thirty seconds,” Reaper said again.

Briar grabbed my wrist hard enough to bruise. “She took the blade in her boot. She won’t be helpless.”

“Selene was never helpless,” I said, and the growl in my voice surprised us both.

“Cross,” Bones said into comms, “that degreaser smell we caught at the motel — check inventory. Who uses it. Who doesn’t like gloves, buys thin ones from the corner store, not our bulk.”

“On it,” Cross said. Keys like rain. “Two purchases at Jimmy’s in the last week for single-pair latex. Same time as hardware buys: nylon cord, not zip ties. Cash. Security footage shows—”

“Don’t say Banks,” Briar snapped.

“I wasn’t,” Cross said. “Banks buys Monster and regret, not nylon cord. Footage shows… Briggs.”

The name sat dead in the middle of the hall.

A hundred small memories rearranged themselves at once. Briggs carrying a crate meant for two. Briggs in corners. Briggs helpful. Briggs quiet. Briggs near the garage sink, citrus, and solvent on his hands.

“Worm,” Bones said, not unkindly. “He’s always under the floorboards.”

“Hangaround,” Reaper said, and the word sounded like a condemnation and a confession. “We didn’t see him because we didn’t look.”

“He saw us because we let him,” I said.

The burn under my sternum went from coal to white heat.

“Cross,” I said, “where do they take women when they think no one’s coming?”

“Storage units,” he said instantly. “Rental lockers with cash boxes. Vacant lots dressed as construction. Abandoned storefronts with back doors that don’t lock. I’ve got three within five minutes of that van’s last ping.”

“Pick one,” Reaper said.

“Cinderblock, blue door, east of River Grove,” Cross answered. “Thermal reads two heat signatures. One pacing. One still.”

I was already moving. “Briar, you stay with Cross.”

“Over my dead—”

“Not tonight,” Reaper said. “You anchor the room. If she calls, you answer.”

Briar’s throat worked. She nodded once, fury shining like tears she refused to let fall. “Bring her home,” she said. “Or I will.”

“Count on it,” I said.

We ran. Lot. Bikes. Gate. The steel grudgingly rose on Cross’s command and slammed again behind us, and I took the lead into a night that suddenly felt small enough to fit in my fist.

Streetlights stuttered past like a metronome.

We cut two alleys and a blind corner and burst onto the industrial strip that even the Quarter pretends not to see.

The cinderblock block rose up in front of us.

Blue door. One high window with cardboard.

A single security light tremoring like a dying star.

“Eyes on,” I breathed.

“Van in the lot,” Cross said. “Driver still inside.”

“Reaper,” I said.

“On him,” he answered, voice the weight that pins a man to his choices.

I slid to the wall by the blue door and pressed my ear to paint. Inside: fluorescent hum. A scrape of a chair. A voice, not Selene’s. Male. Softer than I expected. And under it, the sound I’d been reaching for since the heel on the tile:

Her breath.

Shallow.

Angry.

Alive.

“Ready?” Bones mouthed.

I nodded.

“On three,” Reaper said into my ear, but my hands were already moving. I counted anyway because rituals matter when gods are listening.

Three.

Two.

One.

Vex — because of course he’d caught up — reached up and popped the security light with a gloved fist. The world tilted a shade darker. I slid the pry bar into the latch and levered once, twice. The door gave with a whisper like a secret changing sides.

We went in low and left. The first thing I saw was her.

Selene. Tied to a metal chair. Crown crooked. Lip bitten. Eyes open and clear.

The second thing was the man across from her.

Briggs.

Our quiet. Our average. Our ghost we’d taught ourselves not to see.

He turned too slow for survival. I closed the distance and took his wrist the way you take a blade from a drunk — decisive, unkind. His elbow cracked. He went to his knees with a sound that proved he wasn’t a myth after all.

“Stay,” I told him, voice calm as a new grave.

Selene’s mouth lifted at one corner. “Took you long enough.”

I didn’t laugh. Couldn’t. “You leave sharp edges everywhere,” I said.

“Good,” she said. “I meant to.”

Behind me, Reaper pulled the driver from the van by the collar of his hoodie and introduced him to a wall. Bones pinned him with a knee and a quiet promise. Vex zip-tied Briggs with the kind of efficiency that says I’ve been waiting for this.

I cut Selene free. The nylon had burned grooves into her wrists; she’d already half-sawn one herself. Proud doesn’t cover it.

“You hurt?” I asked.

“Annoyed,” she said. “Hydration would help.”

I handed her the bottle from my back pocket. She drank, winced, smiled like a knife. “He thinks I’m a church,” she said. “He brought me chloroform and a sermon.”

“We brought you home,” I said.

Outside, sirens lifted faint in the distance — not ours.

The city doing what it does when blood hits the wrong surface.

Cross’s voice was a balm and an order in my ear.

“I’ve got everything,” he said. “Petal in the sink matches the motel. Glove powder on Briggs’s hands.

His phone just pinged the River Grove tower at 6:53.

He killed Adam. He came for her. We nail him clean. ”

Reaper’s shadow fell across the doorway. He looked at Selene the way kings look at the part of the world they can’t afford to lose. “You good?” he asked, which for him is poetry.

“I will be,” she said, and she slid under my arm like she’d always belonged there.

We walked her out under a sky that smelled like motor oil and victory deferred, and I let the cold air hit my face and scorch the parts of me that had been praying in languages I don’t admit to.

Someone had played us.

We’d learned the song.