Page 38 of A Witchy Spell Ride (31 Days of Trick or Treat, Bikers and Mobsters #15)

Ghost

We dragged Banks into the chapel at midnight.

His face was pale; blood smeared across one temple from where Rattle had bounced him off the cinderblock. Cross stood by the monitors, jaw a hard line, while Reaper paced like a caged beast in a room that suddenly felt too small for all the oxygen we were burning.

“Where is she?” I demanded.

“I don’t know,” Banks choked out, words tumbling over breath. “I swear”

“Don’t lie to me,” Reaper barked. “You disappear from the party, your bunk’s empty, and Selene’s missing? You think that looks clean?”

“I left because I couldn’t take it anymore!” Banks shouted.

Reaper froze. “What?”

Banks’ eyes skittered to me and stuck there like a moth on a hot bulb. “I left because I saw her with him.” He swallowed. “She was laughing. With you. And I couldn’t fucking stand it. So, I left.”

A pulse thudded in my neck. I stepped forward, fists clenched. “You’ve been watching her for months. Lurking. Leaving flowers.”

Banks blinked hard, frantic. “I didn’t leave any flowers. I just… I just liked being around her. She never looked through me. Not like the others.”

“She doesn’t even know you,” Cross snapped.

“She noticed me,” Banks said softly. “That was enough.”

“And you followed her?” I growled.

“Only from a distance,” he whispered. “I never hurt her.”

Bones slid out of the corner, gun low and very real. “But you know who did.”

That made him flinch. His eyes danced, searching the floor for a safe answer that didn’t exist.

“I’m not the only one who watched her,” Banks muttered. “Not the only one who noticed when she wore red. When she stayed late at the shop.”

“Speak,” Reaper said, the word an order and a threat.

“Briggs.”

The name hit like a thunderclap.

Everyone froze. Even Reaper.

“What about him?” I asked, closing the distance until Banks could count the stitches on my cut.

“He was always around,” Banks said, words picking up speed. “But not just around. He asked questions. Wanted to know where she lived, what she did. He used to hang back when you all cleared out for rides. Said he was ‘doing the bins’ or fixing lights.”

“He was in the clubhouse tonight,” Bones muttered. “I saw him.”

“Not for long,” Banks said. “He told me he had a job to do.”

A job.

My stomach dropped. The room tilted, not from surprise, but from the sick rightness of puzzle pieces snapping into place.

“Where?” I asked.

Banks shook his head, desperate. “I don’t know. I swear. He never tells me anything that matters. I’m not—” He caught himself. “I’m not in that deep.”

“Then why run?” I pressed.

His mouth worked. “Because it hurt,” he said finally, and it was a stupid, human truth. “Because watching her choose you felt like being skinned alive.”

Reaper’s eyes didn’t soften. “You run from pain; you run from me. You understand?”

Banks nodded like his neck might break.

Cross was already at the terminal, a metronome of keystrokes and contempt.

“Access logs. West wing. Back stairwell.” He squinted.

“Briggs clocked out at 10:19 p.m. Used the back stairwell. Disengaged the west wing security panel manually.” His fingers stopped.

He looked up, face like a verdict. “Only two people have that code besides me—”

Selene. And Briggs.

Rattle spat a curse.

Reaper’s voice dropped an octave. “Find. Him.”

I didn’t wait. I was already moving.

“Hold up,” Cross snapped, palm up. “You want a direction, or you want to go howl at the moon?”

I stopped because he was right and because Selene would gut me for wasting seconds. My hands were shaking; I flexed them until the tremor found a home in my jaw instead.

“Run it,” I said.

Cross fed the beast, dragging footage across screens until the wall looked like a bad dream stitched from good cameras.

“West hall feed goes dark at 10:21. Not looped. Power cut at the junction.” He flicked to another window.

“Back door pops at 10:23. Sliver of shoulder. Weight profile matches Briggs. He’s carrying something.

Dead weight on the left. She fought.” His voice went thinner on that, then snapped back.

“Lot cam: white van we’ve seen before with another magnet.

Driver never exits. Passenger, Briggs, loads and goes. ”

“Plate?”

“Borrowed. Again.” Cross brought up street cams, traffic pings, shadows moving under sodium lights. “They head south, west. He knows where the blind pockets are. I’ve got three likely destinations within five minutes that offer privacy and patience.”

“Pick one,” Reaper said.

“Cinderblock with a blue door,” Cross replied. “Thermal last week showed squatters. Tonight? Two signatures. One pacing, one still.”

I was already at the door.

“Ghost,” Reaper said, and I knew the word under the word.

“Alive,” I answered. I meant Selene. He meant Briggs. We were both lying and both right.

“Take Vex and Bones,” Reaper added. “I’ll bring Thorne and come up the back. Cross in our ears. Ash holds the gate.”

Briar burst into the doorway, glitter a war paint slash on her cheek, eyes gone feral. “Where is she?”

“Found,” I said. “Not yet saved.”

She grabbed my forearm, nails biting through leather. “Bring her home.”

“Count on it,” I said, because there was nothing else to say that wouldn’t be a prayer I didn’t deserve.

Banks sagged in Rattle’s grip, relief, and terror warring on his face. I stepped close enough to fog his vision with mine. “If you’re lying,” I said, quiet, “I’ll know.”

“I’m not,” he whispered.

I believed him. It didn’t make me like him. It didn’t make him safe.

We moved. The clubhouse turned itself into a weapon: gate lowering, shutters sealing, bodies funneling to purpose.

I hit the garage, grabbed what I needed without thinking, slim pry bar, spare blade, a low-vis comm Cross tossed me without looking.

Bones handed me a backup mag. Vex slapped my shoulder once and grinned like a wolf about to come home bloody.

Out in the lot, the air had that late-night taste: oil, river, the faint sugar of someone’s bad decision two blocks over. I kicked the bike, and the engine came alive like it had been waiting to be useful.

“Route?” I asked.

Cross’s voice filled my ear bud. “Two rights, one left, cut through Dauphine. Van last seen heading toward the industrial strip east of River Grove. Blue door building is three blocks past the scrap yard.”

“Reaper?” I asked.

“On your six,” he said, and when he says it, it isn’t a comfort. It’s a fact the night has to negotiate with.

We rode. Streetlights stuttered past like a metronome counting down a song I hated.

People moved out of our way without knowing why; some things read as danger even in a city built to ignore it.

I threaded through alley shortcuts my hands remembered before my head did.

Vex covered the blind corners with a reckless grace I trusted; Bones played anchor, unflashy and necessary.

“Blue door,” Cross said. “Bear left at the rusted gate. Kill your lights the last half block.”

We did. The night swallowed us with a satisfaction I understood.

The building rose ahead, cinderblock, single high window with trapped cardboard, security light flickering like a dying star. In the lot: the white van, magnet slapped on crooked this time, driver-side window fogged with breath. A silhouette behind the wheel fidgeting, nervous.

“Two inside,” Cross said. “Pacing signature’s larger. That’s your boy. The still signature is seated. Not prone. Not cold.”

Alive. The word bloomed in my chest like something I’d water with blood. “Copy.”

“Clock?” Reaper asked.

“10:37,” Cross said.

We sheltered in the building’s shadow, syncing breath without trying. I felt Selene the way you feel weather in my bones, in the fine hairs at the back of my neck.

“You good?” Vex murmured.

“No,” I said. “Go anyway.”

We moved on Reaper’s count because rituals matter when you decide to live. Vex popped the security light with a gloved fist. It died without drama. I slid the pry into the lock, felt the old metal consider its loyalties, and choose us.

Inside smelled like bleach and bad plans. Fluorescent hum. A scrape. A voice — male, soft and wrong. And under it, the sound I’d been begging the world for: Selene’s breath. Shallow. Angry. Alive.

Everything after that was muscle memory and bad intentions.

We went low. Left. And found the scene I’ll see when I’m jackknifed awake at eighty: her, tied to the chair like a queen on a bad throne.

Crown crooked. Mouth blood-red. Eyes very, very awake.

And Briggs — our average, our overlooked — with ritual on his face and a blade he didn’t deserve near his hand.

He reached. I broke his reach. The rest was technique dressed as inevitability. Vex pinned him with zip ties so tight they’d leave his future smaller. Bones and Reaper peeled the driver from his seat outside and taught him a lesson he’d remember every time he sat down.

I cut Selene free. Nylon fell. Blood returned. She sagged for a second and then righted herself with a stubbornness that made my throat hurt.

“You hurt?” I asked.

“Annoyed,” she said. “And thirsty.”

I gave her water like it was sacrament and tucked her into my side because I could. Because I was done pretending there was any universe where I wouldn’t.

Back in the chapel, Cross’s monitors would be filling with proof, Briggs’ phone pings, glove powder residue, a petal in a motel sink that didn’t fit the way he thought it did.

Reaper would be on the phone to Thorne, to the lawyer who likes us and the cop who doesn’t, setting the path for an ending that let us keep the doors open.

In the present, I looked down at Briggs and discovered that the rage that had been rattling my ribs since a heel hit tile was gone.

What was left was purpose.

“You walked into my house,” I told him, quiet. “You touched what’s mine.”

He tried to shape love with his mouth and found his lips didn’t know how to move anymore.

“Alive,” Reaper reminded me from the doorway.

“Alive,” I said, and this time I meant Briggs, too because Selene was pressed against my side, breathing my air, and the only thing I wanted more than ending him was giving her a night where the ending was ours to write.

We hauled him up. Vex cut the cheap tarot from the wall and handed it to Cross in a bag, because sometimes you keep trophies and sometimes you keep evidence. Selene reached up, lifted her crown from her hair, and hung it over the card like punctuation.

“Not his,” she said.

“Never,” I said, and walked her out into the air.

Briar’s voice crackled over comms, a prayer disguised as sarcasm. “Do I hex the parish or are we good?”

“We’re good,” I said.

“Lame,” she muttered, and I heard the way her breath shook when she laughed.

We rode back slowly, not because we had to because I wanted the night to see us. Because I wanted whatever eyes were still watching to learn a lesson.

You can study a woman for months. You can memorize her routines. You can script a romance in your head with knives and candles and cheap cards.

But if you take her, you don’t keep her.

We do.