Page 40 of A Witchy Spell Ride (31 Days of Trick or Treat, Bikers and Mobsters #15)

Chapter Thirty-One

Ghost

Briggs was cuffed, bloodied, and wheezing like a man who knew his last breath would come slow.

Reaper didn’t even look at him.

He looked at me.

“You want the patch?”

My chest was still heaving. My knuckles were split open from the last two punches, one for the heel on tile, one for the fear in her voice I’d only heard in my nightmares. Blood stung, sweat burned, the old war drum in my ribs finally quieting now that I had a target and a conclusion.

“Yeah.”

“You want the title?”

I met his eyes. “Enforcer.”

He tossed me the cut.

I caught it midair without thinking. The leather hit my palms like a promise I’d been dodging for years. The back rocker gleamed with the New Orleans curve, the front panel bare where a name and a job go when a man stops pretending, he’s passing through.

And Selene. Selene stepped right up beside me, eyes gleaming, mouth curved like sin and church and something that broke me open in a clean way. Glitter still on her collarbone. A thin line of Briggs’s blood drying under her jaw where my blade hadn’t reached and her mercy had.

Reaper gave one nod. The kind that means I see you and don’t make me regret it and Welcome home all at once.

“Then claim your Old Lady proper.”

I didn’t need to be told twice.

I turned, curled my hand around the back of Selene’s neck, and kissed her like she was oxygen.

Because she was.

She’d saved herself.

She’d survived.

And she was mine.

“Party’s back on,” Bones muttered somewhere behind us. “Someone grab the fuckin’ bourbon.”

The club roared, steel on steel on throat. The sound rolled through the cinderblock walls and up into the black. But I didn’t hear them, not really. All I heard was her breath against my cheek when she whispered, “Take me upstairs.”

All I saw was fire in her eyes.

“Soon,” I murmured back. “Do this right first.”

She knew what I meant. This life runs on ritual the way engines run on fuel. Sloppy gets men buried. Proper keeps ghosts quiet.

We marched him back ourselves. Vex had Briggs by the zip ties, cheerful like a man walking a mean dog to the pound.

Bones shepherded the jittery driver like gravity with hands.

Reaper brought up the rear, silent, watching.

The van would get logged, the room bagged, the evidence caged with Cross’s neat labels and neater lies.

We weren’t burning this one. We were prosecuting him, in our way and the city’s.

Back at the clubhouse, the shutters rolled up inch by inch, slow as sunrise.

The main room breathed again, the band tuning strings in apology, Daisy lighting candles that smelled like cinnamon and poor decisions.

People turned and the noise rose, then broke in silence when they saw Selene, torn dress, blade still in her boot, chin high.

Briar flew at her like a shot. Selene braced and took the impact full body, one arm around my cut, the other around her sister of the soul.

Briar swore into her hair, the kind of swearing that is prayer and promise.

She pulled back, cupped Selene’s face, and kissed her forehead hard enough to brand.

“You, okay?” Briar demanded.

“I’m excellent,” Selene said, voice steady. “And thirsty.”

“On it,” Vex said again because he’s decided hydration is his ministry now.

Reaper stalked Briggs to a chair, sat him, tied him to it like he was taping up a busted pipe.

No flourish. No speech. The club understood the line: we were done with vigil candles and alley justice for tonight.

We were going to close this with signatures and camera time and Cross’s locker full of favors.

“Eyes,” Reaper said to Cross.

“Got ‘em,” Cross answered, pointing without looking to the lens tucked in the low corner. “Audio too. He confesses, he walks into a cage I built, not one he thinks he can survive.”

Briggs looked small. Not helpless, small. He squinted at me like he could find the version of me that once let things slide. I let him look and learn that man had burned in the same fire he’d tried to lit.

Reaper turned back to me and slapped his palm twice on the war table. The thud carried to the rafters.

“Nomad no more,” he said, voice a blade. “Ghost, step.”

I did. The table still smelled like lemon oil and blood. Selene’s red heel strap was in my pocket; it dug into my thigh like a reminder. Reaper took a needle from Thorne and pricked my thumb. He did the same to his own. We put blood to leather, old as patched men and bad ideas.

“Say it,” he ordered.

“I put the club first,” I said, the words old and new at once. “I keep the code. I keep the peace by breaking what needs breaking. I keep ours safe. I don’t run.”

“You enforce,” he said.

“I enforce.”

He took a small rocker from Thorne, ENFORCER and pressed it to my palm. “Then wear it, carry it, or die before you betray it.”

“Copy,” I said, voice low, the word a soldier’s bad joke turned truth.

He pinned it under my name. The weight settled where other men keep a saint’s medal.

“Now the rest,” Reaper added, and his gaze cut to Selene.

She stepped forward without me needing to tug. She was not shy, and she was not performing. She came to the table like a woman who’d built it. Briar followed and stood a pace off, a guardrail with teeth.

“You trying to claim my sister?” Reaper asked, and there was that warning buried under humor that only family understands.

“No,” I said, and the room actually moved with surprise. I let it hang a breath and watched Selene’s mouth tilt. “I’m asking if she’ll claim me.”

Briar grinned like I’d passed an exam I hadn’t studied for.

Reaper’s head tipped. “Ask, then.”

I turned to Selene. “I’ll put a patch on your back if you want it.

I’ll put my tags around your neck if you want those.

I’ll wear your red thread and call it armor.

But this isn’t a cage. You don’t belong to me; you belong to you.

You want to put me in your pocket and call me yours? Say it. And say your terms.”

A hush fell that had nothing to do with fear.

Daisy sniffled into a bat-shaped napkin.

Bones looked like he’d never seen a miracle because he didn’t go to church.

Cross’s eyes flicked to the corner lens and back like he wanted this part archived for the day some prosecutor tried to make us something we aren’t.

Selene’s hands were steady. She reached into her bra; Briar clapped because of course she did and pulled out a small square of leather. The white-stitched words were simple: PROPERTY OF GHOST.

She held it up. The room exhaled.

“I don’t wear chains,” she said, voice clean. “I wear choices.” She looked at me like she could see every scrape under the leather. “You want me as your Old Lady?”

“Yes.”

“Then you’re my Old Man,” she said, and the grin on Vex’s face could’ve powered half the city.

“My terms are these: you don’t keep me out of the room because you’re scared of what I’ll see.

You don’t lie to me to feel noble. You don’t disappear without a call.

If I say stop, you stop. If I say go, you don’t hesitate.

You put me on the back of your bike and in the front of your decisions. ”

I could’ve hit my knees and thanked every god I don’t believe in. “Done.”

“And when the world tries to make me soft,” she went on, eyes like flint and honey, “you remind me I’m steel.”

“That I can do,” I said, throat tight.

She slapped the patch into my palm. I took off my cut, heavy with the new rocker, and shrugged it around her shoulders just long enough to set the leather’s weight on her bones. She closed her eyes and inhaled like it smelled like home. Then I took it back and draped my dog tags around her neck.

I haven’t taken those tags off for more than a shower since Fallujah. They clinked against her collarbone, glitter catching on the edge of one letter. GHOST, the O always looked like a scar.

She lifted the chain and kissed the steel once. “Okay,” she said. “Now kiss me in front of God and everyone so all these idiots stop squinting like they can’t see.”

I did. The club lost its collective mind.

Daisy screamed. Vex howled. Bones pounded the bar with a bottle until the label shred.

Reaper’s mouth turned a quarter inch and that’s how you know he was pleased enough to scare himself.

Cross slid a glass of water toward Briar, and she pretended not to drink it, then drank it.

Banks stood off to the side under Rattle’s eye, pale and small, looking like a boy who’d finally realized longing isn’t a job. He didn’t speak. Smart. He’d get a second chance at breathing, not at belonging. That’s Reaper’s call. Mine too, now, whether I like having a say or not.

Briggs stared at the floor. The cuffs cut his skin. He was learning about consequences in the only language that ever stuck.

“Party’s back on,” Bones barked again because he likes to echo himself when the echo works. “Pour the good stuff, not the rat-killer.”

The band picked up a beat. The fog machine tried to do too much, and Ash kicked it back into sense. Daisy stuck a glitter crown on my head and then remembered I don’t do crowns and put it on Briar instead, who did a curtsy, so dramatic Reaper had to look away to keep a straight face.

Selene leaned her forehead against mine. The room spun around us, but we were a fixed point. “Upstairs,” she whispered again, teeth catching my lower lip. “Now.”

“Now,” I agreed, the oath of a man who’s been late for the last time.

I caught Cross’s eye as I stepped backward with her, my hand threaded with hers so tight it felt like one thing. He nodded once. “I’ll package the case,” he said. “By dawn, Briggs belongs to a judge in a bad mood.”

“Alive,” Reaper reminded, his gaze cutting to me, to the fresh Enforcer rocker under my name.

“Alive,” I said, and Selene squeezed my hand once to anchor me to my own word.

We took the back stairs. The hallway still smelled like her perfume and the choke of chloroform ghosts. My jaw locked; she felt it and tugged me back down with a kiss to the hinge that made the muscle unclench.

Inside my room, the door clicked shut. The noise of the party muffled into a low animal hum. I turned the lock out of habit, not fear. She turned me by the lapels and pushed me to sit on the edge of the bed with that look that makes men ruin nations.

“Hands,” she said, and I obeyed because I like to live. She took alcohol wipes from the drawer, swore about how much it would sting, and cleaned my knuckles. I hissed anyway. She blew on them like you do for kids. It helped anyway.

“My turn,” I said. I cupped her wrists and checked the angry grooves the nylon had left. I kissed the burns. She rolled her eyes and shivered.

“Hydration,” Vex’s voice drifted faintly from the hall as if the devil heard his name. A bottle thumped against the door. Briar’s snort followed, and then her voice through the wood: “If you two break the bed, I’m not cleaning it.”

“Go away,” Selene sang, laughter like something holy.

Footsteps retreated.

I set the bottle on the nightstand and went back to work. “I should’ve been faster,” I said, because honesty is the only religion that saves me from myself.

She hooked a finger under my chin and made me look at her. “You were exactly on time,” she said. “I did the first part. You did the second. That’s how this works.”

“Partnership,” I said.

“Partnership,” she echoed, and kissed me like she was signing the document.

When she pulled back, she reached into her pocket and took out that square of leather. PROPERTY OF SELENE. She folded it once and slid it into the inner pocket of my cut, over my heart. “In case you forget,” she said.

“I won’t,” I said.

“Men like you carry a lot,” she murmured, scratching her nails lightly where my new rocker lay. “Let me carry you sometimes.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She smiled, satisfied, and then ruined me for a while with a pace I’d follow into fire. It wasn’t the rough edge of earlier; it was something steadier, deeper, we lived stitched into skin.

Later, when sweat had dried and breath had evened and the party downstairs had turned from roar to song, I lay with her head on my chest and counted the seconds between her inhales like a man doing math on a bomb.

“I’m not running anymore,” I said into her hair.

“I know,” she said, voice sleep-warm. “You live here now.”

“Yeah.” I stared at the ceiling. “I do.”

My phone buzzed once. Cross: Package delivered. Briggs screaming about love on camera. Ty rolled and gave us magnets, store receipts, the works. DA will dine on him. Good patch.

Another buzz. Reaper: Tomorrow 10 a.m. Church. You bring donuts. Enforcer buys first round and fixes what he breaks.

I huffed a laugh and set the phone facedown.

Selene slid her palm over my ribs and tapped once. “What.”

“Nothing,” I said. “Just thinking about donuts.”

She pinched me. “Liar.”

“Thinking about how you looked with a blade to his throat,” I confessed. “Thinking about how proud I am I might not survive it.”

She propped up on one elbow and smiled slow. “Get used to it,” she said. “War paint’s my color.”

I hooked a finger under the chain of my dog tags around her neck and tugged gently until our mouths met again, slower this time, grateful. “Mine too,” I said.

Outside, the city tuned itself back to normal, the hum of tires on wet streets, laughter muffled by brick, a horn downtown that meant nothing to us. In here, the world was small and precise. Leather and sweat and glitter freckles on my pillow that I’d never wash out on purpose.

I’d always thought ghosts show up after the war.

Turns out sometimes they’re the men who come home.

I slipped my hand over the patch in my cut and felt the stitch bite my palm. ENFORCER. A job I could do with my hands and my teeth and, if I’m being honest, my heart for once. A weight I wanted. A weight I’d earned.

Selene’s breath slowed. Mine matched it.

“You’re mine,” I said into the dark, to her and the job and the city and the kid I used to be who thought staying meant dying.

“Yours,” she murmured back, and I knew she meant the same thing I did when I said mine, not ownership. Belonging.

Downstairs, someone, Bones, yelled for the bourbon again. Daisy shriek-laughed. Vex lost at pool because he’s a clown. Reaper pretended not to watch the hallway where Briar eventually fell asleep on the couch and pretended not to be guarded.

Family.

I closed my eyes.

The drum in my chest didn’t pound anymore.

It kept time.