Page 7 of A Witchy Spell Ride (31 Days of Trick or Treat, Bikers and Mobsters #15)

At 14:53, Selene has a delivery, a florist with a box, handwritten card taped to the top.

Nice paper. Not her birthday. Not a holiday.

The delivery guy rang, shrugged at an empty shop, and left the box by the door when no one answered fast enough.

I'm close enough to read the logo. Uptown florist, upscale, out of place for our block.

I'm two buildings away and too far to intercept without showing myself. I hate it.

Briar comes down the stairs, sees the box, glances up and around.

Smart, even when playing reckless. She checks the street, then carries it inside like it might explode.

The door shuts. I count. One Mississippi.

Two. Thirty. I shift to the side window where the sun cuts the glare and catch the edge of her expression when she lifts the lid.

Her mouth shapes a word I can’t hear. “Shit” or “oh.” She pulls out flowers, white lilies, too sweet, then a small glass bottle tied with red thread.

She looks up the stairwell, calling for Selene.

Selene comes down slowly, wiping her hands.

She stares at the bottle like she already knows it from a bad dream.

My jaw locks. Red thread.

Briar flips the card. She reads. Her face changes, not fear, not anger.

Something colder. She passes the card to Selene.

Selene reads and for a second her chin dips and her hand trembles, then she catches herself and sets both on the counter like she was setting down a hot pan.

She walks to the sink and turns on the tap. She doesn’t touch the bottle again.

I hate the distance between us. The job requires distance. The man doesn’t.

Three minutes later, the upstairs lights go off and on again, her code to herself.

Reset. She comes back down with a small, lidded tin, moves the bottle into it using a pair of tongs, and wraps the tin in a cloth embroidered with sigils.

Practical magic. Containment. You don’t fight a thing just by calling it evil.

You make it small, and you make it inert.

I text Reaper: “Gift delivered. Red thread. Upscale florist. No immediate move.”

He: “Understood.”

Then: “You think?”

I: “Not a kid move.”

He: “Keep eyes.”

I burn the florist's name into my head and take a detour. A city like this, you can be across town and still be nowhere. Ten minutes on foot, one bus, two blocks. The shop was white tile and money. A clerk with clean nails and no sense. I don’t go in.

I wait until a driver comes out back with a dolly and a cigarette. Men with dollies always talk.

“Busy?” I ask, like I belong. He shrugs and light up. I hold up my lighter to help; men smoke easier when they think you’re doing them a favor. “Run a lot to the Quarter?”

“Only with standing accounts.”

“You get any today?”

“Three. Hotel, gallery, private.”

“Private?” I nod toward the dolly.

He exhales. “Drop on Burgundy. Weird note. Weird chick.” He laughs, like fear is funny at noon. “People are freaky down there.” I smile like I agree and walk away, I don’t press, don’t spook the pipeline.

Afternoon turns to late afternoon, then to almost-evening, when the city’s temperature drops by one arrogant degree and the humidity decides it’s a religion.

Selene closes the shop early. Smart. She locks the door, draws the shade, and walks upstairs.

Lights on, off and on again. She sits on the floor cross-legged with Briar and they talk.

I can’t hear it, but I can read it in their hands, quick, hard movements, then stillness. Decision.

At 19:12, she grabs a bag. Briar grabs keys. I move to cover the back exit and see my hair marker still intact. No breach today. They come out the front instead. I let them get a half-block head start, then slide into the flow.

They go to the river. Good call. Open space.

Fewer corners. They sit on a bench and watch the water.

Briar keeps up a patter that looks like jokes.

The sun smears itself across the water like butter, and for a second, I let myself imagine the thing inside me didn’t have teeth. That's when Banks appears.

He doesn’t see them at first. He comes down the steps like a man who tells himself he’s out for air and lies well enough to almost believe it.

He sees Selene and every muscle in his back bunches like a slow blow.

He pockets his hands, stares at the water, then risks a look and catches himself being obvious.

He turns away, his body screams want and shame at the same time.

I get closer, slide past a couple holding hands, and let my shadow swallow him. “Walk,” I say, quietly enough that he doesn’t startle. He walks, we move up the steps, into the cover of a planter.

“You like the river?” I ask.

“I like air.” Defensive.

“You like watching women breathe it?”

He swallows. “I wasn’t—”

“Don’t lie.”

He closes his eyes, then opens them. “I was just—”

“Don’t.”

He exhales, “I’m not the bad guy here.”

“Good guys don’t need to say it.”

His jaw set. “You don’t know me.”

“I know enough. If you’re smart, you’ll stick to the garage and the bar, and the list Reaper hands you. If you’re stupid, you’ll keep making yourself a pattern.”

“Selene isn’t—” He cuts himself off, but the word he doesn’t say hangs there anyway. Ours. Mine. Whatever possession sounds like in a man who’s never earned anything from a woman but a look.

“Not yours,” I say, voice flat enough to cut. “Not mine either. That’s not the point. The point is you won’t like what happens if I catch you where you don’t belong again.”

He flushes with anger or humiliation; they look the same at that age. “You gonna jump me behind a planter, old man?”

I smile without humor. “I’m not gonna do anything. I’m going to let you do it to yourself.” I let the words sit, then step back so he could feel the distance. “Be invisible in all the right places, Prospect. That’s how you live long enough to patch.

Back at the bench, Briar tells a story with her hands and Selene tips her head back and laughs, the sound small and real.

It hits me weird, like relief and ache in the same breath.

There are men who mistake that sound for invitation.

I knew better. Laughter is armor for women like her.

If you can make her laugh, you can make her forget fear long enough to choose the next move.

They head home just before full dark. I take the long route to check my telltales.

Back door hair intact. Chalk line unbroken.

I set one more, a tiny smear of grease on the underside of the window latch, a ghost of a print only I would check.

The city’s music softens, then shifts to something with bones.

At 01:06, I wake from a crouch with my neck screaming and knew I’d slept because the hair at the door was broken.

Not a clean break. A smear. Someone had brushed it with clothes. I move to the alley wall and listen. No movement. No voices. I crouch by the hinge and saw the chalk disturbed like someone had tested the door but not opened it. A test can be worse than an entry; it means patience.

I text. Reaper: “Probe.”

He: “Who?”

I: “No eyes.”

He: “Ghost.”

I: “I’m on it.”

I stand in the alley and let the drum in my chest find a meter I could use.

I thought of Fallujah. I thought of the last op, the smell of cordite, the way a briefing read like a prayer until the wrong man said amen.

I remind myself that patience is a weapon.

You hold it until the other guy thinks you dropped it.

Sun bleeds into the sky slowly the next morning, and I was still here.

Someone had to be. Selene comes down for trash with her hair in a knot and a shirt that said BUY YOUR OWN CRYSTALS.

She looks tired. She sets the bag down, props the door open with her hip, and bends to brush something off the threshold, a fine hair she didn’t know she’d disturbed.

She frowns at it like it had insulted her, then sweeps it away with her foot.

“Don’t worry,” I say to the empty air, a habit I’d never break. “I’ll set another.”

I wait until she’s upstairs again and replace it. New hair. New chalk. I wedge a sliver of mirror under the eave to catch a face if someone leaned too close. Low-tech is best. It doesn’t crash.

By noon I’ve logged three more passes of the sedan over two days, none lingering long enough to convert suspicion into action.

I’ve noted Briggs twice, never close enough to accuse, always close enough to remember.

I’ve pushed Banks back into his lane. I’ve watched Briar bait Reaper with a smile that said she knew exactly what she was doing and a heart that would do it anyway.

And I’d watched Selene breathe through it all.

The job said stay cold.

The man said stay close.

The man won.

That night I climb the same rooftop, settle behind the same dead plants, and let the Quarter sing.

Selene and Briar sit outside again, legs up, flask between them.

They look like trouble and salvation, and maybe that’s what they were.

They laughed. They whispered. They let the night lean close and didn’t flinch.

I watched, and the watching felt like something holy and something criminal at once. I didn’t mind. I’m not a saint. I’m a weapon with a name and a purpose and a preference. My preference is her being alive and laughing.

When Briar finally leaves and the light upstairs went soft, I told myself the same truth I’d been telling since Reaper said, “keep eyes.”

Selene didn’t know I was there.

And that’s exactly how I wanted it until the day it wasn’t.

Because something was coming. I could feel it in the broken hair, in the sedan’s slow roll, in the way men’s shoulders go when they decide a thought is theirs to keep. When it came, I’d be there. Not a sound. Not a warning.

Just a hand on a wrist in the dark, a knife that meant no, and the quiet certainty that for once, my gut and my ghosts agreed.