Page 9 of A Witchy Spell Ride (31 Days of Trick or Treat, Bikers and Mobsters #15)

Ghost

She left the shop just before noon.

Leather jacket slung over one shoulder, hair tied up, big black sunglasses hiding most of her face. But not all of it.

Not the way her shoulders were tighter than usual.

Not the way she didn’t wave at the guy selling pralines on the corner like she always did. And not the way she checked over her shoulder twice before she even hit the curb.

Something was off. I knew her rhythm by now.

Selene had this way of moving, like the whole world was hers but she didn’t feel like taking it today.

A kind of quiet power that drew people in without trying.

She moved like the Quarter belonged to her, not rented, not borrowed, but claimed.

People noticed without realizing they noticed.

The flower-seller smiled wider. The old man sweeping his stoop straightened up a little taller.

Even the pigeons seemed to clear space when she walked past.

But today, her movements were smaller.

Sharper.

Defensive.

She was spooked. And that made me cold.

I waited until she turned the corner, then eased off my perch and dropped to street level. I kept my distance, but not too much. Enough to stay invisible. Enough to respond if I had to.

She wasn’t out long. Fifteen minutes, maybe twenty. Picked up a few things from the little herb stall Briar loved. Bought candles. Clove oil. A few spell jars she probably didn’t even need. I clocked her bag, not heavy, not full. She wasn’t shopping. She was distracting herself.

But when she came back?

She moved faster.

Keys already in her hand.

No humming.

No small talk with the barista down the block.

Straight in. Lock. Lights out.

She didn’t see me.

But I saw her.

And something had changed.

That’s when I saw it. The silver sedan again. Two blocks down, just easing out from a side street. Same dent on the passenger side. Same missing front plate. Tinted windows. Darker than legal.

It rolled past the shop once.

Slow.

Deliberate.

Then it took the next corner and vanished. I didn’t chase it. I could’ve.

But I didn’t. Because I was watching Selene’s window. And the timing was too damn perfect.

She came back.

It drove past.

One after the other.

It wasn’t about finding her.

It was about letting her see.

Or maybe letting me see.

And that twisted the knot in my gut tighter than anything else had so far.

Because whoever this was?

They weren’t just watching.

They were playing.

The Quarter was made for games like this. Narrow streets, too much noise, too many distractions. You could follow someone for blocks without ever being caught. Or you could be standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the threat and never know it until they cut you open.

I hate cities for that reason.

I trust terrain where you can see your enemy coming. Sand, desert, jungle, they don’t lie to you. Cities lie every second.

But I’ve learned to listen.

That sedan? It had a rhythm. A pattern. And patterns are where predators slip.

Later, I caught it parked two streets over, half-hidden beneath a busted streetlight. I circled from behind, no jacket, no kutte, just another man out of place in the night.

I got close enough to read the plates. Ran them through a contact. Dummy tags.

Registered to a dealership three parishes over. Could mean anything. Could mean nothing. But it didn’t sit right. And neither did the voice in my head asking the question I didn’t want to answer:

What if it’s not Banks?

He’d been at the bar with Rattle all afternoon. Hadn’t left once. I saw him there myself, laughing too loud, trying too hard. Still grinning, still too eager. But not driving that car. Not today. So, who the hell was it?

Someone else?

Someone inside?

Or someone neither of us had clocked yet?

I didn’t have answers.

Just suspicion.

And one woman was stuck in the middle of a game she didn’t know she was playing.

That night, I stayed closer.

Didn’t leave my post when the bar across the street kicked off a jazz night. Didn’t budge when Briar came and went again, this time bringing her brother Cross a pile of paperwork and a chocolate milkshake and zero explanation for either.

Didn’t flinch when Selene’s light flicked on just after 2 a.m. She didn’t move for a while. Just stood at the window. Looking out. Not at me, she didn’t know I was there.

But looking anyway.

Like she felt me.

Or maybe something else.

Something darker.

The game was starting.

And if this was chess?

Someone had just moved their queen. I know how games like this end. Not with a checkmate. With bodies. And I’ll be damned if one of them is hers.

Morning brought nothing but stale coffee and restless streets. I hadn’t slept, not really. I’d taken short crouches, the kind where your head drops for three minutes and you wake sharper, meaner. I’d done it enough times overseas to know my body could function like this for weeks if it had to.

Selene opened the shop a little later than usual. She wore a long dress today, black with silver stars, a denim jacket thrown over it like armor. She held her chin high, but I clocked the way her eyes darted once to the right, once to the left.

She knew something was off.

Not enough to say it out loud.

But enough to feel it.

She kept the lights lower inside, candles burning stronger than usual. Customers came and went, the bell chiming, laughter spilling. But her smile didn’t quite reach her eyes.

I watched from across the street, pretending to read a paper, drinking a coffee gone cold. Every time a man lingered too long by the shelves, my hand twitched toward the knife at my back. Every time the sedan crawled past, twice that day, I logged the time, the direction, the speed.

It was methodical. Too methodical to be random.

I thought about telling Reaper. But then I thought about Selene. Reaper would burn the city down. He’d send ten brothers on rotation, lock her inside the clubhouse, never let her breathe without a guard.

And Selene? She’d kill him for it. She didn’t do cages. Not even gilded ones. That’s why it had to be me. I could move in silence. I could watch without being seen. I could do the thing no one else could, get close without her pushing me away.

Not because she trusted me.

But because, deep down, she already knew I’d been watching her all along.

At dusk, the sedan reappeared. Parked across the street this time. Too bold. Too obvious. Like a hand waving in the dark. I shifted rooftops, climbed two buildings over, crouched low behind a line of clay chimneys. From here, I could see into the car through the angle of a streetlamp.

The driver was there. Male. Ballcap low, beard trimmed. Didn’t look up. Didn’t move. Just sat. I memorized his profile. Not Banks. Not anyone I recognized from the club. Which made him worse. Because unknowns in our world weren’t just strangers. They were threats waiting to be named.

I considered moving in, dragging him out of the car, demanding answers. But that’s not how this works. You don’t show your teeth until you know where the bite lands.

So, I waited, and hours passed. The Quarter shifted moods from tourist-happy to drunk-snarling. Music rose, fell, bled. Cops rolled slow. Rats made their rounds.

Through it all, I kept my eyes on the sedan. At 11:07, the driver finally started the engine. Rolled away, slow, deliberate. Like he wanted me to see. He’d won that round. But the game wasn’t over.

I dropped back to street level, cut down the alley, and set my own markers. A thin hair across the latch of Selene’s back door. Chalk on the hinge. A sliver of mirror propped under the eave. Old tricks, simple ones, but they worked.

If anyone touched that door tonight, I’d know.

Selene’s lights flicked off around midnight. I saw her silhouette move past the window once, then vanish.

Briar didn’t come tonight. Which meant Selene was alone. And for reasons I didn’t let myself analyze too hard, that sat wrong in my chest. Sometime past two, she appeared again. At the window.

Her hair was down, loose around her shoulders. She leaned against the frame, one hand resting flat on the glass. She didn’t move for a long time. Just… stood there.

Looking out. At nothing. At everything. And for one heartbeat, I let myself believe she was looking for me. The thought burned like whiskey. Because the truth?

She didn’t know I was there.

And she couldn’t.

But some part of me, the reckless, haunted part wanted her to. The city kept breathing. The game kept playing. And me? I kept watching.

Waiting.

Ready.

Because whatever this was, whoever was in that sedan, whoever scratched photos, whoever thought they could toy with Selene like a piece on their board, they’d forgotten one thing. Ghosts don’t play by the rules.

And when the board tips?

I’ll be the last man standing.