Page 101 of A Witchy Spell Ride

“Alive,” Reaper murmured, far away and close.

Vex had the jittery one pinned against the wall with a forearm like a door bar. “You like errands?” he asked lightly. “Run this one: don’t move.”

The gloved man under me twisted and I gave him a pressure lesson he’d remember when it rained. “You came into my house,” I told him softly. “You took my woman. You don’t walk out of here the same man.”

He hissed, “She’s not—”

“She is,” I said, and let him feel the truth of it in his bones.

I looked at Selene and everything else went out of frame. “You hurt?”

“Annoyed,” she said. “And armed.”

“Good.” I cut her ankle ties first, then her left wrist, and palmed her right hand where the skin had burned from sawing plastic. “You did perfect.”

“I didn’t do anything,” she said, echoing the shop. Her eyes burned. “I didn’t run.”

“You did the hardest thing,” I said, and my voice wrecked itself. “You waited.”

She swayed when she stood and I caught her, not gentle, not rough, ours. She tucked herself under my arm like she’d always fit there. Vex cuffed the gloved man with zip ties so tight he’d remember us every time he looked at his hands. Outside, a shout, Reaper.

“Driver down,” Cross reported. “Alive. Bones with him.”

“Bring them,” Reaper said.

I walked Selene past the table with the knife someone had laid out like a ceremony and felt the world go hot again. I wanted to take the blade and write a language this man would never forget. I didn’t. Alive.

At the door, Selene paused. She turned, eyes on the cheap print ofThe Loverswith the black X over the man. She reached up, pulled the crown from her hair, and hung it on the nail above the card like a benediction flipped inside out.

“Not his,” she said.

“Never,” I said.

We stepped into the night, and the air hit my face like absolution and gasoline. The van idled silent now, driver cuffed against the wheel, Reaper and Bones flanking like gravestones. Briar’s voice came frantic and furious in my ear, “Tell me she’s with you.”

“She’s with me,” I said.

Briar sobbed one syllable and then cleared her throat and turned it into a threat. “Good. I was about to hex the entire parish.”

“Save it for court,” Cross muttered, and I heard keys clicking, evidence logging, the tidy music of a man building a cage out of facts.

I tucked Selene closer. She looked up at me, blood-red mouth, glitter collarbones, eyes that had watched herself in a mirror and decided who she was. “You’re late,” she said again, smaller now, teasing and trembling.

“Never again,” I said, and for once in my stubborn fucking life, I meant the promise I made before I knew the path to keep it.

Someone had declared war.

They’d just learned what kind of soldier I am.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Selene

I came to in the dark.

The air was thick. Dust. Gasoline. Motor oil. Old sweat. The kind of stale that sticks to your tongue and makes you think of basements that never learned the wordsun.

Concrete under my thighs. Candlelight flickering somewhere behind my eyelids. My wrists ached, bound in nylon cord. Ankles too. Not tight enough to numb just tight enough to remind me somebody planned for squirming.