Page 103 of A Witchy Spell Ride

I swallowed bile and gave him a look that saidoh honeywithout moving my mouth. “You’re insane.”

“No,” he said, crouching so we were near eye-level, hand brushing my ankle like a benediction he had no right to give. I kept my face still while the urge to bite rose like a second tide. “I’m the one who loves you.”

I stared him dead in the eye. “You’re the one who dies.”

He froze.

Then smiled.

“We’ll see.”

He expected the threat in my words, not the boredom. That bored tone, the one I use when men mistake obsession for fate put a hairline crack in his confidence. He covered it with ritual.

“Okay,” he murmured, exhale shaping into something he’d rehearsed. “Okay, we’ll start. We’ll make it right.”

He stood and began arranging his altar the way Cross arranges data—like patterns could save him. He lit three more candles. Their light crawled across the concrete and showed me more of the room: cinderblock walls sweating old damp, a naked bulb that hummed like a fly, a single high window with bars and warped cardboard. A metal chair bolted to the floor under me. Zip ties at my wrists. Ankles. Nylon, not plastic. Stouter. Rougher. Easier to saw once warmed.

A camera sat on the far table. Cheap. Battery light dead. Amateur hour. He’d planned to film a revelation and forgot to bring electricity.

He wasn’t Adam. He wasn’t Cross. He was a man who mistook watching for knowing.

Good.

He moved to the far side, and I let my head list like I was still catching up, while my fingers did what they could out of sight, rolling, testing, making my wrists small, small, smaller. Nylon warmed under skin. Skin burned under nylon. Pain became a plan.

“Why me?” I asked, casual. Not a plea. An ask.

He smiled without eyes. “Because you’re the only one who isn’t pretending.”

I let the silence sit. Sometimes men fill it with confession.

He did.

“You pretend to be mean, but you’re soft with the old men who come in for their wives. You pretend to be wild, but you fold your receipts and tuck your hair behind your left ear when you’re tired. You pretend to need them—” his mouth twisted at the word “But you don’t. And it scares them. So, they try to own you.”

He looked proud of himself. Like he’d passed a test I hadn’t given.

“Tell me about the clubhouse,” I said, rolling my shoulders, cataloguing range of motion. “About how you got in and out so easy.”

He swayed, pleased. “Doors open when you know where to look.”

“The vents,” I said.

He smiled bigger. “You, see? We understand each other.”

“We don’t,” I said, and I kept my eyes on his face while I flicked my gaze for a heartbeat to his hands. Gloves. Thin, cheap, fingerprints tucked under latex. He wasn’t completely stupid. The nervous accomplice was nowhere; a mutter in the hallway earlier, male, younger, jittery, now replaced by empty quiet. Maybe driver boy ran. Maybe Reaper didn’t give him the chance.

Briggs reached for my throat again. Pulse-checking like a doctor who learned medicine from movies. I tilted my chin, so his fingers slid over the ridge of my collarbone and found glitter instead. He froze, expression going reverent.

“You shouldn’t wear this for them,” he murmured, thumb smudging shine. “It’s for me.”

“It’s for me,” I said, and I didn’t hide the blade in my voice.

He blinked rapidly, recalibrating. Ritual again. He shuffled the cheap tarot deck beside the altar. The box saidMystic Visionsin a font that had never seen mysticism. He cut the pack like a man who’d learned to shuffle yesterday. Drew a card without looking and held it up, crooked.

The Tower.

Of course.