Page 119 of A Witchy Spell Ride

“Annoyed,” she said. “And thirsty.”

I gave her water like it was sacrament and tucked her into my side because I could. Because I was done pretending there was any universe where I wouldn’t.

Back in the chapel, Cross’s monitors would be filling with proof, Briggs’ phone pings, glove powder residue, a petal in a motel sink that didn’t fit the way he thought it did. Reaper would be on the phone to Thorne, to the lawyer who likes us and the cop whodoesn’t, setting the path for an ending that let us keep the doors open.

In the present, I looked down at Briggs and discovered that the rage that had been rattling my ribs since a heel hit tile was gone.

What was left was purpose.

“You walked into my house,” I told him, quiet. “You touched what’s mine.”

He tried to shapelovewith his mouth and found his lips didn’t know how to move anymore.

“Alive,” Reaper reminded me from the doorway.

“Alive,” I said, and this time I meant Briggs, too because Selene was pressed against my side, breathing my air, and the only thing I wanted more than ending him was giving her a night where the ending was ours to write.

We hauled him up. Vex cut the cheap tarot from the wall and handed it to Cross in a bag, because sometimes you keep trophies and sometimes you keep evidence. Selene reached up, lifted her crown from her hair, and hung it over the card like punctuation.

“Not his,” she said.

“Never,” I said, and walked her out into the air.

Briar’s voice crackled over comms, a prayer disguised as sarcasm. “Do I hex the parish or are we good?”

“We’re good,” I said.

“Lame,” she muttered, and I heard the way her breath shook when she laughed.

We rode back slowly, not because we had to because I wanted the night to see us. Because I wanted whatever eyes were still watching to learn a lesson.

You can study a woman for months. You can memorize her routines. You can script a romance in your head with knives and candles and cheap cards.

But if you take her, you don’t keep her.

We do.

Chapter Thirty

Selene

He was spiraling.

Briggs had moved from whispering devotions to arguing with himself in the span of fifteen minutes. One candle toppled and rolled under a crate, casting warped shadows across the wall; the flame threw a halo over rust and oil stains like it was trying to bless a crime scene. His little shrine to me, lipstick, Polaroids, a cheap Lovers card with the man X’ed out, trembled every time he paced too hard.

“I know you love me,” he muttered, back turned, voice high and breathless. “You just forgot. They made you forget. Ghost… that nomad bastard… he poisoned you.”

I didn’t speak.

Didn’t flinch.

Not while my fingers worked the seam of my boot.

The blade was still there. Flat and mean, the one Briar insisted I carry, and Ghost pretended not to notice when he tucked my hair behind my ear. I bent my wrist inside the nylon bite until it burned, found the hilt with my fingertips, eased it loose one millimeter at a time.

Keep talking, Briggs.

“After tonight,” he said, voice falling back into a dreamy hum, “it’ll all be different. You’ll see. We’ll see.”