Page 22 of A Witchy Spell Ride

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.