Page 61 of A Witchy Spell Ride

He lifted a hand like he might touch my cheek and then didn’t. He curled it into a fist instead and dropped it to his side. “Not because of him,” he said, and it took me a second to understand.

I did. I hated that I did. “Not because of him,” I repeated. “Okay.”

A knock on the doorframe. Briar. Because of course Briar. “Hate to interrupt your romance novel,” she said, “but Cross found a match on Ballcap Beard.”

I exhaled. Ghost stepped back. The spell broke like glass.

We followed Briar to the war room. Cross had a face up on the screen, DMV crisp, expression devoid of anything useful. Name. Two minor arrests. Nothing to explain obsession. Enough to justify fear.

“Lives across the river,” Cross said. “Day job intermittent. Delivery gigs. Lots of time, lots of routes, lots of places to be no one.”

“Known associates?” Reaper asked.

“Two. One local. One maybe. I’m pulling their socials, but he’s the type who posts pictures of steak and calls it personality.”

“So, he’s boring,” Briar said. “Great.”

“Boring people do interesting crimes,” Cross said. “They need spice.”

Reaper’s phone buzzed. He glanced, nodded once. “We have his car.”

Ghost didn’t smile. He didn’t need to. The room shifted around that piece of information, furniture rearranged by gravity.

“Can we be done?” I asked, tired in my bones. “Can we just… be done?”

“Soon,” Reaper said. And it wasn’t a lie, and it wasn’t a promise. It was a timeline with variables he intended to strangle.

Ghost’s hand brushed the small of my back as we left the room. Accident. Not an accident. My skin pulsed where he touched — a single drumbeat that made everything else go quiet.

The day before Halloween, Daisy dragged us all into final prep. “If I don’t see at least three fake ravens, I’m mutinying,” she announced.

“Please do,” Briar said. “I’ve always wanted to be a pirate.”

“You already are,” Vex muttered and, miracle of miracles, smiled a little when I elbowed him.

Briar set a bowl of candy on the bar with a label that saidFOR CHILDREN (and Ash). Ash flipped her off fondly and tested the hallway couch for the third time like he intended to actually sleep there.

I carved a tiny sigil on the underside of the front door with a pocketknife; a protection charm older than any of us. Cross pretended not to see me do it.

Ghost adjusted my jacket collar before I could. His fingers were careful. Impersonal, I told myself. Necessary, I insisted. A lie, I knew.

“You’re going to have a blade here,” he said, tapping the inside seam. “And here.” He tucked a second knife at my boot. “You don’t need them. But you’ll have them.”

“I’ll have you,” I said, before I could stop the truth.

He stilled. “Yeah,” he said softly. “You’ll have me.”

I swallowed a storm.

That night, I tried sleeping and managed something that felt like hovering over myself. When I woke, the hair on the latch was intact; the shotgun was still a chaperone; my chest was not a cage. I dreamt of the river and of a woman with my face walking away from a man who thought he was owed it. She didn’t run. She justleft.

Briar knocked the next morning without knocking. “Coffee, witch,” she sang. “And a donut with black icing because I love you and want you to fear mirrors.”

Her makeup was a soft knife. Mine would be too. She drew a small sigil behind my ear with eyeliner. “For bravery,” she said. “Or vanity. Your pick.”

“I’ll take both.”

In the hall, Bones leaned his head into the doorway upside down. “You stab anyone, you gotta yellUNO,” he said. “House rules.”