Page 76 of A Witchy Spell Ride

Vex’s mouth twitched. “Mean.”

“Honest.” I took a careful sip. “Tell Bones his playlist is scaring the coffeepot.”

Vex snorted. “Bones doesn’t scare in the morning. He lumbers.” He leaned on the counter, eyes flicking to the hallway like he could drag trouble back by the collar. “You need an escort to the war room?”

“I’ll walk myself.” I set the mug down. “But if anyone breathes wrong, you can come haunt them.”

“I’m everyone’s favorite ghost,” he deadpanned, then sobered when I didn’t smile. “We got you, kid.”

“I know,” I said. The thing was, I did.

I carried the napkin down the hall like evidence and knocked twice on the war room door before pushing in.

Cross was at the table with three screens up, posture perfect, tie already straight at an hour when the rest of us were still negotiating with gravity. He glanced up, took in the shirt, the bare feet, the napkin. His eyes cooled.

“Tell me that’s lipstick,” he said.

“It’s a petal.”

“Of course it is.” He flicked his fingers, a gimme gesture. I passed it over. He lifted the napkin like it might bite and set it on a sheet of acetate. “Where?”

“Outside Ghost’s door.”

“Time?”

“Now.” I pointed toward the feed screen. “You should have it.”

He spun his keyboard, fingers flying. The hallway camera popped to full frame. He rewound twenty minutes. Thirty. An hour. The corridor showed men on patrol, Briar ghosting by with a bowl of something that looked like cereal and glitter, Ash yawning and scratching his jaw like a cartoon bear.

Then, at 5:11, a shadow cut across the floor without a body attached, a dark sliver at ankle height and the petal appeared as if from nowhere. No hand. No sleeve. Just a fall.

“Vent,” Cross said. He rewound and slowed the tape until each frame wavered. In the top corner of the hallway, the smallest shift: a louver twitch, the slightest exhale of dust. “He fed it through the vent.”

My stomach turned. “Which means?”

Cross’s mouth went flat. “Either the ductwork is accessible from the crawl space, or some absolute genius got himself past a locked grate.” He looked up at me, expression calm and murdery. “I’m a genius. So is he. The difference is I’m on your payroll.”

“Run the hall headcount from two to five,” I said, the coffee burning kindly in my throat. “Who was where.”

He already had it. Colored dots on a timeline, names attached. Bones outside. Vex in. Bray and Thorne rotating. Briar everywhere. Banks in the garage on sweeping duty at 4:50, then unaccounted for between 5:02 and 5:14 when he claimed hewas in the bathroom no one had a camera on because it was a bathroom and even, we had lines.

I stared at the gap. “Banks.”

Cross shrugged a shoulder, neutral but not blind. “He’s the softest data point. Which makes him likely or convenient, depending on your appetite.”

My appetite was knives. “I’ll talk to him.”

“Not alone,” Cross said, which would have been insult if it weren’t just smart.

“I’ll take Bones.”

“You’ll take Ghost,” he corrected smoothly.

“He’s—” Sleeping, I almost said, and then remembered the man I was talking about. “Fine. I’ll take Ghost.”

Cross’s gaze slid to the door. “He’ll be here in three, two—”

The door opened on Ghost; awake like he hadn’t been asleep at all. He clocked me first, then the screen, then the napkin. He took a breath that was more plan than oxygen.