Page 83 of A Witchy Spell Ride

“You missed a spot,” I said, and pointed to a knot in the wood. “There.”

She finished the line, blew on the chalk, looked up at me through lashes that should be illegal. “You’re bossy when you’re anxious.”

“I’m always bossy,” I said.

She smiled, not performative, not armor. “True.”

I took her hand. Not the way a man takes a prize. The way a sailor takes a rope. “You did good this morning.”

She squeezed back. “So did you.”

I wanted to put my mouth on her and forgot how to want anything else. Instead, I kissed the center of her palm, quick, like a promise I wasn’t ready to speak out loud.

“You ready?” I asked.

“Not even a little,” she said. “Go anyway.”

“Good girl,” I said before I could stop myself, and she sent me a look that landed low and dangerous.

“Later,” she said. “Focus.”

I grinned. Couldn’t help it. “Trying.”

Bones emerged from the crawl space a while later with his worm pants and a grin like he’d found the last cookie. “We got scuffs,” he said, holding up his phone with photos of the duct interior: fresh scratches where a screwdriver had slipped, a smear of oil too new for this old building, a twist of lint that looked like it had been eaten by roses. “Your boy’s not a ghost. He’s just careful.”

“Careful’s a mask,” I said. “Masks crack.”

Reaper nodded. “Tonight, we bring a hammer.”

Cross printed a floor map, and I drew circles on it with a grease pencil until it looked like a target. “Selene stays here,” I said,pointing to center. “Briar shadows. Vex on door. Ash plays red light/green light with the bar traffic, he’ll move bodies without anyone thinking he’s moving bodies. Bones roams. Bray and Thorne hold the back. Cross in the office. Reaper floats where shadows go to get nervous.” I tapped my earbud. “Everyone calls a color before they move. We use the band as cover for shifts.”

“And you?” Reaper asked.

“I’m the tide,” I said. “He moves; I take him.”

Reaper’s mouth did that almost-approval, almost-threat I’ve known since I had knuckles. “Alive,” he reminded me.

“I heard you,” I said.

“Good.”

Selene tracked all of it without flinching. When I finished, she lifted her chin. “What do you want me to do if he gets close?”

“Breathe,” I said. “Look him in the face and let me cut the space between you.”

“And if you can’t?”

“I can,” I said, and made sure she saw I believed it. “But if I trip, you go left. Briar will already be moving you. Don’t look back.”

She nodded once. “Okay.”

Briar draped herself over Selene’s shoulders like a cat and bared her teeth at me. “If she trips, you catch her.”

“I already did,” I said, and I don’t know which of the three of us believed it most.

By midafternoon the building thrummed. Daisy leveled a fake raven at a speaker and declared it art. Ash tested the fog machine and made the main room look like a bad dream; Vex opened a door to clear it and glared at the fog like it had insulted his mother. Cross did unholy things to the feeds and gave me a backup black box for my ear like he didn’t trust electricity to be loyal. Reaper walked the perimeter with the patience of a storm. Bones taught Bray how to palm a blade and pick a pocket as if he were teaching him to foxtrot.

Banks reappeared, quieter. He didn’t look toward Selene, and I decided to let that be his good deed for the day.