Page 86 of A Witchy Spell Ride

The Lovers.

Only it wasn’t one of mine. It was a cheap, knockoff print—the kind you could buy online for five bucks. The card was worn, faded. And someone had drawn a big black X through the man’s face.

Underneath was a single sentence:

He doesn’t know you like I do, He never will.

My fingers trembled. But I didn’t flinch. I turned to Ghost, held it up between two fingers.

“He’s escalating.”

Ghost took the card, stared at it for a long, hard second, then slipped it into his cut. “No,” he said. “He’s spiraling.”

And this time? There was no fear in my voice.

Just fury.

“Cross needs to see it,” he said.

“He will.” I reached under the counter for a little tin and pulled out chalk. Drew a small sigil on the underside of the glass, attention, not alarm. A note to the building:Watch with me.

Ghost leaned across the counter, forearms braced, eyes never leaving the door. “We’ll close early.”

“We’ll stay open,” I countered. “He wants me to hide. I’m done hiding.”

“That’s not the same as bait.”

“It is today.”

His jaw ticked. “Then we do it my way.”

“Which is?”

“You stand where I put you.” A muscle moved in his cheek, not quite a smile. “You glare. Look dangerous. Let me be the ugly part.”

“You’re always the ugly part,” I said sweetly.

That earned me a real smile, quick and wrecking. “Good girl.”

“Don’t push your luck.”

We set the stage.

Candles lit. Music low. Doors unlocked. I straightened shelves I’d straightened three times already, moved a jar two inches to the left because control sometimes looks like arranging rosemary in odd numbers.

The bell over the door chimed twice in the next half hour. First, a couple hunting for something to make their apartment smell less like beer and heartbreak. Then Daisy, who came bearing a roll of black fabric and a crisis about bat placement. Ghost moved through both interactions like a shadow cast by a knife. Daisy clocked the mood, squeezed my arm, and promised to return with glitter and threats.

“Don’t bring glitter,” Ghost said.

She winked. “He loves it,” she stage-whispered to me, then skipped out as if she hadn’t just baited death in his own house.

We were alone again.

I stood at the counter. Ghost took the corner by the draped bead curtain to the back. Nothing moved but candle flame. I could feel the city outside: footsteps passing, a laugh, a moped’s whine, the brass ghost of a trumpet somewhere down the block. The Quarter never goes fully quiet. It only pretends.

“Tell me about the dinner,” Ghost said, voice low enough it didn’t ripple the surface of the air.

“With Adam?” I kept my eyes on the door. “We met at a place on Chartres that thinks Edison bulbs are personality. He was… polite. Listened more than he talked. Asked questions about the shop like he wanted to understand and then asked questions about me like he wanted to own the answers.”