Page 89 of A Witchy Spell Ride

I leaned on the counter and let the adrenaline drain out slowly. The building exhaled. The candles burned steady instead of tall. Briar came around and bumped her hip into mine, casual, grounding.

“You, okay?” she asked.

“I’m furious,” I said truthfully.

“Good,” she said. “Let’s weaponize it.”

Ghost adjusted the warding charm at the door with two careful fingers, like he was resetting a seal. “You did perfect,” he said without looking at me.

“I didn’t do anything,” I said.

“You didn’t run,” he said. “You don’t minimize how hard that is.”

I didn’t have a quip for that. I took a breath and let it be enough.

Outside, the Quarter kept being itself, messy, holy, loud. Inside, the shop held a new shape, carved by a line I’d drawn with my own mouth.

I wasn’t prey.

I wasn’t bait.

I was a woman behind her own counter, in her own house, with her people set like stones around her.

“Keep the card,” I told Ghost.

“I was going to,” he said.

“For evidence?”

“For me,” he answered, then softened it with, “For Cross,” because he knew I’d let him have the truth if he covered it in practicality.

I smiled, small and sharp. “Good.”

We stayed open. We made three sales, and I gave Daisy a discount on bats if she promised not to staple any to my ceiling.She promised and then did it anyway. Briar balanced the cash drawer with a flourish, then scribbled a sigil on the back of a receipt and told me it’d make the bills harder to steal. It wouldn’t, but the intention would.

As we locked up at dusk, I touched the glass and whispered a thank you to the space that had held me when I was shaking and then when I wasn’t.

Ghost stood at my shoulder, hand hovering at the small of my back like a shadow that knew its job. “Ready?” he asked.

“Now I am,” I said.

He nodded. “Then let’s go tell your brothers what happens next.”

“What does happen next?” Briar asked, popping her lollipop back between her teeth like a question mark.

I looked at the black X over the man on the card peeking from Ghost’s cut and felt the answer settle.

“We finish this,” I said. “On our terms.”

And for the first time since that first note, the future didn’t feel like a door I was being pushed through.

It felt like one I’d chosen to open.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Ghost

There’s a moment before violence when the world goes too still.