Page 92 of A Witchy Spell Ride

We planned like men who understood the cost of improvisation.

Cross spread a floor plan across the table, and I drew circles on it with a grease pencil until the paper looked like a target. Vex on the door with Ash; their job was to move bodies in that easy way that keeps crowds from noticing they’re cattle. Bones floated; if you needed a wall, he’d be it. Bray and Thorne played anchors in the back hallway and courtyards. Daisy ran interference with glitter and noise and a tote bag that could conceal a rocket launcher. Briar stayed stuck to Selene like beautiful gum.

Reaper orbited. Not center. Not edge. Gravity.

“Colors for shifts,” Cross said, tapping the comms. “You move; you call a color. Red for immediate. Green for slide. Blue for eyes-only. We keep chatter clean.”

Selene stood across from me, arms folded, absorbing details like heat. “What do you want me to do?”

“Own the room,” I said. “You stand where I put you. You breathe when I say. If you see him, you don’t approach. Youmarkhim and let me take the space.”

Her chin lifted. “And if he speaks to me?”

“You let him,” I said, and her eyes flashed sharp at that, anger, not fear. “You let him show us his tells. You let him step into our shape.”

Briar bumped her hip. “And you look hot while doing it.”

Selene’s mouth curved. “Non-negotiable.”

Reaper slid a small black box toward me. “Extra ear for you. Encrypted. If power dies, it still records.”

I clipped it. “Cross?”

“I’ll be in the office,” he said. “I’ll have the alley cam, the vent cam, the lot cam, and two floaters for when people insist on being mysterious.”

He looked at Selene. “You okay with that many eyes?”

She held his gaze. “Tonight? I want a thousand.”

An hour later, I took Bray and rolled back by the River Grove. We didn’t stop. We didn’t need to. We just let the motel see us. Let him feel the pressure of being preyed on for a change. Bray’s voice stayed quiet as the road.

“You ever think about walking away from all this?” he asked.

“No.”

He nodded like that’s the answer he expected. “You think she does?”

“She did,” I said. “Then someone tried to write her story for her.”

“And now?”

“Now she’s the author and I’m the editor with a mean streak.”

Bray laughed once, short. “Copy.”

We looped twice, then went home.

Back at the clubhouse, Daisy had turned the main room into a temple of petty gods—bats, candles, a skeleton on a motorcycle that grinned like it knew things. Vex threatened to staple a bat to my kutte. Briar threatened to staple Vex to a bat. Ash tested the fog machine and cursed each time a bulb refused to glow; Daisy named the dead bulbs and held a funeral; Reaper told her to pick up the glitter after her own wake.

Selene disappeared and returned twenty minutes later in the black silk and velvet she’d chosen. My shirt from the morning was gone; in its place was a jacket I’d adjusted to hide a blade in the seam only I knew. Her hair, shorter now, framed her jaw like it had opinions.

“You ready?” I asked, the ritual again, because the ritual mattered.

“No,” she said. “Go anyway.”

“Good.”

I adjusted her collar. Slipped the flat blade where it belonged. She didn’t watch my hands. She watched my face, like she was cataloguing the parts of me that were hers. It did something in my chest I didn’t have time to diagnose.