Page 96 of A Witchy Spell Ride

He tightened. The cloth pressed harder. Black at the edges of my vision.

I dropped my weight, became a problem. My free hand stabbed backward, thumb hunting soft, eye, throat, caught cheek instead. I felt stubble scrape my palm. Faint cologne. Heat. And eyes—God. A pair of eyes I almost recognized in the sliver of reflection from the glass on the wall as he hauled me around the bend. Not Adam’s cool vacancy. Not Banks’s dangerous softness. Someone else’s. Familiar in a way that made my stomach ice and rage.

My boot heel scraped metal. The emergency bell line we’d strung at ankle height—there.I hooked it with the toe and dragged.

It skittered. Jangled.Once.

Not loud enough.

He hissed, adjusted, jammed the cloth harder. The scent turned thick and cotton-candy wrong. My limbs went syrupy. The world tunneled.

The last thought I had before the black took me?

Ghost is going to burn the world down for this.

—

It didn’t go full dark. Not yet. I drifted in a mean, slow sea, surfacing in slivers long enough to catalog anchors.

Cold air on my thighs where the slit gaped. The rasp of carpet on my calves—no,van trunkcarpet. A wire bite at my wrists, zip ties, not rope. Worse. A thud-thud under me, wheels. The smell of rubber and stale fries and the chloroform ghosting my sinuses. A radio in the distance, muffled bass. The metallic clink of a tool rolling somewhere near my head.

And voices. Two.

One the man who grabbed me, breath steady, unbothered. The other thin and nervous, runner cadence. “You sure—”

“Drive,” the first one said, and the word wasn’t loud, but it shut the other man down.

I let my body go heavy like I’d learned to do when a fight wasn’t the fight I wanted. Counted the bumps, the turns. Right. Straight for a while. Left. The van paused at a light; I felt the weight shift and the heat of a sun I couldn’t see.

I wasn’t out. I wasn’t in. I was hovering in a place that let me choose where to put my teeth.

So, I left a trail.

I spit glitter—literal, from the collarbones Briar had dusted—onto the carpet and rubbed my cheek there. The shimmer would stick. If Cross found this van, he’d find me. I twisted my right wrist, found the zip-tie ridge, and dragged my ring against it until my skin burned and plastic warmed. Not enough. I bent my left leg, found the blade in my boot. He’d missed it because he’d pinned my right. Bless the paranoia that made me carry two.

The blade was small, two inches, flat, meant for seams and secrets. I sawed slowly, careful, every breath a measurement. The van turned and my blade nicked my own skin. I didn’t stop. The tie gave a fraction. Plastic sang under steel.

“You hear that?” the thin voice asked.

“It’s the road,” the other said.

I pushed until the tie bit deeper, then took the breath I had left and shoved the blade through the last strand.Snap.My right hand slid. Blood slicked my palm. I rolled my shoulder and kept my left wrist still, tie intact, angle innocent. If he checked, I needed one to show.

A pothole hit and the blade jumped from my boot and skittered. I caught it with my fingertips and slid it under my thigh. The van slowed. Turned. Gravel now, not asphalt. We were leaving the Quarter.

I let my head loll and made myself small. He wanted me adoll. I could do doll. For a while.

The van doors yawned, and light knifed the dark. I shut my eyes to slits and watched shadows move. The nervous one, skinny, cheap sneakers. The other, gloves, jeans that tried to be anonymous. Not Adam. Not Banks. The almost-recognized eyes were hidden by a cap tugged low.

They hauled me out by my arms and legs like I was laundry. I let everything hang until a boot hit dirt and threw a heel out, catching shin again. He cursed. I smiled into the black.

“Careful,” the nervous one hissed.

“Shut up,” said the other.

They dragged me into a room that smelled like bleach and old regret—the kind of abandoned storage unit landlords callflex spaceand cops callnothing to see here.Concrete under my thighs. A hum somewhere, fluorescents. A chair. Metal. My body kissed cold, and I made it go slack one second more, two, while I slid the blade to the back seam of my corset and tucked it high against the lacing. If I got one more chance, I wanted steel where hands wouldn’t grope first.

Zip ties hit the back of the chair. Ankles, too. Too tight. I made a noise and let my head roll. I felt his fingers on my throat, checking pulse like he was a doctor and not a monster and breathed shallow. He didn’t strip me, didn’t search thoroughly. That told me he wanted a scene he’d written already, one he thought he could control.