Page 97 of A Witchy Spell Ride

He peeled the cloth away. The room tilted, straightened. I coughed sweet chemical and air. The nervous one shifted from foot to foot. I opened my eyes slow.

Concrete. One grimy window with bars and cardboard taped haphazard. A naked bulb. A table with a knife laid just so. Another table with… I catalogued. Rope. Tape. A cheap camera with a long-dead battery light; he hadn’t even charged it. On the wall, someone had hung a print ofThe Lovers, the same cheap knockoff from the shop, a black X over the man’s face.

“Hi, Selene,” the man with the gloves said softly, like I should thank him for the consideration. His eyes, those almost familiar eyes, went warm and flat and wrong. Not Adam. Not Banks.Someone who’d been around.The parking lot guy? The handyman who fixed nothing? The cousin in Metairie Cross had muttered about? Recognition danced just out of my reach and the not-knowing made me want to scream.

“You made it hard for me,” he went on, and his tone held reproach, as if I’d failed an appointment. “Running to them. Cluttering the space.”

“Which one are you,” I asked, voice rough and steady. “The coward who watched from the car? The one who sold him prepaid cards? Or just the errand boy who thinks he deserves a seat at the table.”

His mouth tightened. The nervous one’s sneaker squeaked. Good. Make it ugly. Spread the crack.

“You don’t need them,” he said, stepping closer. “I’ve been with you. I’ve seen you, before the makeup, before the noise. Therealyou.”

“Sweetheart,” I said, tasting blood and sugar at once, “you haven’t met the real me.”

He smiled. “I will.”

He reached out. I leaned forward and let my crown catch the light. His hand paused, hovering over my hair like a benediction he hadn’t been given permission to offer.

Back at the clubhouse, a version of me was dancing with a man who’d calculated doorways and escape routes and the color of my breath. Back in that hallway, a bell had jangledonce. Cross would hear it. Or Briar would notice my drink still sweating where I left it. Or Vex would realize the bathroom break took too long. Or Reaper would feel the weather change because that’s what big brothers do, hoard lightning.

I met the almost-familiar eyes and let him see my decision.

“I’m not afraid of you,” I said. “I’m furious.”

He blinked, confused, like no one had ever named the emotion in his presence before.

I smiled. Small. Sharp. “And I leave sharp edges everywhere.”

He tilted his head. “You’ll learn.”

“Promise?” I said sweetly.

He reached for my face.

In the same breath, I made my wrists small, slipped the half-sawn zip tie off my right hand, and went for the blade tucked in my corset seam.

I didn’t get free. Not yet.

But I stopped being the story he thought he was telling.

And somewhere, in a room full of skulls and bats and men who love me in teeth and steel, a hunter was lifting his head because the world had gone too still again.

Get ready,I’d told the camera.

I meant it.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Ghost

Something felt wrong.

I knew it before the scream.

Before the lockdown.

Before Reaper flipped the war table and Cross punched a hole through the drywall.