Page 108 of A Witchy Spell Ride
West wing.
My room.
Selene’s temporary room.
The hallway where I first noticed the rose.
I didn’t wait.
I was already running for my bike.
“She’s still close,” I shouted over the roar of the engine. “And someone’s playing us like fools.”
Reaper’s throttle snarled behind me. Bones took point with us. Cross’s voice hit our ears over comms. “I’m re-routing power to the west bank camera. Give me sixty.”
“You have thirty,” Reaper said.
I took the river road like I owned it, torn between wanting to get there and wanting not to see. The Quarter rose up in front of us, all teeth and song and rust, and I threaded it like a man who knew where the holes were. People jumped. Horns cursed. We didn’t stop.
“Lockdown now,” I barked.
“Already dropping,” Cross said. “Everything but the west wing is green.”
“Who’s on that hall?”
“Briar was last seen moving toward the bar with Daisy. Ash at the door. Vex floating. Banks—” Cross hesitated. “Banks isn’t pinging.”
“He won’t be,” Reaper said, ice-cold. “He’s gone.”
“He’s not our primary,” I said, not for Cross, for myself. The smell of citrus degreaser back at the motel sat under my tongue. Banks wasn’t a shop rat. He was eager, not patient. He didn’t have that careful. Our killer had careful.
“Someone’s inside,” Bones said, what we were all thinking out loud.
“Then we take our house back,” Reaper said.
We cut into the lot hot. The gate slammed behind us on Cross’s command. Steel shutters rattled down like a promise. I left my bike angled wrong and didn’t care. We entered through the side where the cameras feed to Cross’s office first.
“West wing feed?” I snapped, taking the stairs two at a time.
“Dark,” Cross said. “No loop. Power cut at the junction, not at the panel.”
“In-house knowledge,” Reaper said behind me.
We hit the hall. Too quiet. The sound of a party bleeding in from the main room like music under water. Then, faint, a bell jingle. One. The ankle-high trip bell Selene and I had rigged.
I moved. The first turn: clear. Second: a rag on the floor that smelled like sweet rot. Chloroform. Fucking chloroform. Third: a heel. Red strap snapped. A drop of blood like a punctuation mark.
“Selene!” Briar’s voice cracked the hall like a thrown glass as she skidded in, eyes wild. She saw the heel and bit her fist. “No— “
“Briar,” Reaper said, catching her one-handed. “Eyes for me. Breathe.”
She dragged air into her lungs, feral and fast, then forced it slow. Her finger jabbed at the baseboard. “Dust.”
Good. She saw it too: a smear under the vent where fingers had dragged or a shoulder had bumped. Bones went low with a light. “Scuff at hip height. He hugged the wall with her.”
“Back door,” I said.
We sprinted and hit steel. Cross had already sealed it. I set my palm to it anyway, as if heat could tell me how many seconds, I was behind. Cold. Too cold.
