Page 124 of A Witchy Spell Ride
“You want the title?”
I met his eyes. “Enforcer.”
He tossed me the cut.
I caught it midair without thinking. The leather hit my palms like a promise I’d been dodging for years. The back rocker gleamed with the New Orleans curve, the front panel bare where a name and a job go when a man stops pretending, he’s passing through.
And Selene. Selene stepped right up beside me, eyes gleaming, mouth curved like sin and church and something that broke me open in a clean way. Glitter still on her collarbone. A thin line of Briggs’s blood drying under her jaw where my blade hadn’t reached and her mercy had.
Reaper gave one nod. The kind that means I see you and don’t make me regret it and Welcome home all at once.
“Then claim your Old Lady proper.”
I didn’t need to be told twice.
I turned, curled my hand around the back of Selene’s neck, and kissed her like she was oxygen.
Because she was.
She’d saved herself.
She’d survived.
And she was mine.
“Party’s back on,” Bones muttered somewhere behind us. “Someone grab the fuckin’ bourbon.”
The club roared, steel on steel on throat. The sound rolled through the cinderblock walls and up into the black. But I didn’t hear them, not really. All I heard was her breath against my cheek when she whispered, “Take me upstairs.”
All I saw was fire in her eyes.
“Soon,” I murmured back. “Do this right first.”
She knew what I meant. This life runs on ritual the way engines run on fuel. Sloppy gets men buried. Proper keeps ghosts quiet.
We marched him back ourselves. Vex had Briggs by the zip ties, cheerful like a man walking a mean dog to the pound. Bones shepherded the jittery driver like gravity with hands. Reaper brought up the rear, silent, watching. The van would get logged, the room bagged, the evidence caged with Cross’s neat labels and neater lies. We weren’t burning this one. We were prosecuting him, in our way and the city’s.
Back at the clubhouse, the shutters rolled up inch by inch, slow as sunrise. The main room breathed again, the band tuning strings in apology, Daisy lighting candles that smelled like cinnamon and poor decisions. People turned and the noise rose, then broke in silence when they saw Selene, torn dress, blade still in her boot, chin high.
Briar flew at her like a shot. Selene braced and took the impact full body, one arm around my cut, the other around her sister of the soul. Briar swore into her hair, the kind of swearing that is prayer and promise. She pulled back, cupped Selene’s face, and kissed her forehead hard enough to brand.
“You, okay?” Briar demanded.
“I’m excellent,” Selene said, voice steady. “And thirsty.”
“On it,” Vex said again because he’s decided hydration is his ministry now.
Reaper stalked Briggs to a chair, sat him, tied him to it like he was taping up a busted pipe. No flourish. No speech. The club understood the line: we were done with vigil candles and alleyjustice for tonight. We were going to close this with signatures and camera time and Cross’s locker full of favors.
“Eyes,” Reaper said to Cross.
“Got ‘em,” Cross answered, pointing without looking to the lens tucked in the low corner. “Audio too. He confesses, he walks into a cage I built, not one he thinks he can survive.”
Briggs looked small. Not helpless, small. He squinted at me like he could find the version of me that once let things slide. I let him look and learn that man had burned in the same fire he’d tried to lit.
Reaper turned back to me and slapped his palm twice on the war table. The thud carried to the rafters.
“Nomad no more,” he said, voice a blade. “Ghost, step.”
