Page 26 of A Witchy Spell Ride
“And motivated.” She smiled without humor. “Selene, I’m not trying to fight you. But whoever this is, they know your routines. They know where your cameras don’t see. They know how to get in and out fast enough to avoid motion alerts. That’s not random.”
“I know.”
“So, you move. You change the routine. You stay noisy.”
Noisy. The opposite of what I wanted. I wanted to shrink to a dot and wait for it all to pass. I wanted to believe this was a mistake and my life would rewind to a week ago when the worst thing on my mind was whether the lavender shipment would arrive on time.
“Tonight,” Briar said softly, like she was coaxing a feral cat. “Come back to mine. We can booby-trap the place. Bells, flour, hair across the door, a glass on the doorknob that will fall and shatter if it turns. Old-school. We’ll sleep in shifts. You can do your witch things. I’ll do my gremlin things.”
“What if he’s watching?” I asked. “What if he sees me leave and waits?”
“Then Ghost will make him regret his birth.” The name slipped out of her like it didn’t weigh anything. It weighed everything.
I looked away. “We’re not calling Ghost.”
She didn’t argue. Not out loud. But her eyes said she’d already decided she would if she had to.
“Help me,” I said, voice scraping. “Help me make it safe enough to lock up.”
Briar nodded. She pulled evidence bags from her tote, yes, evidence bags and slid the note inside, then the felt. She studied the rose for a long beat, then used scissors to take a clean half-inch off the stem and placed that snippet into another bag. “Cut angle, residue, potential trace,” she murmured, mostly to herself. “He handled it. He’s not wearing a hazmat suit in the Quarter at noon. We might get a partial print off the thorn base if we’re lucky.”
I stared at the ridiculous little pile of plastic packets like they might transform into safety if I wished hard enough. “We’re ridiculous.”
“That’s step one of survival.” She tucked the bags into her tote. “Ridiculous and paranoid beats romantic and dead.”
We set to work. I cleared the front display and pretended it was stock rotation while Briar walked the perimeter with a roll of fishing line and a handful of tiny bells she stole from the craft drawer. She strung them low, ankle height, in places you wouldn’t notice until they chimed. I salted thresholds and whispered my mother’s charm under my breath, the vowels old and steady, the consonants clipping fear into pieces small enough to swallow.
When we finished, the shop looked the same. Felt different. Maybe that was enough.
“Upstairs,” Briar said, jerking her chin at the stairwell. “Grab what you need.”
I hesitated. “Just… give me five?”
She studied me, then nodded. “Five. I’ll be here. If you’re not back down in five, I’m coming up with a scream and a frying pan.”
“Very on-brand.”
She lifted the pan from behind the counter. “Already selected.”
I climbed the stairs on legs that didn’t feel like mine. My apartment smelled like chamomile and cedar and the faintest trace of Briar’s perfume from last night. Normal, I told myself. Safe. Home.
On my dresser, the charm with red thread sat where I’d left it, slightly off-center because I’d knocked it with my elbow this morning. I paused. Checked the bathroom window. Locked. Checked the closet. Empty except for too many vintage coats and a pair of boots I couldn’t resist on clearance.
I opened the drawer and took out the box with the photo. The one from the envelope slipped under my welcome mat. I hadn’t shown Briar. Not yet. Part of me still wanted to pretend the universe was sending mixed signals I could ignore.
I opened the lid and looked at seventeen-year-old me. Hoodie. Smirk. Vex’s grin. Ghost a blur behind us like an omen I hadn’t learned to read. Everyone else crossed out. Me and Ghost left behind. Us against the world.
My stomach turned.
I slid the photo back, shut the box, and locked the drawer. If Briar knew, she’d go straight to Reaper. Reaper would turn the Quarter into a war zone. And maybe that was what I should want, scorched earth, zero mercy.
But I wanted to choose my own war.
I shoved clothes into a bag without thinking jeans, a black dress, three shirts, underwear, a hoodie. My toothbrush. My tarot deck. The tin I’d tucked the red-thread bottle into. Two knives. The old brass key to the shop that didn’t actually open any current locks but made me feel better.
On my way out, my eye caught the bathroom mirror. I’d left a lipstick print there a week ago, drunk on Briar’s sangria, thinking I was cute. I wiped it off with the corner of a towel before I could decide it looked like a target.
Back downstairs, Briar waited exactly where she’d promised, frying pan perched like a crown. “Three minutes thirty,” she said. “Efficient. Gross bag, cute shoes. I approve.”
