Page 52 of A Witchy Spell Ride
“Well?” he asked.
“Clean,” I said. “Which is the problem.”
Briar leaned out of the doorway, glitter on her cheek like war paint. “Defineclean.”
“Nothing you can take to a lab and make a man out of. Closet door had a red thread nailed inside. That’s not for Selene.”
Reaper’s eyes went colder. “It’s for you.”
“Yeah.”
“Good,” he said, and there was nothing good in it. “Because now I don’t have to pretend this is only her problem.”
“We weren’t pretending,” I said. “We were prioritizing.”
He grunted. “Cross?”
“On his way to the scene with a kit.”
“And you?”
“Here,” I said. “Until dusk.”
He nodded. Deal made without the weight of words.
Inside the room, Selene sat on the edge of the bed with a towel around her shoulders while Briar hacked at her hair with a pair of shears like a surgeon who’d run out of time but not nerve.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Change the silhouette, confuse the pattern,” Briar said. “Also, she’ll look hot.”
Selene’s mouth tugged at the corner. “She needed to feel useful.”
“Useful is a decoy walk,” Reaper said from behind me.
Briar pointed with the scissors. “That too.”
Selene’s eyes found mine in the mirror across from the bed. She held my gaze while hair fell like black ribbon onto the floor. She looked like a woman molting. Like a blade getting honed.
“Anything at the apartment?” she asked without looking away.
“Just a message. For me.”
“I figured.”
“You figured right.”
Her mouth made that small, private almost-smile I’d pretended not to memorize.
I left before I did something I wouldn’t regret until later.
Cross arrived with a rolling case that saiddo not ask questionsin twelve languages. He and I went back to the apartment without Reaper because Reaper wanted to tear the building apart with his hands and we needed it intact enough to read.
Cross put on a pair of booties like a fashion choice and knelt in front of the closet. “Photograph. Bag air. Lift prints no one left. Swab for DNA no one’s dumb enough to drip.” He talked to himself as much as me.
“You think he wore gloves?” I asked, even though we both knew the answer.
“I think he reads crime blogs,” Cross said. “And I think he’s sloppy in ways that aren’t about touch. That’s where we get him.”
