Page 21 of A Witchy Spell Ride
Keys already in her hand.
No humming.
No small talk with the barista down the block.
Straight in. Lock. Lights out.
She didn’t see me.
But I saw her.
And something had changed.
That’s when I saw it. The silver sedan again. Two blocks down, just easing out from a side street. Same dent on the passenger side. Same missing front plate. Tinted windows. Darker than legal.
It rolled past the shop once.
Slow.
Deliberate.
Then it took the next corner and vanished. I didn’t chase it. I could’ve.
But I didn’t. Because I was watching Selene’s window. And the timing was too damn perfect.
She came back.
It drove past.
One after the other.
It wasn’t about finding her.
It was about letting her see.
Or maybe letting me see.
And that twisted the knot in my gut tighter than anything else had so far.
Because whoever this was?
They weren’t just watching.
They were playing.
The Quarter was made for games like this. Narrow streets, too much noise, too many distractions. You could follow someone for blocks without ever being caught. Or you could be standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the threat and never know it until they cut you open.
I hate cities for that reason.
I trust terrain where you can see your enemy coming. Sand, desert, jungle, they don’t lie to you. Cities lie every second.
But I’ve learned to listen.
That sedan? It had a rhythm. A pattern. And patterns are where predators slip.
Later, I caught it parked two streets over, half-hidden beneath a busted streetlight. I circled from behind, no jacket, no kutte, just another man out of place in the night.
I got close enough to read the plates. Ran them through a contact. Dummy tags.
