Page 38 of A Witchy Spell Ride
Ghost shook his head. “Not yet. Not until we know more. Keep this tight.”
I took a breath.
Briar slipped her hand into mine.
I wasn’t alone anymore.
But I was still in it.
And something told me the worst was yet to come.
The shop felt like a church after a confession, quiet, exposed, sacred in a way that made my skin crawl. Reaper finished his call and came back to the counter, eyes colder, voice level.
“Here’s what’s happening,” he said. “Cross pulls feeds. Bones checks exits and sits the alley, zero noise. I’ll put a watcher two blocks out, no kuttes, no tails that stick out. You” his gaze pinned me, “do not leave this shop without Briar or Ghost.”
“I’m not a—”
“Prisoner,” he cut in. “I know. You’re not. But youarea target.”
Briar squeezed my fingers once, a pressure that saidargue later, move now. Ghost’s presence at my shoulder felt like a wall I hadn’t asked for and couldn’t quite hate.
Cross cleared his throat. “Timeline?” he asked me, pen ready. “Start with the charm.”
I recited it all, this time like a ledger: dates, times, locations, the exact phrasing of each note. When I stumbled, Ghost supplieddetails he shouldn’t have known unless he’d been nearby. He had been. It didn’t scare me. That was the scariest part.
Cross’s pen moved fast. “So, the first anomaly was three weeks ago,” he said, tapping the page. “Windowsill charm. Then the scratched photo. Then incremental escalations, moved objects, unlocked latch, red-thread bottle, the lilies, and now the rose + note in-shop during business hours.”
“Pattern,” Ghost said. “He’s closing distance and upping intimacy.”
Bones thunked the crowbar’s end on the floor, impatience twitching through him. “Say when and I’ll take his kneecaps.”
“Later,” Reaper said, not looking at him. He was watching me again. “You had dreams?”
Heat climbed my neck. “Sometimes.”
“Men in them?”
“That’s not—”
“Relevant,” Ghost said, calm. “If he’s watching her, he could be timing deliveries and appearances to her sleep cycle. Dreams can make the waking feel… pliable. Easier to push.”
Reaper’s jaw clicked. “You saying there’s magic in this?”
“Men don’t need magic to be monsters,” Briar said dryly. “But if he thinks there is, he’ll act like there is. That’s enough.”
Reaper scrubbed a hand over his mouth, thinking. “We change your routine,” he said to me. “Today.”
“Already started,” Briar said. “She’s coming to mine again. We’ve got trip lines, bells, hair on the hinges, flour at the threshold, the whole gremlin toolkit.”
“Cameras?” Cross asked.
“Upstairs, yes,” I said. “Downstairs, front and back. He avoided the fields or jammed them. Either way, I’m adding two more interior cams today.”
“Good,” Cross said. “And I want your last two weeks of phone logs and texts.”
“Mywhat?”
“Not content. Just metadata. Time stamps. Unknown numbers. Patterns help.”
