Page 59 of A Witchy Spell Ride
“It won’t.”
But we both knew that was a lie.
Because something always changes.
That’s how this worked.
He watched.
He waited.
And sooner or later…
He would strike again.
But not here.
Not inside.
I wouldn’t let him take this too.
Night stretched like old rubber. It had give, but no comfort. I learned the new noises: the clink of ice in a glass at 2 a.m., Bones’s off-key humming during patrols, the hum of Cross’s printer spitting out camera stills like a secular rosary. I slept in my old room with the blackout curtains and a borrowed shotgun leaned by the bed like a chaperone. I placed a line of salt along the sill because it made my mother’s voice go quiet in my head. I taped a hair to the latch because Ghost would check it even if I forgot.
I still dreamt.
Not the wanting kind. The watching kind. A door easing open and a breath I didn’t own fogging the glass. I’d wake with my palms pressed to my sternum and the taste of iron at the back of my tongue.
Ghost started teaching me how to breathe like a soldier breathes when the world narrows.
“Square breath,” he said, sitting on the floor with his back to the bed and his boots braced. “In for four, hold for four, out for four, hold for four.”
“You counting me through a panic attack?” I asked, dry.
“I’m counting you through a fight,” he said, dry back.
So, I breathed. In, hold, out, hold. Over and over until the edges of the room stopped trying to cut me.
“Again,” he’d say. And I would. Because I didn’t want to be fragile. Because I didn’t want to give him the version of me who only broke.
Sometimes he’d wrap my hands with tape at the bar, slow and careful, like boxing and prayer shared the same grammar. He’d nudge my stance wider and tilt my hips so my weight lived where it could do damage. “Drive through, not at,” he’d murmur, and I’d hit the bag until my shoulders burned, and the inside of my mouth tasted like copper and victory.
“Anger’s a tool,” he said once when I fumbled. “Not a home.”
“It feels like both.”
“Then use it,” he said. “Don’t live in it.”
He didn’t touch me more than necessary. He didn’t have to. His presence moved the air the way heat does, visible only by what it made shimmer.
The second day, Cross delivered a manila folder to Reaper with the kind of care you give a live grenade. I knew what was inside. I didn’t ask to see. I also knew Ghost had left with Reaper andBones the night before without telling me where. He came back with a split knuckle and a quieter jaw.
“You, okay?” I asked because I had to start somewhere.
“No,” he said, honest, and left it there.
Briar poured me coffee and whispered, “He’ll tell you when it won’t make you feel worse.”
“You’re not wrong often,” I murmured, and her look saidNever.
