Page 8 of A Witchy Spell Ride
She grins. “Now you’re starting to sound like me.”
I smile too, but the truth is still buried in my chest like a splinter. What if the thing following me wasn’t just a person? What if it was a pattern that had been set in motion, an old hurt, attracted to the place where it started? That was the part that made me keep my knives on me even when the air smelled like jasmine and bourbon and the club was loud with laughter. That was the part that kept me from sleeping.
We fall into silence for a beat, listening to the muffled chaos inside. Briar’s ridiculous rendition of a song, Cross grumbling about the taxes he’d pretend to understand, Vex’s laughter booming. It was home, in its way. Dangerous, loud, full of people who would torch a town for one of their own. But home.
Later, when I get back to my apartment, the city has already shed the golden light and put on the deep velvet of night. New Orleans took its darkness like a second skin; it hid and revealed in equal measure. I lock the door twice out of habit, testing the deadbolt with a fingertip like reassurance. The lock clicked and I breathed a little easier. For ten seconds.
Then I went through the ritual I’d been taught by a woman who smelled of rosemary and old books, the kind of woman who wove protection with voice and spit and thread. I lit sage slowly and carefully, letting the smoke curl up and carry away unwanted things. I whisper my mother’s charm under my breath, no rhyme, no show, words my mama used when the storms felt close. I pour salt in a neat line under the window and tuck the folded paper charm the tarot woman had given me in the hollow between the curtain and the sill.
Superstition or sense? I couldn’t tell. I only knew the action calmed the part of me that thought in lists and worst-cases. It was like tying a knot in the back of my throat where fear wanted to fall out. I checkevery window twice. I adjust the sensor lights on the stoop. I listen to the city breathe and pray it would not inhale me. I didn’t sleep.
The bed felt alien, too soft, too quiet. The city outside hummed like an insect, a constant that kept me tethered to reality. I close my eyes and try to imagine the tarot card the woman had slid across the table when I left: a sun half-hidden by smoke, a rider on a horizon that looked like a promise and a threat at the same time. She’d told me I’d walked into a ride that would change my life. I’d laughed at the dramatics. But laughter tastes funny when you’re afraid.
When dawn lifts the sky, it doesn't feel like escape. It feels like an hour longer to wait. I move slowly, careful with my hands, as if anything I did could rattle the fragile thread holding me upright. I check my phone again: no messages, no strange calls. The silence feels heavy, like someone holding their breath on the other end. And there was the thought. The one that had slipped into every corner of my day since I’d found that photograph.
What if the spell was the problem? What if whatever was following me had been invited by curiosity, by the whisper of something different, by the scent of me in a pocket of air so ordinary it hid the extraordinary?
I want to be practical about it. Practical means logging everything, tracing back who’d had access to the shop, who had keys, which customers lingered too long. Practical means telling Reaper and letting him rip the world open, letting his fury bathe me in safety until nothing could touch me. Practical also means calling Ghost and letting him be the dagger he so likes to carry across his chest.
But practical also means admitting I was afraid. And admitting that means admitting I’ve been wrong a hundred times about wanting certain kinds of danger because sometimes danger comes with a laugh and a hand on your back and the wrong kind of possessive light in someone’s eyes.
So, I do the only thing I can control. I read the cards again, slower than usual, fingers steady. I set up talismans where they wouldn’t be obvious but would be close enough to bite, an old coin in the register, a sprig of rue under the counter, a scrap of iron hidden on the back shelf. I number the locks on the storeroom with the kind of logic that made sense to me, three clicks forward, two back. I hang a small bell by the door that chimes once for anyone who leaves without permission, a stupid little thing that makes me feel like I still have a line of sight even when I don’t.
I don’t tell Reaper. I don’t tell Ghost. I told Briar because she saw me through my own lies, andbecause she was a bright, ridiculous person who made fear less heavy by being incandescent about it.
At dusk I catch my reflection in the shop window, soft hair, sharp jaw, dark eyes, someone who knows how to fight in a thousand small and ordinary ways. I keep all my weapons close, but beyond that I keep moving. I walk the street where the light hits the bricks cold and hard, like everything was carved into the city’s memory. I listen. I watch.
Somewhere, a motorcycle coughs to life and the sound splits the night open. There is a shape in the doorway of the clubhouse silhouette I recognize with a jolt and a thing that feels suspiciously like hope tangled up with fear, Ghost. He stands like a dark promise in the doorway, shoulders loose but ready. For a moment I think about walking straight to him, leaning on him like a rope. For a whole second, I want that, want to let him be the danger that feels oddly like safety.
But I don’t. Slow burn, I remind myself. Not everything that wants a fire needs to be lit. I step inside the shop and close the door behind me. The bell chimes a single, small note. The city hums on. The charm in my pocket warms at my thigh like a heartbeat.
Someone is watching. Someone is waiting. And I still aren’t sure if the spell has brought the danger tome or if the spell has revealed something that had always been there, patient, and hungry.
Either way, I’m already in too deep.
Chapter Four
Ghost
They say trust your gut.
Problem is, mine’s never been quiet. Not since Fallujah. Not since that final op that went sideways in a way no one likes to talk about. The voice in my chest, the one that used to shout orders at four in the morning over a sandstorm, never found the off switch when I came home. It learnt new rhythms. It learnt to watch for patterns that didn’t belong. It hummed like a wire pulled tight.
And tonight? That old war drum was banging low and steady in the pit of my stomach. Something was coming. Something ugly. I just didn’t know from where yet.
Reaper calls me into church long after most of the noise has died down for the night. The clubhouse has that after-hours smell, stale smoke, spilled beer, the sticky film from a thousand hands. I step in and the light feels too bright for the room, but Reaper keeps the candles low, like he prefers decisions made in the shadow.
The table is empty, candles flickering low. Just him, leaning back in the head chair, arms folded, jaw tight. No need for introductions. He never wasted time with pleasantries when it was about family.
I shut the door behind me. “This about your sister?”
He looks up slowly. “What gave it away?”
“Same look you had the night you put a bullet through that trafficker in Shreveport.” I say it like a joke, but the memory sits between us like a warning.
He smirks. Barely. “She hasn’t told me shit. But I know her. And I know when something’s under her skin.”
“She has always been good at hiding it.”
