Ride For Me, Die For Me.

Chapter 24: What the Bones Remember

Justin’s P.O.V.

We hit New Orleans just as the sun bled into the horizon, painting the sky in the kind of bruised purple that made the whole city feel haunted.

It wasn’t the first time I’d been here. But this time? It wasn’t for wandering the Quarter or slipping into a second-line crowd with a flask tucked in my waistband. Nah. This was blood work. Root work. The kind of visit you don’t tell the city you’re making, ’cause she’ll start whispering your name before you ready.

Monica pulled off the main drag and turned down a side road with no street signs. Gravel crunched beneath the tires like old bones, and Spanish moss brushed the windshield like reaching fingers. The houses thinned out until there was nothing but marshland and shadows.

“You sure he’s still here?” I asked.

Monica smirked. “He ain’t left. You know that. Folks like him can’t leave. They are the place.”

I knew where we were going before she even stopped the car.

The Crossroads of St. Étienne.

Buried behind bayou water and a cemetery the maps forgot. A place older than Louisiana, older than any line on a page. My father used to call it the place where things get chosen.

Monica cut the engine. “You good?”

I stared ahead. A dirt path snaked between two willow trees, leading into the thick brush where fireflies flickered in unnatural colors—green, blue, violet, like bruised stars.

“I’m breathing,” I said.

“Barely.”

I grabbed the duffel from the back seat. Not much inside—just what I needed. Bone, iron, salt, a wrapped bundle of my father’s handwriting. And at the bottom, the charm Waiya made me when she didn’t know what she was doing yet—but her spirit did.

Monica didn’t follow me this time. “He said to come alone.”

“Of course he did.”

The walk to the Crossroads felt longer than it used to. Or maybe I was just older, heavier. My feet sunk into the damp earth, and the heat clung to me like regret. Something buzzed low in the trees. The kind of sound you don’t hear with your ears.

When I reached the clearing, the night shifted.

Four stones marked the cardinal points. A post stood dead center, draped with red cloth and offerings—coins, tobacco, bone dice, and a broken rosary. At the base, someone had left a bowl of black salt and a crow feather.

The smell hit me next—rum, blood, and jasmine.

He was already there.

“Been wonderin’ when you’d crawl back,” the voice drawled.

I turned slow.

There he stood. Papa Toussaint—keeper of the Crossroads. He wasn’t my blood, but he raised my father in the old ways, and by extension, raised part of me. Dressed in all black, wide-brimmed hat, eyes like oil slicks. He had a cane he didn’t need and a grin that knew too much.

“I ain’t crawlin’,” I said.

He chuckled. “Then you better be ready to walk through.”

He motioned to the circle of stones. “This ain’t Grove work, boy. This here? This judgment. Crossroads don’t give power. They take somethin’ first.”

“I came to remember,” I said. “To unlock what I turned away from.”

His smile dropped. “Then kneel.”

I stepped inside, knelt before the post. The earth hummed beneath my knees like a heartbeat.

Papa Toussaint placed a hand on my head. “You come with fire in your blood. You come with her name on your soul. But love alone don’t protect. Blood knows. Now, what do you offer to be worthy of what’s buried under your ribs?”

I didn’t speak.

I pulled out the charm Waiya made, pressed it to the ground, then unwrapped the bundle of my father’s notes—his words, his spells, bound in dried cedar bark and sinew. I added the small bone from my uncle’s altar.

“I offer my name,” I said. “My truth. My fear. And my promise.”

The wind rose. The flames around the offering bowls leapt higher.

Papa Toussaint’s eyes glinted. “Then the old ones will meet you halfway.”

I felt it hit me like thunder under the skin. My body seized. Breath gone. My back arched as heat raced up my spine.

Visions came in flashes—my father’s face, a serpent coiled in flame, Waiya glowing beneath a storm sky, Donquavious bleeding shadows into the ground, and something darker behind him, ancient and hungry.

I screamed without sound as the energy scorched through every vein, tearing out the cowardice I’d been hiding behind.

And just before everything went black, I heard Papa Toussaint whisper:

“When you rise, you gon’ know who you really are.”

Waiya’s P.O.V.

My breath slowed.

The room melted into something deeper—walls giving way to horizon, time dripping like honey through my veins. I could feel the earth shifting beneath me, slow and patient. The energy in the room pulsed in waves: smoke, bone, heartbeat, memory.

But then—another rhythm.

Not Granny’s, not Momma’s, not Nyla’s. A different beat. One I knew like I knew my own damn shadow.

Justin.

His energy moved like a low hum under my skin, grounded and fire-wrapped. He wasn’t in the room—wasn’t even in the city—but I felt him. Like he was thinking about me right then, his thoughts brushing the edges of mine. Worry, strength, grit. Something heavy in him, but he was carrying it anyway.

I tilted my head slightly. My eyes stayed closed, but my spirit stretched, reaching across whatever thread tied us together. And it was a thread—braided with smoke, blood, and whatever strange magic had been growing between us since the night he showed up on that porch.

“You feelin’ it?” Granny’s voice was far off, like I was underwater now.

“I feel… him,” I whispered.

Momma’s hand paused in the middle of another symbol. “Justin?”

I nodded.

“Then he walkin’ his path same time you walkin’ yours,” Granny said. “That ain’t coincidence. That’s alignment.”

“His energy…” I swallowed. “It’s steady. Heavy. But true.”

Momma exhaled like she understood something without needing to say it out loud.

“Then you draw from it, baby,” Granny said. “You pull it into your bones if it helps anchor you. Ain’t nothing wrong with leaning on what’s real.”

And he was real. Real as the pull in my chest, real as the memory of his voice when everything went dark. Real as the quiet promise I never asked for but felt every time he looked at me like I was something more than just the next burden to carry.

The fire in my blood responded to the thought of him—flaring, then calming, like his presence soothed something deep in me I hadn’t even realized was screaming.

I opened my eyes, just a crack.

The shadows on the wall shifted again. One of them—tall, familiar in a way I couldn’t name—leaned forward like it had been waiting for me to notice.

Granny was still working her circles of smoke. Momma was chanting low under her breath.

But me?

I was somewhere else entirely. Somewhere between the now and the never-was. Between my bloodline and my heartbeat. Between my pain and his presence.

And in that space, I finally understood.

I wasn’t fighting against the scar anymore.

I was fighting through it.

Justin’s energy wrapped around me like the last thread keeping me from unraveling.

Wherever he was… he hadn’t let go.

And neither would I.