Page 10 of The Summoning Spell (The Holiday Glitch #1)

Haunted, Not Cursed

A shar took her out.

No concerts or rooftop bars or surprise candlelit dinners, but on a date that fit perfectly for them, and perfectly suited their Midwestern surroundings.

The neighborhood had an old, easy charm, nothing curated, only worn sidewalks and the kind of fences people forgot to fix.

The kind of place with cracked sidewalks and lopsided fences, where fall clung to every branch.

Pumpkins sat in rows on porches, some carved with jagged grins, others painted with careful brushstrokes.

Skeletons lounged on lawn chairs and dangled from trees.

Somewhere, wind chimes made of bones, or maybe just enthusiastic metal, sang in the dusk.

Blair wore a black skirt, fishnets, black heels, and a leather jacket that offered zero warmth but looked incredible. Fingerless gloves completed the look, one with an additional hole in the thumb that annoyed her the whole walk.

Ashar didn’t need gloves, or a coat, or the knit beanie she made him wear anyway “for disguise,” which made him look less like an otherworldly sex deity and more like someone’s Instagram boyfriend.

He didn’t complain. When they held hands, Blair tried not to notice how warm his skin was, or how his fingers fit around hers like he’d done it before. Like he remembered it from another life.

They stopped at a food truck glowing gold beneath a string of twinkle lights. She ordered hot cider, and he got one too.

She looked at him, “It’s part of the aesthetic.”

Blair took her cider, her fingers brushing his for a second. The cup felt too warm in her hands, as if it might melt, like she might melt.

He took it without a word, fingers curling around the paper like it was something important.

On a bench between the trees, they shared fried dough dusted with cinnamon sugar. They tore off pieces, not quite looking at each other as they licked the sweetness from their fingers. It almost felt like high school, but more fragile, more real.

Ashar laughed at something she said about pumpkin spice being a government conspiracy.

“I don’t understand everyone’s obsession with pumpkin spice,” she said, licking sugar from her thumb. “The smell is fantastic, but apple cider is the superior taste by far.”

Blair tucked her knees up on the bench and leaned into his side like it was the most natural thing in the world. But under it all, under the cider and the lights and the shallow fall air, she still felt it.

The static beneath her skin, the countdown, the goodbye, quiet and heavy, and waiting at the edges. They didn’t speak much on the way home, because they didn’t need to.

They walked close, shoulders brushing. Every now and then, Ashar would look at her like he was trying to memorize her silhouette against the amber streetlights.

Blair pretended not to notice. She didn’t want to say it, didn’t want to make it real, but she was already grieving him.

* * *

That night, when they undressed, it wasn’t hurried. No fumbling, no frantic heat, just slow movements, quiet as breath. It wasn’t about lust, it wasn’t even about need, it was something softer.

Something Sadder.

It was worshipful.

Ashar stood in front of her, bathed in golden windowlight, and Blair reached for the hem of her shirt like she was unwrapping something sacred. Her hands trembled, not from nerves, but from the weight of what they both knew: this might be the last time.

He helped her, peeling the fabric over her head, his knuckles grazing her ribs like a kiss. She undid his buttons with shaking fingers, revealing skin in slow inches, inked, warm, impossibly real. His chest rose and fell like he was trying to stay calm, but his eyes never left hers.

When they were bare, she didn’t cover herself, and he didn’t look away.

He touched her like she might vanish, palming her hip, tracing her collarbone, reverent in every motion.

Not just want, not even love, no, this was something older, something bigger, like she’d always been carved into him, long before this night.

Then he kissed her, slow, unhurried, like time didn’t matter.

Blair curled her fingers in his hair and pulled him with her to the bed.

The kiss deepened, and with it came a shift, Softness, yes, but also ache.

Longing, sharpened into something knife-edged.

Ashar moved over her, slid between her thighs with the kind of reverence reserved for gods and dying stars.

He didn’t tease, he didn’t speak.

He entered her slowly, with a breath caught in his throat, like he was crossing a threshold he’d never return from.

Blair gasped, eyes fluttering shut, her hands gripping his shoulders as he sank into her, inch by aching inch.

They moved in silence.

No crafted moans, no whispered promises, just breathe, Heartbeat, and the creak of the bed frame as they rocked together in quiet surrender.

His forehead pressed to hers. Her legs wrapped around his waist.

Every thrust was a goodbye she couldn’t say out loud.

His mouth brushed her jaw, her shoulder, her ear. He whispered something between kisses, not in English, not in any language she knew.

But she felt it, in the way his voice trembled, and in the way his hands shook, like a vow.

Her orgasm rose slowly, like a tide against stone. When it broke, it was quiet, just a shudder, a gasp, a soft cry pressed into his neck. Her tears came then, too, silent and startling.

Ashar held her through it, still moving, still inside her, as if he stopped, she’d disappear.

When he came, it wasn’t a cry; it was breathless, devastated.

Final.

He kissed her like he was dying there, like a part of him already had.

Afterward, they lay tangled in sweat and shadow, skin to skin, bare in every way.

Ashar brushed her hair back with reverent fingers. Whispered her name like it meant more than anything he’d ever known.

Blair blinked away the tears she wasn’t ready to own.

“Don’t make this harder than it already is,” she whispered.

Ashar kissed her forehead, but he didn’t promise anything, because he knew he couldn’t.

Blair sat on the edge of the bed long after Ashar fell asleep, her body still humming from everything he’d given her. Her skin smelled like cinnamon and sex and something older. Her heart, traitorous thing, felt full in a way that terrified her.

Because she knew the end was coming.

And this? This was the part where people always left.

* * *

She pulled on the hoodie he’d worn the day before; it still smelled like him, and she padded into the living room where he lay sprawled across her couch, one arm over his head, bare chest rising and falling in steady rhythm.

He looked peaceful. Human, almost. Like he belonged in this life she’d spent years trying to make feel like hers.

Maybe that was the scariest part.

She knelt beside him, heart hammering like a curse she couldn’t take back.

“Ashar,” she whispered. “Wake up.”

His eyes opened instantly, lashes heavy, mouth soft. “Blair?”

“I need to do something,” she said, voice thin. “And I need you to let me.”

Ashar sat up slowly, sensing something had shifted. “What is it? ”

She reached for his hand, brought it to her heart, then lowered it, pressing it against his chest.

“I release you,” she said, trembling. “I unsummon you. I break the bond.”

She’d been taught, somewhere, maybe not in words, but in patterns, that love was a storm you boarded the windows for. Those who were smart left before the wind hit. She’d always believed that was survival. Maybe it still was, perhaps it wasn’t.

There was a moment of silence while the words sank in.

“Blair, what did you do?”

She closed her eyes. “You’re free.”

Ashar didn’t move, but something in the air snapped tight, like a string pulled too far.

“I can’t lose you,” she said, voice shaking. “So I’m choosing to leave first. It’s what I always do. I’m better at endings than hope.”

Ashar’s jaw clenched. “That’s not true.”

“Yes, it is,” she snapped. “And if I let you stay, if I let myself want this, really want this, what happens when the magic decides I’m done? What happens when it rips you away, and I’m left with the echo of something that was never mine?”

“You think this is mercy?” he asked softly.

She swallowed. “I think it’s the only way I don’t destroy you.”

His voice cracked, not with anger, but devastation. “You think letting me go is love?”

“I think it’s survival.”

His expression shattered like glass.

“I wasn’t just summoned,” he said, voice breaking. “I chose to come. I fought to stay.”

“I know,” she whispered. “That’s what makes it worse. ”

The air cracked.

“Blair,” he said quietly, like her name alone might be enough to anchor him.

But it wasn’t.

He stood slowly, bare, and wrecked.

“You’re not cursed,” he said. “But you’re sure as hell haunted.”

The air popped, the wax cracked, something on the bookshelf fell with a soft, final thud. And just like that, he was gone.

No burst of flame, no bright flash of light, just air, cold, and too still.

Blair sank, hoodie sleeves pulled over her hands, and whispered the only thing she couldn’t say out loud:

“Don’t go.”

But she was already alone. Blair’s body collapsed onto the floor.

Her hands wouldn’t stop shaking. She pressed her face to the rug, as if the floor could anchor her. As if silence could stitch her back together.

She didn’t cry, not at first, at least. She was too used to loss. But when the tears came, they came like floodwater. She didn’t know how long she had stayed there. Long enough to forget how to breathe without him in the room.

Maya called around noon.

Blair didn’t answer.

Maya called again.

And again.

On the fourth try, Blair picked up, voice barely audible.

“He’s gone.”

Maya was quiet for a beat too long. “Gone how?”

“I unsummoned him. ”

A long, stunned silence.

Then: “You what?”

“I had to,” Blair whispered. “He was going to disappear, eventually. I just beat the magic to it.”

“You didn’t beat it,” Maya snapped. “You let it win.”

Blair swallowed. “I did it to protect him.”

“Bullshit,” Maya said, voice rising. “You did it to protect yourself from hope. Because if you let yourself believe something could last, and it didn’t, it would wreck you.”

Blair said nothing.

“You didn’t even let him stay,” Maya said, her voice low.

“I couldn’t,” Blair started, then she stopped. What did she want to say? I couldn’t wait? I couldn’t hope? I couldn’t let him prove me wrong?

Her voice cracked, quiet and raw. “I couldn’t handle him leaving on his own.”

“Does it feel better now that you controlled it?”

“No,” Blair said, with her heart in her throat.

Later that night, Blair sat on the floor beside the cold wax pool of a long-dead candle.

There were no spells this time. No glitter. No magic.

Just her. Her hoodie. Her grief.

“I’m sorry,” she said softly. “I didn’t mean to.”

She wiped her eyes with her sleeve and glanced at the doorway, half-hoping it would open.

But nothing happened.

Not yet.