Page 11 of The Summoning Spell (The Holiday Glitch #1)
Devil’s Night
B lair hadn’t really slept in two days.
Not since she woke to the cold side of the bed, empty, silent, haunted by the scent of smoke and sugar and something wild. Fading. Like a ghost who didn’t want to leave, but had.
At first, she told herself he’d gone out. Then she told herself he’d be back. By the second morning, she stopped lying.
The air felt wrong, still, tense, as if the building itself was missing something.
Every creak made her flinch, and silence shivered into sharp edges. Her apartment, once her messy sanctuary, now felt hollow. Not with grief, with almost, with the ache of what was nearly hers, and still might not be.
She tried to distract herself.
Cleaned like a woman possessed.
Reorganized her books by color, then alphabetized them just to be sure. Lined up her spices like they were soldiers.
Called Maya and pretended everything was fine.
It wasn’t .
By the time the sun bled down behind the skyline on the 30th, she was strung out, sleep-deprived, and wearing a hoodie that still smelled like him even though she hated herself for it.
Blair sat cross-legged, knees aching, sleeves stained with wax and regret.
She didn’t mean to pick up the chalk.
It just called to her.
Like a memory, or a muscle reaction, or maybe it was something older.
The faded sigils on her floor were nearly gone now, scuffed by time and hope and panic. But her fingers moved anyway. Re-tracing. Re-centering.
She whispered as she worked, not in Latin.
Just the truth.
“I wanted you to stay.”
The candle wouldn’t light. She used a match, then the stove, then a lighter.
Nothing caught.
Of course, it wouldn’t be easy. Magic never was.
She grabbed the last thing she hadn’t thrown away: the stupid birthday candle from the original spell. Bent. Half-burned.
Perfect.
She jabbed it into a chunk of old wax and muttered, “Fine. One more try.”
The flame caught, and so did the room, not with fire, but with presence. The air shifted. The walls hummed.
The Before was listening.
Blair swallowed. “I release the fear,” she whispered. “The part of me that thinks no one ever stays. That doesn’t trust love when it shows up.”
She placed her hand in the center of the sigil. The chalk sparked where her fingers touched.
“I offer something back,” she said. “A trade, not for sex, not for magic. For a choice.”
The flame pulsed.
“What do you offer?” the shadows seemed to ask.
She blinked back tears. “My idea of love,” she said. “The one that says it has to look like suffering, that I have to be broken for it to matter.”
The flame shot higher.
A glass on the counter trembled. Her plants leaned toward the sigil like pulled by gravity. The air itself grew heavy, as if it were holding its breath.
The sigil glowed beneath her palm.
Her voice cracked. “If I lose him again, I lose him, but I want him back. Not because I need him, because I chose him.”
Silence.
Then:
A sound outside.
Three sharp knocks.
BANG. BANG. BANG.
She sat bolt upright, heart rabbit-punching her ribs.
“It’s not Halloween yet!” she barked, voice raw from too many silent hours.
BANG. BANG. BANG.
She grabbed the bat, actual wood, cracked from a summer softball league she never finished, and crept to the door barefoot.
She threw it open, ready to swing.
And stopped.
Ashar stood there, framed in the doorway like temptation with a costume budget.
Wearing red. Not a shirt, and definitely not subtle.
Red like sin. Like statement. A leather jacket that clung to his shoulders like temptation.
Tight pants, fangs for flair, fake dollar-store horns, curled and gleaming, crowned his head.
A stuffed tail flicked lazily behind him like punctuation.
He looked every inch the devil he was rumored to be, and still unmistakably him.
He grinned like mischief incarnate.
She didn’t believe it at first. Her brain tried to fill in the blanks: a cruel prank, a dream, a hallucination dressed in red. But then he looked at her. And it was him.
“Miss me?”
Her throat locked. Her knees nearly followed.
“It’s Devil’s Night,” he said, stepping inside. His boots echoed off the hardwood. “Seemed appropriate.”
She swallowed. “But you left.”
“I had to,” he said, quieter now. “The magic pulled me back. But it didn’t break.”
She frowned. “Why not?”
Ashar took her hand, pressing it to his chest, solid and warm, yet impossible.
“The magic changed,” he said softly. “What started as a summons born of need has grown into something else. Love. That’s not a need, it’s a choice. The magic couldn’t unmake it, because it was never part of the original deal.”
Blair’s breath caught.
“You changed the terms,” he finished, voice like dusk and vows. “Without even realizing it.”
Her eyes stung.
“And now?” she whispered.
He smiled, not a cocky one. No, it was Soft.
“Now I can’t. You wanted someone who would choose to. And I did.”
The words cracked something wide open.
Joy. Fury. Relief. Grief. Hope.
She jerked her hand away, as if he’d seared her.
“Then why did you leave?” she snapped, voice tight. “Why did you let me feel, why let me believe?”
“I didn’t have a choice,” he said, voice rising with hers. “The magic yanked me out like a hook through bone. I had to fight my way back.”
She stared, lip trembling.
“Really?” she asked, barely breathing.
He paused. Let her believe it. Then shrugged.
“No. Just paperwork. Mountains of it. No one ever talks about the bureaucracy when you’re a demon.” He said with a smirk.
A strangled laugh burst out of her, wet and furious and disbelieving.
“You’re such an asshole.”
He shrugged. “You summoned a demon. We come in two varieties: terrifying, and hot with bureaucratic trauma.”
She grabbed a throw pillow off the couch and launched it at him.
It hit his face. He didn’t even blink.
“I deserved that,” he said.
She lunged, maybe to hit him, maybe to kiss him. It turned into both. He caught her, and he held her, letting her shake in his arms.
And for a while, there were no words, just her breathing into his chest. Just his arms wrapped around her like a vow.
And the steady, impossible beat of a heart that shouldn’t be real.
But was.