Page 13 of The Summoning Spell (The Holiday Glitch #1)

Epilogue: The Devil You Knew

B lair opened her front door the day after Halloween morning and froze.

The chill of dawn brushed her bare arms, but that wasn’t what stopped her. It was the pumpkin.

There, on her porch, sat a single, perfect pumpkin, the day after Halloween. No note, no ribbon, no context.

Merely a carving.

At first glance, it looked decorative, ornate, perhaps overambitious.

But something about it tugged at her eyes like it didn’t want to be looked at directly.

Not all at once. Swirls curved into sharp lines.

Nested circles layered into patterns that felt sentient.

The design shimmered when the sun kissed it, as if the air itself were holding its breath.

Her heart began to race.

She stepped closer. The static built on her skin, as it does when you stand beneath a sky seconds before a lightning strike.

And then, like a page turning in a book she hadn’t known she was reading, the runes shifted .

It changed into four little words.

Will you marry me?

Her breath caught. The world narrowed to a pinpoint and expanded in the same instant. She blinked, once, twice, as if testing whether she was dreaming. But the porch stayed solid beneath her feet. The air smelled like cinnamon and cold.

Then,

Ashar stepped into view from the side of the porch, like a shadow that had finally decided to claim the light. Slow, deliberate. The gold wash of morning made him look almost holy, as if holiness wore black jeans and boots and the same ridiculous red leather jacket he refused to part with.

He was smiling. Not the wicked grin he wore when he was being clever. Not the teasing smirk he gave before doing something unholy to her against a wall.

This smile was soft and open.

Molten gold in human form.

He held out a ring.

It looked forged, not crafted. Like someone had pulled it from the center of the earth, obsidian-black with veins of ember-glow, set in a band that shimmered with shifting runes. Not symmetrical. Not smooth.

But unmistakably hers.

“I figured,” Ashar said, voice low and steady, “if you were going to marry a demon, it should be with a magical pumpkin.”

Blair laughed, or possibly sobbed. She wasn’t sure. Her chest ached in the best way. Her eyes burned.

“What if I say no?” she asked, voice barely above a whisper.

He stepped closer, took her hand, lifted it gently, reverently, as if she were something sacred and the world might stop if he dropped it.

“Then I’ll keep haunting you,” he murmured, pressing a kiss to her knuckles, “until you change your mind.”

She threw her arms around him like her body had made the decision before her brain could catch up.

“Then it’s a yes,” she whispered into his shoulder, into the universe, into fate.

* * *

They married a year later.

Not in a church, nor in a courthouse.

But in a haunted greenhouse on the edge of town. A place where ivy tangled around broken glass, and the fog rolled in like an honored guest. The air had the scent of moss and rain and something beyond recollection.

Ashar’s world shimmered just beneath the veil, visible in the candlelight, the mirrors, the reflections in the still water. Runes floated in the air like fireflies. The boundary between realms didn’t dissolve that day. It just stepped aside.

Maya officiated.

Unqualified in every conventional sense. But spiritually chaotic, cosmically correct, and absolutely thrilled to be there. She wore a black sequined jumpsuit called Ashar “hot Satan” at least three times and nearly set her cue cards on fire with a stray spell spark.

Blair didn’t flinch.

Ashar only laughed.

The vows were improvised.

The magic wasn’t .

When they kissed, the greenhouse bloomed, flowers bursting from vines that hadn’t bloomed in decades, petals unfolding like secrets. The air pulsed with energy, ancient and wild and deeply personal.

* * *

Blair never went back to her old life.

Not because she couldn’t, but because she didn’t want to.

She wrote instead.

More than only smut, though, yes, plenty of that, unapologetically. But also stories with teeth and softness. Stories about girls who cursed bad lovers and accidentally summoned better ones. Stories about women who weren’t broken, just unfinished.

Sometimes, in interviews, someone would ask what inspired her.

“When I start writing those books,” she’d say, lips curved in a secret smile, “a few women I know ended up meeting their partners in, glitchy ways.”

And if they pressed, because they always did, she’d lean in and whisper:

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you. But maybe that’s the fun of it.”

Blair got her happy ending.

Not perfect.

Not polished, but real.

And it turned out she’d been writing it all along.