Page 3 of The Summoning Spell (The Holiday Glitch #1)
She was draped in a towel she didn’t remember putting on, eyeliner half-melted into soft crescent moons beneath her eyes, a birthday candle stabbed into a shot glass on the kitchen table like some half-assed Pinterest altar.
There was glitter in her hair.
A fresh crack on her phone screen, which she didn’t recall happening.
The apartment smelled like old incense and the lingering scent of burnt popcorn.
“Blessed be the Target clearance section,” she muttered, flicking a handful of expired glitter over the flickering flame.
It fizzled out immediately, just perfect.
She huffed and thumbed back to the TikTok, rewatching the girl with suspiciously perfect winged eyeliner and a voice like she drank moonlight for breakfast, chant about energy transfers and karmic dick justice.
Blair didn’t believe in magic, but she also didn’t believe in guys texting about Plan B while she was still washing their sweat off her thighs, and yet, here she was.
Her stomach twisted. She didn’t know if it was the wine, the popcorn, or something heavier curling beneath her ribs. Something she didn’t want to name.
She relit the candle using the stove burner and whispered the words like a joke she hoped would hit something ancient and petty:
For every woman he tricks, may his dick go soft. May it bend like overcooked spaghetti. May his ego shrink with every ghosted text. May his nights be haunted by the ache he leaves behind. May something old and vengeful hear me.”
It wasn’t Latin, but it felt right.
She looked around for something else witchy, finally settling on a bath bomb from her quarantine self-care phase, regret, and cucumber melon scent crumbling in her fist.
She crumbled it like sage and waved it around with the solemnity of someone absolutely winging it.
“From this moment on, may no woman suffer his stubby sword. So mote it be.” She snorted, “Or whatever.”
The kitchen light flickered weakly, and she stopped dead in her tracks.
“Old wiring,” she muttered, though her voice came out too thin..
The glitter shimmered like it had a pulse, like it didn’t fully belong to her.
Then something growled; it didn’t come from outside, not from a dog, or the wind, or anything she could blame on city noise—it came from inside her apartment.
Her spine went rigid, and she grabbed for her phone.
Dead.
Of course .
Then the lights cut out.
“Shit.”
Then, something moved, heavy, not footsteps exactly, more like a presence with weight.
From the hallway that led to her bedroom. The part of the apartment where no one should be. She didn’t think; she just flung the shot glass at the shadow.
“I have a black belt!” she yelled.
She did.
It was a fashion one.
A shape emerged from the dark like the shadow had made him.
Tall, Broad-shouldered, and Shirtless. His skin caught the candlelight like burnished bronze, ink winding down his arms in shifting, liquid patterns.
Horns? Perhaps, or at least black hair styled to resemble them. His eyes glowed, and not metaphorically. Like, actually glowing. And he smirked, the kind of smirk that said he’d seen her naked and remembered everything.
“Blair,” he purred. “Like the Blair Witch.”
Her mouth dried up.
“How do you know that? Do I know you?”
He took a step forward, barefoot on tile.
“Not yet. But you summoned me.”
“Oh. Oh hell no.” Blair blinked hard, stepping back like that might un-summon the six-foot fever dream in her kitchen. “Wait. Are you like, karma in abs? A ghost with a dick? A, God, I can’t believe I’m saying this out loud, sex goblin?”
The stranger tilted his head, lips curling. “Not quite. I’m what you’d call a pleasure demon.”
Her laugh came out cracked. “Of course. Because this week wasn’t surreal enough already.”
He smiled, slow and devastating. “And based on that spell? You’re drowning in unmet needs. ”
Blair crossed her arms over her towel.
“I am very satisfied. Thank you.”
“Don’t lie. The scent of your unmet needs is stronger than that pumpkin spice wax burner.”
He gestured casually to the wax melter bubbling beside her microwave.
She didn’t scream, mostly because her vocal cords were playing dead, and also because, if she was being honest, he was stupidly hot. Not gym-bro hot, not movie-star hot. More like: if every forbidden fantasy she’d repressed since puberty formed a union and took human shape.
He looked human, at first, until you noticed little things.
The way his tattoos shifted, like ink suspended in water.
The flicker in his eyes.
The way his presence filled the room, not like a person, but like a weather system.
“Okay,” she whispered, inching toward the coat rack. “Okay, okay. This is a dream, or some delusion, or I fell asleep watching Supernatural , and this is my brain’s messed-up fanfic.”
He raised an eyebrow.
“You called. I answered.”
She caught her reflection in the dark window—mascara streaked, towel slipping, glitter clinging like cosmic dandruff.
Maybe I didn’t summon a demon to destroy my ex, she thought. Maybe I summoned one to stop destroying myself.
And perhaps that was worse.
She shook the thought off before it could settle too deeply.
“No, no, no. I drunkenly cursed my ex’s dick with a birthday candle. I did not invite a six-foot-tall demon thirst trap into my home.”
He sniffed the air like a sommelier.
“There’s also wine. And a whiff of self-loathing.”
She grabbed her Swiffer and pointed it like a cross.
“Back. Back, foul creature!”
He blinked.
“Is that a mop?”
“It’s lemon-scented justice, asshole!”
He bit his lip to keep from laughing. Or from something else entirely. “Do you want me to go, Blair?”
She hesitated. “Wait. Go where? How are you even here?”
“You summoned me.” He moved forward, slow, like gravity bent toward her. “And I’m bound to fulfill the desires you haven’t been given. You’re not satisfied, are you?”
Something inside her clenched. Because no, she wasn’t. Not emotionally, not sexually, not spiritually, not even metaphysically.
And somehow, this demon could smell it on her like cheap perfume.
Even if he was a hallucination, he felt like the first person who’d actually seen her in longer than she wanted to admit. Not just the jokes and the hard shell, but the loneliness she never said out loud. And God help her, part of her wanted to be seen.
She adjusted her grip on the Swiffer, but it was hard to look intimidating with mint-green plastic and anxiety sweat down her spine.
He didn’t seem concerned. In fact, he looked delighted.
Like a man who knew her. Like a man who knew what it would take to unmake her.
“What’s your name?” she asked, aiming for control and landing somewhere around breathless.
He tilted his head, amused. “Do you want my true name, or the one you can pronounce without rupturing a blood vessel? ”
“Oh, good. You’re also a cryptic asshole.” She edged toward the couch. “So you’re really a demon?”
“You can call me Ashar, and I’m a pleasure demon,” he said again, as if it were on a business card. “Bound to fill your needs, whatever they are, physical, emotional, or carnal. Whatever your date left in ruins.”
Her jaw tightened. “I’m not neglected.”
He looked at her legs. “You smell like disappointment and Axe body spray.”
She gasped. “Excuse me.”
“And glitter,” he added. “Which, honestly, is a choice.”
She hurled a throw pillow at him.
He caught it without effort, grinning. “Fiery. I like that.”
She narrowed her eyes. “So if I believe you, which I don’t, you’re only here until I’m, what, fulfilled?”
“That’s how the bond works.” His voice dipped lower, wrapping around her like silk. “You called because you were left wanting. When you’re no longer needing, I’m gone.”
And that?
That made her stomach twist in ways no dream hallucination had the right to.
Because no, she wasn’t okay, she hadn’t been in a long time. And the worst part? She’d stopped believing anyone would ever notice.
He stepped closer. Not threatening, just undeniably there. The surrounding air shimmered, like heat off asphalt. The candle flame leaned toward him.
Her breath hitched.
“Okay,” she said shakily, “you’re very confident for someone who might be a figment of my trauma response.”
He smirked. “I’d prove I’m real, but beautiful, I’m not sure you could handle it.”
Her whole body betrayed her. Heat pooled low in her stomach, and her grip on reality frayed like cheap lace. It had been a long time since someone called her beautiful; she heard sexy, hot, but beautiful?
She answered before her mind could stop it.
“Try me.”