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.”
