Page 1 of When I Accidentally Summoned a Demon

1

Vesper

If anyone had told me ten years ago I’d be half-naked in the woods, chanting to old gods, I’d have shoved a cross up their ass.

I was in seminary back then. Funny how life strips the lace off your collar.

The humid June air clings to my skin. The night air feels expectant and full of promise. Especially with the harvest moon rippling ribbons of golden light through the leafy canopy. My favorite kind of night.

It smells of damp cedar, crushed pine needles, and the aggressive Persian jasmine I’ve planted near the house to mask the stench of my ex’s lingering stagnation. Every time I catch a whiff of that floral sweetness, it’s a reminder of how I’m the one who decides what this land smells like now.

Not Rick. Not the church. Just me.

I stand in the thick shadows of the Pacific Northwest forest, the kind of deep green which feels like something is watching you back. My toes sink into the cold moss and the soft as velvet, damp earth

Behind me, the electric fence hums low, the only thing separating my small sanctuary from the wild reality of the Cascades. Or maybe it’s separating the world from me. Regardless, it allows me to come out here buck naked if I want, ready to howl at the moon like it’s an old lover who still knows exactly where to touch.

Self-care is important after all.

Inside the house, the baby monitor clipped to the waistband of my slip remains silent. Bethie is finally down for the night, breath even as she dreams of bright colors and soft things, hopefully far away from the courtroom drama and the “visitation rights” emails I’ve been archiving like digital poison.

I pull a small, leather-bound volume from the moss at my feet. It’s an old book, one my mentor left to me at my shop, Vesper’s Vessels. The pages don’t just smell like old paper; they smell like ozone and burnt hair. It should unnerve me. But it doesn’t.

I’ve laid out the obsidian at the cardinal points, the smoke from the mugwort wand curling around my ankles like a ghost.

The old spell inside the pages practically begged me to recite it. Even the most infinitesimal chance to evict Rick from my life forever is worth any poison ivy or paranoia over glowing-eyed critters.

I clear my throat, my voice small but steady against the vast silence of the woods. This isn’t the Latin they taught us for the liturgy. This is older. Raunchier. Daring. Not that I expect this one to work. The other fifty-seven certainly didn’t. But if it means getting Rick out of the picture…

“Thief of peace and thief of time, leave this space and leave this clime.” I shove the words into the air. “By the salt and by the stone, take the weight that isn’t mine to own. Root the rot and purge the core, open wide the ancient door.”

The salt circle at my feet begins to sizzle.

I freeze. For one stupid second, all I can do is stare. Fifty-seven dead spells, and this is the one that decides to answer?

A faint pop snaps through the circle, like sparks from a bonfire. My pulse lurches. “Oh, shit.”

The popping escalates into a frantic, angry hiss. And then, as if the universe decided I wasn’t dramatic enough, a spark leaps from the obsidian and catches the hem of my vintage slip. “Son of a⁠—”

I hit the moss, doing the ‘stop, drop, and roll’ method through the damp dirt and the wet moss until the sludge covers my skin and the cold earth soaks the silk.

Finally, the pathetic orange flame dies.

I stand up, fuming. I’m covered in mud, the wet slip is clinging to my curves like a second skin, and I’m pretty sure I’ve ruined a three-hundred-dollar vintage piece.

I don’t cover myself. I don’t cross my arms in shame. I’m dirty, wet, and pissed off, and if the forest wants a show, it’s getting one for free.

The electric fence behind me erupts. Every hair on my body stands on end as a blinding surge of blue light arcs across the wires, like a guitar string snapped by a hand—if the hand belonged to a giant.

A sound like tearing parchment—a cosmic rip—echoes through the trees, and a body slams into the dirt inside my circle with the force of a fallen meteor.

A scream lodges in my throat. My breath leaves in tatters.

The man—if you can call him that—is face down in the dirt and moss, his large, graceless limbs sprawled. But he isn’t dead. He’s heaving, his bronze skin shimmering in the moonlight. Even through the mud on my eyelashes, I can see he’s less like a person and more like a work of art that’s been put through a meat grinder.

Two heads taller than me, he is bare-chested, muscles rippling under a sheen of sweat and a dark, viscous fluid that smells like sulfur and expensive leather. It pools into the moss, turning the green to a bruised black.

And then there are the horns. Real horns. Elegant, matte-black curves, ancient enough to have outlived the dinosaurs.