Page 22 of When I Accidentally Summoned a Demon

“Hound,” she says.

The word lands in my chest like a stone dropped in still water. I don’t move. I don’t breathe.

Hound.

Dog, yes. She knows dog—she says it whenever she sees our neighbor’s beagle. But hound is not a toddler word. Hound is ancient. Hound is something that hunts.

Where did she learn that?

The black tourmaline pendant at my collarbone goes warm. Not body-warm. Not a lazy warmth. This is a live wire. It’s pulsing. I’ve worn it on a cord since Rick. I recharged it under the last full moon. It warms like that when something near me is not what it appears to be. My other hand closes around it beneath my shirt.

Across the street, the man takes one single step toward the curb.

I pick Bethie up. She wraps her legs around my waist and presses her face into the side of my neck without a sound. Her tiny hand finds the cord of my pendant and holds it, like she already knows what it’s for.

I don’t run. Running draws attention. Running is an invitation.

I put her in the stroller and walk quickly, back the way we came, north toward home. I keep my gaze forward. Don’t look back. Look around.

At the end of the first block, I glance casually over my shoulder. The sidewalk across the street is empty. No man. No dog. Not even a disturbance in the leaf litter at the curb.

The pendant goes cool.

I don’t slow down. I only stop once to give Bethie a new toy. Now, I go through my back gate, down the cracked concrete path, up the back porch steps. I fumble my keys out of the diaper bag, pick Bethie up while she hums a low sound into my collarbone.

The tether catches the moment I push open the door—a familiar warmth threading up from my sternum to meet something just inside.

The second I step from the kitchen into the main room, Valefar rushes to our side.

10

Valefar

ONE HOUR EARLIER

Vesper’s dwelling is a bewildering place when she is absent.

Not unpleasant. Simply bewildering.

I have spent the past couple of hours in a state of intense cataloguing. I received her instruction to read as a sacred covenant.

Now, I know a great deal about weather patterns and cloud formations.

I have also matched nearly every object in Goodnight Moon to its counterpart somewhere in Vesper’s dwelling—the great green room is not so different from this one.

The social conduct of manners appeared in the family of large bears whose treehouse I find deeply suspicious, as other texts contradict that a cave is the dwelling place of such creatures.

I sat with the small bird from Are You My Mother?, my nerves nearly fried until the snort returned the feathered offspring to its nest.

And then there was The Runaway Bunny. I have read it four times.

The story is simple: a small rabbit tells its mother that it will run away. The mother calmly says that she will follow. Whatever the small rabbit becomes, the mother will become the thing that brings it back. The rabbit runs through every transformation it can conceive of, and each time, the mother is already there.

At the end, the small rabbit says it might as well stay. The mother offers it a carrot.

I set the book face-up on my knee and regarded the ceiling of Vesper’s dwelling for a few long moments before turning to the television show.

A program about a group of humans who appear to live in an impractically large apartment and spend a great deal of time arguing in a coffee establishment. I have watched approximately two episodes. Their difficulties seem solvable. I do not understand why they do not simply communicate more efficiently.