Page 7 of Accidentally Summoned an Incubus

Surprisingly, Mom’s good mood lasted a full five minutes before she glanced over at me, her knuckles slightly white on the steering wheel, and said, “Okay, dear. Give it to me. What have you done?”

When I told her how Chad had propositioned me, she turned the color of hell-flame, her brows knitting together. This was, fortunately, short-lived as I told her about the hex I’d cast.

“You hexed his penis off?” she sputtered, trying desperately not to laugh.

“Only a little bit,” I said. “I didn’t have much to work with to begin with.”

She was practically howling with laughter. “Oh, Goddess, I wish I could have seen that. Oh! I will, at the trial!”

I was not looking forward to that part. When the head of the coven finally finished reading over my paperwork, as I supported my carpal tunnel wrist, everyone would have the chance to watch a blow-by-blow account of my ordeal before they passed judgment.

I knew Mom wouldbe okay watching it. She would know I was never in any real danger, and I could have done a hell of a lot more than hex his favorite appendage off. But it was my dad who I was worried about. He could get a little... feral... where his family was involved. There was one time where we went on holiday to Disney World, the last place you’d think of someone trying to take advantage of a lone woman. Dad had taken me on the Haunted Mansion ride, while Mom, who’d queued with us despite having an intense fear of haunted houses (which was insane, given where we lived), made a last-minute claim that she had to use the bathroom. Dad had rolled his eyes and said to meet us at the exit of the ride. When we got off, she was nowhere to be seen. Dad immediately followed his mating pull to the nearest toilets, where he found Mom around the back, a look of determination on her face as a drunk man in some Mickey Mouse ears told her things my then four-year-old ears couldn’t understand. But I knew they were bad, because just as flames crackled in my mom’s palms, my father had closed the gap between them, his shadows creeping in tendrils from the surrounding foliage as he lifted the drunk man by the neck and hissed, “Apologize to my wife.”

“S-s-sorry!” the man had slurred, but my father still stared into the drunk man’s wide, fearful eyes. My father’s eyes glowed like brimstone as he squeezed.

“Arch,” my mom had pleaded. “Put him down. He’s apologized.”

My mother had been about to throw witchfire at the man, but whatever was brewing in my father was terrible enough for even my mother not to want him to use it. Finally, the tendrils of smoke crept back into the depths of the foliage, and my father dropped the man to the floor, casually straightening the strings of his vest top. “If you so much as look at my wife again, I will kill you.Slowly.”

If my dad saw what Chad had attempted to do to me, I hadno doubt that he would be on the first plane to Sacramento, and all that would be left of dear old Chad would be his shriveled up dick.

I chewed the inside of my lip. My mom had summoned my dad, and he loved her fiercely enough to kill for her. He loved her beyond fiercely. I truly believed he would burn this earth to the ground for her. It didn’t seem forced. He didn’t seem to be in servitude to her.

“Mom?” I asked tentatively.

“Yes, honey?”

“How does the summoning work?”

Mom’s grin literally stretched from ear to ear. She quickly righted herself, settling her face into a studious pose, even though she’d been waiting for this day since I’d turned eighteen and could legally perform the summoning.

“Well, you know how the summoning works, dear. You know the spell and what it entails. You just pop all the herbs that appeal to you into a cauldron of boiling water, and before the midnight bell ends on Samhain, simply drop a—”

“I know the technicalities, Mom, of course I do.” I tried my best to think of what exactly I was trying to ask my mother. “I mean... I know that our ancestors had made a Goddess-blessed bargain with a clan of incubi. And I know part of that bargain means that the demon we summon will be our mate. But...” Goddess, this was incredibly hard to articulate when I had to say it out loud. “But do they have a choice in it?”

“Hm?” Mom asked, her brows knitting in confusion.

“I mean, we have the choice, Mom. If I never partake in the Samhain summoning, then that is my choice. But the incubus we summon, they don’t have that luxury. What if they don’t want to be summoned? And then one day they’re just ripped from all that they know and love and forced into a bond thatthey never wanted?”

Mom’s eyes flicked to mine, and before I knew it, she was indicating and pulling onto the sidewalk.

She bit her lip. “Sweetie,” she said cautiously, “do you know how the mating bond works?”

I snorted. “Yes, Mom. You meet someone who is your other half in every other way. The ying to your yang, the Bill to your Ted, the Kermit to—”

“I get your point, dear. But do you knowwhywe have a mating bond? Did you ever wonder why it travels between species and across realms?”

I thought for a moment. “Uh... no... I don’t.”

“It’s becauseallmating bonds are fated. As in, Goddess blessed. Just because we summon our mates from the shadow realm doesn’t make the bond any less special. It’s fated, dear. As in, it was already fated that our ancestor would make that bargain, and that every demon in that clan was destined to be mated with one of our witches. It had been planned for eons. The how, where and why might be different, but it will happen regardless.” Surprisingly, my mother smiled. “Did your grandma ever tell you how she met her mate?”

I shook my head. My grandfather was a sex demon like the rest of the coven’s mates, so I’d always just assumed that she’d met him with the summoning.

“You get your stubbornness from her. She had the exact same notions as you, that if she summoned her mate, it wouldn’t be a real bonding. And so, like you, she went far, far away. And yet she still met him randomly in some grungy punk bar in London.”

My mouth hung open, and I didn’t know what to be more shocked by—the fact that the mating had happened regardless of the summoning, or the fact that my grandmother, head of our coven and never without her frilly white apron, had once been a punk.

“My point is, dear, do the summoning or don’t. It doesn’t matter. Your mate is fated to find you, regardless.”

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