Page 20 of When I Accidentally Summoned a Demon

And I feel light as a feather.

Not free exactly—just a weight lifted off, an intense sense of relief. Valefar is the one who suffers when there’s too much distance between us. I remember how he dropped to his knees, screeching in agony, but this morning, apparently, he’s fine. Or at least quietly fine. Quiet enough that I’m not sprinting back inside.

I don’t know if it’s the daylight. Or Bethie being with me. Or the fact that we—well. We bonded in the most aggressively biological way two beings could. Twice.

Probably a combination of all three reasons. And I’ll take it.

St. Johns in June is its own kind of beautiful, the kind that doesn’t try hard because it doesn’t have to. The big Douglas firs bordering my property on the north side cast long speckled shadows across the road, and the air still carries that green, ancient smell of the Cascades right up to the edge of my yard. Three blocks east, the neighborhood gets a little more proper—actual sidewalks, the occasional neatly painted mailbox, a couple of older craftsman houses with tomato cages in the front yards.

Green shoots have popped out of the dirt. Dandelions riddling fields like hundreds of little yellow suns. The leafy canopies are full and bursting with life.

But right here on my block, we’re still on the seam. Civilization on one side. The watchful forest on the other. I’ve always liked living in the seam.

Bethie likes the stroller. She likes gnawing on the teething toys and shaking the rattlers while her eyes soak in every scrap of the world around her. Always so observant.

Sometimes, she wants to get out and toddle near the big trees, which she treats as friends, hugging them as if they were lonely giants. I don’t rush her. We play tag. And I take snapshots on my phone the rest of the time.

Due to the delays, we arrive nearly an hour or so later. Somehow, I know Valefar is fine. The tether between us feels tight but not suffocating. I like that it’s tight. I like that he’s still…here.

The playground is a modest little thing tucked at the end of Ivanhoe Street behind a community garden. A set of swings, a climbing structure with two plastic slides, a sandbox currently occupied by a sparrow having an existential crisis or something.

On a weekday morning, it’s ours. Most of the neighborhood has cleared out for work by now. Kids are at daycare or school. I can’t afford daycare.

That’s the beautiful thing about Vesper’s Vessels opening at three p.m.—I keep witchy hours, and I’m not even slightly sorry about it. On weekends, we open obscenely early.

But I get undivided time with my daughter every weekday.

Speaking of…

After parking the stroller by the picnic bench, I lean over to unstrap Bethie. She slaps my cheek with a small, sticky hand. “Mama.”

“Hello to you, too,” I tell her.

“Valwfar.”

I lift my brows, then smile, rubbing noses with her. So observant. So alert. She’s on a name-by-name basis now.

I settle her into the baby swing, give her a push, and let my brain start untangling its immediate issue, which is not, for once, my disaster of an ex or the visitation emails piling up in my archive folder like radioactive waste. And the debt collectors sniffing around.

It’s the seven-foot demon currently sitting in my family room, reading children’s books, getting a crash course in pop culture, and learning what a spatula is.

It’s not exactly an issue. Just…a complication.

I can’t leave Valefar home alone. With my luck, he’d attack the washing machine and any other terrifying household appliance. He needs supervision. Active, alert, fully caffeinated supervision, and I am the only qualified candidate within a thousand miles.

Which means he’s coming to work with me.

I push Bethie higher and let that thought settle. She kicks her legs, head tipped back, delighted.

Valefar cannot walk through St. Johns in just my ex’s sweatpants. My shop does have a clothing rack—witchy linens, velvet cloaks, the kind of dramatic choices my regulars love—and if that doesn’t sort it, there are at least three thrift shops within a mile of the shop. I should call Manny and ask him to come an hour early. Just in case we need to browse.

Manny. God. Manny Reyes. Emmanuel, technically, but he goes by Manny, which I maintain is the universe’s finest joke, watches Bethie when I’m at the shop. He is the best “manny” I have ever had; he is absolutely unshockable, and he is arriving at my house in approximately ninety minutes.

I cannot leave Valefar there with him.

Not because Manny can’t handle a demon. He absolutely could. But Valefar is tall, bronze, and catastrophically built, and Manny has a very specific and enthusiastic type.

I’m doing Valefar a favor, really. He’s mine, and mine goes where I go.