Page 31 of When I Accidentally Summoned a Demon

I hold his gaze for a second. Then I decide to just say it, because I don’t do coy, and I’ve never been good at performing. “You’ve barely known me for a day, Vale.” I let out a breath. “And you’re about to experience more of the real world. Including other people.” I pause, feeling faintly ridiculous for how much I mean this. “Let’s just say, you could have anyone you want. Today, out in the world, you could have people falling all over you.”

He lifts his brows. “I hope not. It would be quite inconvenient and uncomfortable.”

Despite myself, the smile comes. Lopsided, a little reluctant. “Falling all over you means anyone would want you. Imagine Manny flirting with you but…more.”

His expression shifts. He steps closer, and his hand moves from my chin to cup the side of my face with that enormous, unhurried warmth. The heat crawls under my skin, and yes, I am absolutely flushing, and no, I am not going to acknowledge it.

“Perhaps this is true,” he says. “But there is a phrase I have learned.” His voice drops, quieter, the low register of him being entirely serious. “I read it in the small rabbit book. I have been carrying it since.”

Something cautious and hopeful flutters in my chest.

“The rabbit ran,” he says. “To the mountain, to the river, to the crocus in the garden. And still the mother followed.” He tucks a few stray curls behind my ear. “I did not understand the story when I first read it. I read it four times.” A pause. “I understand now. Whatever you become, Vesper—whatever world you carry me into—I am already the one who follows. Hopelessly. Impossibly. Undyingly. I would follow you to the ends of the earth.”

The fitting room is very small. I am very aware of this.

I exhale slowly, and something I have been holding against my ribs since the moment he read that book out loud to my daughter quietly unfastens.

“Okay,” I say softly.

He tilts his head. “Only okay?”

“Okay,” I repeat, “and that was possibly the most devastating thing anyone has ever said to me in a fitting room.”

The corner of his mouth lifts.

I do a double check, commending him on his glamour still hiding his horns and tail. Rising on my toes, I kiss him, quick and warm, before I step back and press the curtain open. “Now come on. I have a shop to run.”

* * *

Vesper’s Vessels is not one thing. It has never been one thing. That’s the point.

The front half is the shop proper with warm amber lighting, exposed Douglas fir beams, and shelves floor to ceiling on the east wall. Apothecary jars line those shelves, filled with dried herbs, resins, flower petals in eight shades of purple, and glass bottles of oils I blend myself in the back on slow afternoons.

Crystal displays run along the center island—raw chunks of amethyst big as my fist, polished moonstones in small velvet dishes. Selenite towers catch the light like small moons.

A locked case rests near the register for the rarer pieces: moldavite, black tourmaline wands, a single raw ruby the size of a child’s thumb I picked up on a whirlwind visit to Salem, which I wrote off as a business expense.

There are hand-labeled tinctures and ritual candles and a corner rack of clothing, leaning heavily into velvet, gauze, and dramatic hemlines.

On the other side of the shop is the coffee bar. Twelve small tables, two worn leather chairs near the fireplace, and a long reclaimed-wood bar. Pendant lights glimmer low in smoked amber glass. The chalkboard menu above the espresso machine changes weekly.

Today we’re running a lavender oat latte, a cardamom cold brew, and a dark chocolate cortado, and my regular Tuesday crowd has already developed dependency issues with them. Ube will be the next big boom, and I’m already in talks with potential suppliers.

The bar adjoins the brewery room through a pair of antique glass doors—small batch, seasonal, heavy on botanicals. On weekends, it’s standing room. On weekdays it hums quietly in the background, doing its work.

I love every square foot of this place with a fierceness that surprises me sometimes. I built it when I had nothing left to build toward. That matters.

People assume I come from money, which is hilarious.

The truth is simpler and more sentimental. Harold Finch was a retired herbalist and practicing Druid who lived three streets over from my childhood home, had no children, and decided I was worth betting on. He left me everything when he died—not a fortune, but enough. Just as he left me a package of brown paper labeled in that small neat handwriting—use it well—and I brought the book home. He never explained. He just placed things where they needed to be and trusted you to figure it out eventually.

I’m still working on that, Harold.

I built the online shop first, a kitchen-table operation which became a whole thing: the channel, the Patreon, the eBook on protection craft which still sells 100 copies a month without me touching it. The following paid for the down payment on this building.

I pass by the wall with the plaques, admiring the gleam more than my reflection. My Samhain elderflower stout took gold at the Oregon Craft Brewers Cup two years running. So popular, a regional distributor picked it up, and the licensing income paid off the business loan eighteen months ahead of schedule.

Harold would have been insufferably smug about it all. And proud. I think about that every time I unlock the front door.