Chapter 2 The Summoning

Ash felt the summons like an interruption.

Not painful. Not dangerous. Merely inconvenient.

He had been half-asleep when it reached him, stretched somewhere deep between realms where time folded strangely and silence remained blessedly uninterrupted. Most summons never made it far enough to truly disturb him. They snagged against older wards, against hungrier creatures, against the simple fact that Ash had long ago stopped answering desperate little mortals clawing at the edges of forbidden magic.

Usually, they wanted power.

Sometimes revenge.

Occasionally sex, which was always embarrassing for everyone involved.

This summons carried none of that.

It carried exhaustion.

Ash frowned before he even fully understood why he was listening.

The magic reaching for him was uneven—not weak, but restrained too tightly, wound around itself over and over until it had begun to fray. Beneath it lay something old and bruised, a pulse of loneliness so constant it had become part of the spell itself.

Worse, it was aimless.

No proper demand. No clear contract. Just want pressed so deeply into the caster’s bones that the universe itself had apparently decided it counted as invocation.

“Ridiculous,” Ash muttered.

He should have ignored it.

Truly, he meant to.

But the call came again, quieter this time, slipping through the dark between worlds with an ache that scraped unpleasantly against memory. Not greed. Not ambition. Just the raw, aching shape of someone who had spent too long being treated like a thing to endure rather than a person to know.

Ash exhaled sharply through his nose.

“Oh, for pity’s sake.”

Then he answered.

The crossing was abrupt enough to irritate him further. The veil split open around him with all the subtlety of a scream, and Ash stepped through into a cramped cellar thick with candle smoke, rain-damp air, and enough defensive magic to suggest the summoner either knew exactly what she was doing or absolutely did not.

One glance at the circle told him it was the second.

Ash stared at the chalk markings beneath his feet.

“…You have got to be kidding me.”

The witch beyond the circle froze.

She was soaked from the storm outside, dark hair damp against her cheeks and throat, silver knife still clutched in one bloodied hand. Fear flashed across her face first, quick and bright—but what caught Ash’s attention was the immediate horror that followed it.

Not horror at him.

Horror at what she had apparently realized she had done.

Wonderful.

“You didn’t mean to summon a demon,” Ash said flatly.

Her lips parted.

“That obvious?”

“Yes.”

He rubbed one hand over his face, already tired. The wards lining the cellar snapped uneasily at his presence, but they were layered with desperation more than experience. Functional enough to keep lesser things contained. Functional enough to be deeply annoying.

His gaze swept over the room again, irritation slowly giving way to reluctant understanding.

The cottage magic was solitary. Everything about it screamed alone. Wards repaired by one pair of hands over and over again. Protection spells woven too tightly because there had been no coven to reinforce them. The faint scent of old rejection lingering beneath the herbs and smoke.

Then there was the witch herself.

Ash could feel the marks left by others all over her magic.

Not literal scars. Worse.

Doubt.

Fear.

Years of being looked at sideways by every smug little magical creature in whatever miserable town she had crawled out of. He could practically hear the accusations already. Too dark. Too strange. Wrong kind of magic. Wrong kind of girl.

Pathetic.

The witch swallowed hard, visibly gathering herself. “You can’t cross the circle.”

Ash glanced down at the glowing boundary.

“No,” he said dryly. “And thank the abyss for that, because otherwise I might strangle whoever taught you summoning structure.”

Her expression tightened indignantly. Good. Anger was steadier than panic.

“I didn’t summon you intentionally,” she snapped.

“Yes, I gathered that from the look of existential despair on your face.”

The candles flickered violently.

Interesting.

Her emotions were feeding the spell now.

Ash’s irritation faded slightly as he looked closer at the magic binding the circle together. The structure itself was old—very old—but the center had warped around a single desperate impulse. Not spoken aloud. Not consciously formed.

A wish. Ash went still.

“Oh,” he muttered.

The witch frowned. “What?”

He ignored her for a moment, following the threads curling invisibly through the room. The binding had already attached itself. Deeply. Thoroughly. Worse than a standard summon because it hadn’t been built on command—it had been built on need. Need was harder to break. Ash closed his eyes briefly, resisting the urge to swear.

“Well,” he sighed. “That’s unfortunate.”

“What is?”

“You bound me.”

Her face drained of color. “That’s impossible.”

“No, impossible would’ve been you successfully calling one of those useless little moonlit forest spirits your village probably likes better than you.” He gestured vaguely at the circle. “This is merely catastrophic.”

“I didn’t mean to!”

“I know.”

That was the problem.

Intentional contracts had rules. Structure. Limits.

Unintentional ones tended to dig their claws in.

The witch looked genuinely horrified now, gaze darting around the circle as though she might somehow spot the invisible tether curling between them. Ash could feel it clearly already—an irritating pull beneath his ribs, subtle but undeniable.

Bound.

Again.

Gods, he hated binding magic.

“What does that mean?” she asked quietly. Ash leaned back slightly, folding his arms. “It means,” he said, “that somewhere in the middle of your aggressively self-destructive little ritual, you made a wish.”

“I did not.”

“You absolutely did.”

Her brow furrowed stubbornly. “I never said anything.”

“You don’t have to say wishes aloud for magic to hear them.” That silenced her.

Ash watched realization slowly begin to unsettle her expression, though she clearly still didn’t understand. Most mortals thought wishes were words. They weren’t. Wishes were hunger sharpened into shape. Ash exhaled slowly. Her wish was messy. Half-formed. Buried so deep beneath loneliness and rejection that even she didn’t fully recognize it. But the magic had recognized it just fine.To be wanted. To be understood. To stop being alone. The binding tightened unpleasantly as if to emphasize the point. Ash grimaced.

“How long?” she asked after a moment, voice unsteady.

“That depends.”

“On what?”

“On when your wish is fulfilled.”

Her eyes flashed. “I don’t have a wish.”

Ash laughed once, sharp and humorless.

“Little witch,” he said, finally lifting his gaze fully to hers, “people like you are made entirely of wishes.”