Chapter 3. Lex
Billy gave me a bone-crushing hug as “Last call for flight EZSEAT to Seattle” boomed over the PA.
Our coven had stood their ground through it all: creating a home in an unknown country, the threat of another witch hunt, persecution from suspicious mortal men... But the moment tourists started flocking to Massachusetts to ogle the site of one of the most infamous witch hunts, the coven packed up and left. For the last century, they lived in a settlement deep in the heart of the vast Seattle forests. Which was where I’d be touching down in just over two hours.
Billy’s flight back home was an hour after mine, but no matter how many times I stared at her ticket, the words just looked like indistinguishable squiggles to me. Even when I glanced at the board, there was a single flight three down from mine that just looked pixelated.
“I’m going to miss you, witch,” she said into my shoulder.
“I’ll miss you too, wolf,” I whispered back.
Even though we had only shared an office for a month, Billy had become my best friend. Like, if there was a word for a soulmate best friend, she’d be it. I wasn’t quite sure how we’d become so close so fast, but it was like we were two parts of a platonic jigsaw that just fit together perfectly.
“Text me your address,” she said, finally letting go of me. “If my dad—” Buzzing filled my ears as Billy continued to talk. “—I’ll be coming to stay with you.”
“You do know I wasn’t able to understand a word of what you just said.”
Billy smiled. “I know.”
An irate voice called, “Could passenger Cole on flight EZSEAT to Seattle please make your way to gate thirteen. Your flight is about to depart.”
I bent over and grabbed my bag, slinging it over my shoulder.
“I’ll text you when I land!” I called back to Billy as I half jogged to my gate.
Just as I got to the gate and the angry-looking flight attendant studied my ticket, I remembered I had forgotten to tell my parents I was coming home.
As I walked down the echoing hall, I pulled out my phone and called home.
“Hello, sweetie,” my father’s gruff voice called down the phone. “To what do we owe the pleasure?”
“Who’s that?” my mother’s voice called from the background. Something clattered, and I prayed to Hecate that Mom wasn’t on one of her DIY binges.
“Darling,” Dad called back to her, “there’s only two women I call ‘sweetie’ and one of them is you.”
“Lex? Is that Lex?” Mom called back.
As much as I loved their banter, I’d just stepped on to the plane. Everyone was seated, and some were staring at me. “Listen, Dad, I don’t have a lot of time as I’ve just got onto the plane.” I glanced down the aisle. Twenty-nine, twenty-eight, ah, row twenty-seven and— oh Goddess —there was an incredibly attractive man sitting in the middle seat.
Shit .
“Plane? Why are you on a plane?”
“I... uh... well, I’m coming home, Dad. I’ll be there in a couple of hours.” I shoved my bag into the overhead locker as the blisteringly hot man unbuckled his belt. I would have happily climbed over him to get to my seat.
“Oh, Lex!” my mom gushed from the other side of the phone. “Are you going to do the Samhain summoning? Ah! But I have nothing prepared! It’s tonight! I’ll need to—”
“No, Mom. I’m not doing the stupid summoning!”
My plane buddy raised his eyebrow at me, and I mouthed “It’s a Halloween thing” before shuffling into my allocated space.
“You’re not?” The disappointment in her voice was palpable.
“You’re only twenty-seven, dear. You could wait another few years,” my father said, hopefully. Urgh , gross. As if it wasn’t bad enough having an incubus as a dad, the fact that he knew exactly what was waiting for his precious daughter when she summoned one of her very own was disgusting.
“This flight is about to take off. Please remain in your seats, buckle your seatbelts, and put all electronics into flight mode.”
“Listen... I may have done a... thing,” I said. “A well-deserved... thing, but a thing nonetheless.”
“Alexis!” both Mom and Dad bellowed in unison, ?causing me to hold the phone away from my ear.
A flight attendant glared at me from the middle of the plane and began his way toward me.
“Look, I have to go, but can you pick me up when I land?”
“Of course, darling. Love you,” Dad said.
“Love you too,” I said, immediately clicking off the phone and holding my hands up for the flight attendant to see that I’d finished.
***
I will not join the mile high club.
I do not need to drag the incredibly attractive man into the bathroom and fuck his brains out.
I will not join the mile high club.
This felt like hell on earth. Every time the mortal beside me moved, I felt myself dampen. I’d worn the loosest, thickest jumper I owned, but now I wished I’d put another gazillion layers on—anything that meant I didn’t have to feel every time those huge biceps twitched, which was often, as he was reading. Every page he read was one page closer to me combusting.
This must be what hell is like? Surely?
How was I possibly going to spend the rest of my life this way?
A little voice in my head said, But you don’t have to! Summon your incubus. You will never have to drive for hours just to fuck some strange guy ever again...
No. Nope. Not going to happen.
Don’t get me wrong, it would be a hell of a lot easier if I could satiate my succubus side with sex whenever I wanted. And being mated to a sex demon would be so much better than a mortal man. I mean, credit where credit’s due, a few of the mortal men were good lovers. But the majority of my sexual experiences had been... meh .
I knew how happy my parents were together. In fact, all the witches and sex demons that had mated in our coven had picture-perfect marriages. But it felt... fake. I lived in a town where each couple had their own incredibly filthy rom-com movie romance. Stuff like that just didn’t happen in the outside world. And I felt uncomfortable about having to summon a demon predestined to be my mate. What if he didn’t want to? And he was just sitting there, minding his own business, pleasuring some mortal, and then—BAM! Summoned! And he was just standing there, confused in my living room, as I looked at him with a creepy smile and said, “You’re going to live with me from now on.”
I would be no better than Chad and his coercions.
But one-night stands just weren’t cutting it for me now. The thought of having to spend the rest of my life trying to scratch the itch of being part succubus was not exactly a delightful thought. I eyed the mortal beside me up and down. I was twenty-seven, with a curvy, cinched body, and not hard on the eye, if I do say so myself. It would only be a matter of a few words and, provided he was straight, single, and horny, I could probably have him in the cramped toilet of this plane if I wanted to.
But what about when I was eighty? What would I do then?
I would have to use my succubus touch to make a man want me. And that in and of itself was exactly what I was trying to avoid. I never touched a mortal man without knowing for certain that he already wanted to fuck me. On one hand, I could summon the demon that had been fated to be my mate, not knowing if he was actually willing or not. On the other hand, I would have years of sex ahead of me, then turn into a withered old crone on the lookout for men with granny fetishes.
But, Dad was right, I was still young and could spare a few more years before making up my mind.
***
It took me the entire journey through the airport and into the cool Seattle air before I finally rid myself of the mortal’s scent.
After much searching, I eventually saw my mom in the short-stay car park, waving frantically the moment she recognized me. She was almost my exact replica, except two decades my senior. She had the same full, ruddy lips, the same big doe eyes housing slightly too large, mossy green irises. The only difference was our hair color. Where Mom had billowing curves of blonde, slowly turning silver, hair, I had the same thick russet hair as my father.
I waved back, sucked in a breath, and marched my way over. Of course, my mom was happy to see me. And I was sure her joy at having her only daughter back home would last a full three minutes before she started berating me, switching between trying to convince me to make the Samhain summoning and demanding to know what in Hecate’s green earth I had done to have to induce a coven trial.
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 would be 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 had no 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 that they 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 know why we 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 because all mating 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.”
***
I never realized how much I missed my childhood home until I was staring up at it. It was somewhere between a mansion and a log cabin, with overlapping wooden slats painted black, offset by the thousands of flowers and creeping vines, all miraculously still in full bloom, even though it was the end of October.
The door creaked open, despite no one being there to open it. My mom ushered me inside, and I dropped my bag to the floor. I stared at it stupidly for a few seconds, but it didn’t disappear. All the houses in Briar Coven were magicked to cater to your every need. Or, at the very least, what they thought you needed. Usually, the moment my bags hit the floor, the house would have magicked them up to my room and unpacked everything for me.
“Is there something wrong with the house?” I asked Mom.
“Literally moments before you rang, a pipe burst in the bathroom and your room got flooded, honey.”
I groaned. Great! Where was I supposed to sleep? Of the three spare bedrooms the house had, one was an office, one was a gym, and the other was my mother’s spell room.
Mom shrugged nonchalantly while directing me toward the living room. “Your grandma said she’d sort something out for you.”
“Is that you, sweetie?” my dad called from the kitchen.
“Which one?” my mom answered.
“Either!”
I walked into the kitchen, and it was exactly the same as I remembered it, miraculously untouched by one of Mom’s DIY binges. The floor was a mismatch of ancient stone. The cupboards were shaker style (“A classic,” my mom had said when she won the coin toss against my dad when picking the cabinets over a decade ago), the black marble countertops flecked with gold, and a small table with four chairs. We only ever used the main dining room across the hall when we had guests, but this small table held so many memories, most of which usually involved my brother staring blankly into space while chewing with his mouth open.
The air was filled with the smell of rosemary and thyme, making my mouth water.
Dad pulled off his oven mitts and crossed the room in a flash, pulling me into a bear hug and smacking his lips against my cheek.
“I missed you very much, Lex,” he said, cooing down at me before finally releasing his death-grip. “I hope you’re hungry—roast chicken dinner!”
“I could literally murder one of your dinners.” Squeezing his hand, I said, “I missed you too, Dad.”
Dad beamed from ear to ear. “Okay, go get your brother and we can catch up while we eat.”
My brother, I did not miss. Jake was the most annoying little shit to ever walk Hecate’s green earth. I swear, he was only put on this earth for the sole purpose of annoying the shit out of me. Two years my junior, he quickly learned every way possible to annoy me, from slurping loudly to making it his life’s mission to learn every secret I possessed, only to hold it against me like some fucking spy years later.
Male witches were rare in our coven—like, think shiny Charizard rare. About one in one thousand rare. Jake could get away with murder, and he knew it.
“Jake!” I called up the stairs.
“What?” he cried back, over the sound of whatever genre of noise he considered “music” coming from his bedroom .
“Dinner!” I yelled back.
I was met with nothing but louder music coming from his room.
I stared into the empty hallway. “Help me out, House? For old time’s sake?”
A split second later, a series of loud curses emanated from Jake’s room, followed by angry footsteps and the slamming of a door. Jake, nostrils flared, stomped down the stairs like a moody teen instead of the twenty-five-year-old PhD student he supposedly was. He was covered head to toe in his underwear, which he peeled off with every step, the house magicking them back to their drawer above the moment they touched the floor.
“Seriously, Lex? Getting the house to do your dirty work for you? I hate you,” he grumbled, slinging an arm over my shoulder in a half hug.
“Hate you too,” I replied sweetly.