Accidentally Employed an Incubus (Briar Coven #3)

Chapter 1. Caitlyn

My eyes flicked from my tattered notebook to the clock on the wall.

Not a single customer had come into the shop in the past four hours, and it was unlikely that any would.

The day of the Samhain summoning was always the quietest of the year.

I would usually not have bothered opening.

.. but hanging out in the shop beat hanging out at home.

Up until six months ago, I would have done anything to get out of covering a shift in the shop, which catered to the coven’s DIY needs. That was my mom’s passion.

But then one of the dormant houses decided that I was the witch it wanted to bond with...

... and then promptly regretted its decision.

But it was too late. The moment it opened its creaky old doors to me, it was my house, and I was its witch, and there was nothing either of us could do about it.

Which was why I now sat in the shop, feet perched on the counter, sucking my pen, staring at the ceiling and trying to come up with the missing ingredient for my Exploding Gum which was simmering away in the back room, instead of where it should be—if my house didn’t hate me—in my kitchen back home.

But I guessed it wasn’t all bad. Me covering so many shifts had given my parents the excuse to go on a long overdue vacation—the first they’d taken since the responsibility of the shop had landed on their laps almost a decade ago.

The shop had once belonged to my aunt and uncle, who were murdered while on vacation in Headless Hollow. It should have gone directly to my cousin Jen, but for some reason none of us could fathom, she’d confessed to killing her parents—which was impossible.

Jen simply couldn’t have done it.

But unfortunately for Jen, the mortal police had handled the initial investigation before any of the supernatural authorities could get to her, and she’d been swept up into the mortal legal system.

And when our head of coven, the formidable Ms. Lily Cole, led the charge to break Jen out of the mortal prison, we were met by an impenetrable, unidentifiable protective magic that none of us could breach, which meant poor Jen had to remain in the mortal prison and serve her time.

It didn’t help that she’d refused to see any of us and hadn’t responded to a single correspondence.

So, my family took over the shop, each of us counting down the days until Jen got out and we could hand back the keys.

During my aunt and uncle’s time, the shop had been a bookstore, catering to the coven’s smutty book fixes for almost two decades.

Unfortunately, the romantic gene had skipped my side of the family.

Despite Mom and me being part succubus, and my dad being a full-blooded incubus demon, our collective ability to recommend books capable of causing heart flutters or awakening new kinks was practically nonexistent.

So, the shelves were cleared. My aunt and uncle’s stock was boxed up and put into the basement, and the shop was restocked with more pragmatic offerings, such as hammers, nails, power tools, and a rotating selection of useful odds and ends—provided, of course, that you could bribe your sentient house into allowing renovations.

I shuddered at the thought of suggesting moving some of the centuries-old dusty crap in my house, let alone asking to do some DIY, and promptly put the thought to the back of my mind.

Instead, my thoughts drifted to the other sentient house we were responsible for. Not only were we minding the shop until Jen got out of prison, but we were also caretakers of her family home, which still remained in Headless Hollow waiting for Jen to return.

And a few years ago, I’d had a genuinely excellent idea on how to set Jen up for the future.

It might have involved a tiny bit of exploitation.

Okay—maybe a lot of exploitation.

Before the summer her parents died, all Jen ever talked about was summoning her mate.

And unless she’d somehow managed to turn the tin toilet in her cell into a makeshift cauldron—and work around whatever suppressing magic was wrapped around that prison—I doubted she’d done much summoning during her sentence.

When she got out, she’d have to start from scratch. The bookshop would need reopening, the stock we’d saved in the basement was a decade out of date, and while her parents had left her some money, it wasn’t nearly enough to catch up in this economy and provide a life for her and her new mate.

So, I might have turned her family home into a novelty vacation stay.

Which the sentient house was not thrilled about.

BooDini—the house’s manifestation in the form of a cute, little bedsheet ghost—took quite a bit of convincing. But once I explained that the income would help Jen start over when she was released and that BooDini was supposed to scare the guests away, it agreed.

It turned out BooDini was exceptional at its job.

I hadn’t had a single guest last twenty-four hours, let alone the week-long minimum stay.

The rental quickly became a near-cult-level vacation spot and was fully booked up to the furthest date the app allowed, with a growing backlog of eager applicants waiting for a cancellation.

Which reminded me—I’d had a notification earlier about my latest cancellation.

I pulled up the ScareBnB app and opened the message from the chimera shifter who’d booked the cabin for the next two weeks only to now announce that a “very important and completely unavoidable” issue had come up.

And since I only offered refunds if a cancellation was made at least forty-eight hours before the start of the stay, that meant another healthy chunk of cash going straight into Jen’s got-out-of-jail pot.

Easy money.

I accepted the cancellation, then clicked on the next victim in line on my waitlist—Cassandra Calloway, a wolf shifter who’d been waiting for two years. I sent the offer, and before I even closed the app, the wolf shifter had accepted.

BooDini might have its work cut out for it with this one.

And as much as I really did enjoy a fully booked vacation rental that practically no one stayed in because they were terrified of BooDini—or, rather, the tortured soul, hell-bent on its solitary existence, determined to plague anyone who dares cross its threshold, as I’d put in the description—the admin work was crazy with so many no-shows.

Add in running the shop while my parents were away and trying to launch a business of my own, and I was practically running on fumes. If Cassandra managed the full two weeks, that would be one less thing on my plate.

Because this time tomorrow, my parents would be home, the shop would no longer be my problem, and I’d be gone—finally free to focus on my real passion: magicked candy.

Everything was lined up. I’d found a minotaur shifter who owned her own farm and had agreed to rent me a field for the next four weeks. With a little luck—and a lot of bribery—I might hopefully convince my sentient house to materialize there too. Otherwise, I’d be spending a month camping.

All I needed was space and no distractions to work on my potions.

My Exploding Gum still literally exploded—I kept a vial of hair-regrowth potion on hand whenever I worked on that one.

My Wailing Whirls barely made me sniffle, let alone cry uncontrollably for a minute as they were supposed to, and my Shuffle Truffles were way too potent—one nibble had me dancing the Macarena for a full day instead of the planned five minutes.

Not exactly ideal, trying to ring up a customer while doing hip gyrations.

The bell above the door tinkled and a gust of cold wind whipped through the shop.

Reluctantly, I set my pen down, which I realized too late I’d been tapping against my chin with the nib up, and closed my notebook.

“Hey, Caitlyn!” Ashley called as they stepped inside. “You still open?”

“Hey, Ash. Sure are. Need anything specific?”

Ashley wandered down the aisle, plucking items from the shelves without so much as a glance, their grin widening as they dropped the bundle onto the counter.

“Just need a few last-minute fixes before the summoning tonight. You doing it this year?”

Did I want to do the summoning?

Sure! What witch—aside from my friend Lex—didn’t want to do the summoning?

I mean, Gods bless that first head of coven who struck a deal with a clan of sex demons all those centuries ago that meant not only did a Briar Coven witch not have to wander the world searching for their fated mate like everyone else, but I could simply summon him in the comfort of my own living room.

But was I ready?

Not remotely.

“Not this year,” I told Ashley, unable to keep the deflation from my tone.

Another year without my sex-demon fated mate.

All because I needed to concentrate on these damn magicked candies, establish my business, make lots of money, and have a perfect life to summon him into.

None of which, unfortunately, could be attained if I summoned my mate and decided to spend the rest of my days in bed with him.

Which I probably would, because if it was a choice between sex demon and taxes, I knew which one I’d rather do all day long.

Ashley offered me a small smile. They might have been five years younger than my twenty-seven, but when it came to having their life together, they were miles ahead of me.

Their gaze flicked to my notebook. “Y’know, the thing about fate is... if it’s meant to happen, it will. Maybe your mate is what’s missing from getting those recipes just right?”

I snorted. “I don’t think a good round in the sheets is what’s going to stop me from singeing off my eyebrows every time I try to make Exploding Gum.”

Ashley shrugged. “You did come up with the idea to write your recipes in enchanted ink after a weekend trip to the city,” they said, raising a knowing brow.