Moonlight (Grim Gate 3)

“Every time.” He smirks and reaches for me but stops himself at the last second.

“Every time?” Sam scoffs. “There’s no way.”

Ethan shifts his gaze to me, but there’s no worry in his eye. “Every time,” I repeat. “Call me selfish, but I won’t let him stop until I’m done.”

“Aww, to be young and in love,” Nik says and then holds his hand up to his mouth, whisper-talking to Sam. “Give them a few years and every time will be most of the time.”

“I refuse to believe that,” Ethan retorts. Hunter runs through the room, following the dark energy that’s trailing overhead.

“It’s hungry,” I say as Hunter’s thoughts go into my head. “It hasn’t had a good feeding in a few days, since I’ve been sick.”

“Hungry means desperate,” Ethan starts, face serious again. “And desperate means dangerous, but also careless.”

“So, other than you two going to town, how do we get this thing into our plane for good?” Sam asks.

“I was working on something.” I tap the notebook pages on the coffee table. “If I change up the spirit summoning spell, I should be able to pull it out of the astral plane and trap it inside a pentacle just long enough to kill it.”

“Why aren’t we doing that?” Sam motions to the papers in front of us.

“It’ll be the first time I’m trying something like this,” I say honestly. “And the last time I tried to summon a demon into a trap, it didn’t work so well.”

“It’s different this time,” Ethan reminds me. “You have us, and this thing isn’t as powerful as Xozon.”

“I know,” I say with a sigh, still not convinced this is the best route to take.

“We could host an orgy ,” Nik says, looking proud of himself for coming up with something that would actually help us. “And not participate, of course. But what better way to offer up something that would satiate an incubus than a good old-fashioned orgy , right?”

He’s met with our blank stares. “I…I don’t even know how I’d go about doing that,” I say. :Like, who do you invite to an orgy ? Do you tell them that’s the plan before hand or just let things play out on their own and hope everyone ends up naked? And what are the rules? One-on-one but with whoever? A total free-for-all? ”

“You’ve never been to an orgy , have you?” Nik asks.

“I’m not sorry if it’s obvious.”

Nik bobs his head up and down. “Rene seems fun. She’d probably have an orgy .”

“I am not asking her that, though I’d rather ask that than tell her to come over and get involved in another demon vanquishing,” I say and swallow the lump in my throat. One thing at a time, it’s all I can do. The sound of a pot boiling over makes Nik rush into the kitchen, attending to the healing balm he’s making.

“How are we going to go about this?” Sam picks up my notebook. “I don’t know what any of this means.”

I explain my plan of using the elements to force the incubus into our plane while Ethan gathers supplies. I tweak my spell a couple times, add in Ethan’s suggestions, and then tweak it once more. I have the footage from the security camera inside the barn pulled up on my iPad, and the horses have spooked twice in that time, reacting to something on the roof.

Ethan switches over to a different camera, watching the yard. The incubus swoops by, looking like a big bat on the screen. It really is getting desperate, and our working theory is that my energy is different—better in some aspects—because I’m a witch.

“Ready?” Ethan asks, taking my hands in his.

“As I’ll ever be.” I grip his fingers, wanting him to pull me in and kiss me, but he doesn’t because we shouldn’t. Not yet. “I have to pee first.”

“Good idea.”

I hurry to the bathroom and then grab an oatmeal raisin cookie that Nik made on my way out to the front porch. Everything I need is already out there, and I step into the salt circle, heart racing. Ethan is behind me, crouched down behind one of the rocking chairs. Sam is near the porch steps, and Hunter is staying next to Nik, keeping him close to the front door in case things go south and he needs to duck inside.

“Earth, air, fire, water, spirit,” I chant as I draw a pentacle with white chalk inside the salt circle. “Earth, air, fire, water, spirit.”

I set a different object at each point. A potted succulent for earth. An incense stick for air. A mason jar of full moon water for water, and large quartz crystal for spirit. Then I step back, magically lighting the candles that have already been placed around the salt circle, and pull a paper from my pocket so I can read the incantation.