The Witch's Dream - A Love Letter to Paranormal Romance (Black Swan 2) by Victoria Danann

village woman who had served as nanny to the high-born when she was younger, he carried the pretty babe home to the vineyard monastery at Bodega Bay.
    The Cairdeas Deo monks had been "hiding in plain sight" for centuries, disguised as a Christian sect since the term automatically created a societal mystique that functioned as a protective barrier against close examination or typical standards of rational thought. The Cairdeans actually served the twin masters of the Merkaba: truth and life force, privately calling themselves the Friends of Life.
    Brother Cufaylin brought the child home to the Sonoma Coast winery on the very day of the Summer Solstice and dubbed her Litha in celebration of the Feast Day of that name. The monks were, at the same time, celebrating a very fine review of their handcrafted, bottled-in-bond, one hundred proof, seven-year-old brandy. So she became Litha Brandywine, precious daughter to seven monks who could not have been more surprised that an odd twist of fate brought them the opportunity to be proud parents.
    They were in a unique position to help Litha develop and channel her very special talents. Her mind was polished and refined on the turning wheel of free thought. She was exposed to every myth, doctrine, superstition, and philosophy according to the principle that minds with little education form a narrow palette of capability which is far too easily manipulated. Their view, that mental strength requires a perpetual diet of new material to digest, found perfect expression in Litha's step-by-step development.
    She never felt that she missed out by not experiencing a more typical family environment. Nor did she ever spend a minute of her life wanting for love or attention.
    What Brother Cufaylin saw in the infant that day at Father Daugherty's Anglican church was his secret, but he judged truly when he concluded that she was special.
    In point of fact, Litha was the daughter of a practicing Pendle Hill witch and the demon she conjured.
    Litha’s mother had been told that her great-great-grandmother was reported to have summoned a demon. The seed of that tale grabbed hold and took root in such a way that her future was then deprived of real choice. No one knows what sets the heart on an intractable course, but Litha’s mother yearned to repeat her great-great-grandmother’s adventure into the occult and worked tirelessly to discover the key that would enable her to do so.
    One of the central issues in the practice of witchcraft has always been unpredictability and the inability of the witch or sorcerer or magician to replicate results. In the case of demon summoning, the craft took a wrong turn sometime early in the Dark Ages that could be traced back to a practitioner who successfully conjured a demon and documented the episode. The problem was a faulty conclusion based on incomplete data. The magician’s assumption was that a recipe of steps involving tools and words of power had wrought the event whereas that was only true in part.
    The practitioner had accurately performed the steps necessary to cast an ether net which was the true cause. The effect though, was not that a demon had been summoned, but that a demon slipping dimensions had been caught within the net that was cast. Future witches and sorcerers would ponder the unpredictability of summoning for centuries without ever realizing that the process is exactly like fishing. Cast an ample net in which you may or may not catch a demon.
    Tomes on craft were full of legendary accounts of the downsides to conjuring. Naturally demons were rarely happy about being caught in a witch’s web. For one thing it was a little painful, like getting a righteous zap from static-filled carpet.
    Further, it was quite unsettling, even for demons, to set out for one destination and suddenly end up in another. And a pissed off demon wasn’t likely to be in a mood for granting favors.
    Of course there are exceptions to every rule and one was the case of