Face pale, she bobbed her head, and I jerked as she forced more into me. “Oh God,” I whispered, then said my trigger word before Ceri could stop. This time I felt the energy flow like acid through me, following new channels, pulled by my word rather than finding its way to my bubble by accident. My head jerked up. Eyes wide, I stared at Ceri as the pain vanished.

“You did it,” she said, looking almost frightened as she sat cross-legged before me.

Swallowing, I pulled my legs under me so she wouldn’t see my knees tremble. “Yeah.”

Unblinking, she held her cup in her lap. “Let it go. You need to recenter yourself.”

I found my arms were wrapped around myself. Forcing them down, I exhaled. Letting go of the energy spindled in my head sounded easier than it was. I had enough force in me to throw Ivy into the next county. If it didn’t flow back to my chi and then the line using the gently seared channels that Ceri had been burning through my nervous system, it was really going to hurt.

Steeling myself, I set my will around the bubble and squeezed. Breath held, I waited for the pain, but the ley line energy smoothly returned to my chi and then the line, leaving me shaking from spent adrenaline. Enormously relieved, I brushed my hair out of my eyes and put my gaze on Ceri. I felt awful: tired, exhausted, sweaty, and shaking—but satisfied.

“You’re improving,” she said, and a thin smile crossed me.

“Thanks.” Taking my mug, I took a sip of cold coffee. She was probably going to ask me to pull it off the line by myself next; I wasn’t yet ready to try. “Ceri,” I said as my fingers trembled. “This isn’t that hard compared to the benefits. Why don’t more people know this?”

She smiled, her dusky shape in the shadow of the lamp going sage looking. “They do in the ever-after. It’s the first thing—no, the second thing—that a new familiar is taught.”

“What’s the first?” I asked before I remembered I really didn’t want to know.

“The death of self-will,” she said, and my expression froze at the ugliness in how casually she said it. “Letting me escape, knowing how to be my own familiar, was a mistake,” she said. “Al would kill me if he could to cover it up.”

“He can’t?” I said, suddenly frightened that the demon might try.

Ceri shrugged. “Maybe. But I have my soul, black as it is. That’s what’s important.”