I examined the first bedroom with its neatly arranged queen-size bed, its plush reading chair, and the largest oak dressing table I had ever seen. The whole room was almost oppressively tidy, without even a discarded t-shirt on the thick carpet or an empty coffee cup on the desk. Seated by the window in the reading chair was Belinda the psycher. She was curled up in the chair, scanning the pages of an ancient-looking codex in the early-morning light coming in the window.

Out of interest, I reached for the stat readout. I wanted to see Belinda’s abilities, but I also wanted to see if she, like Astrid, had the Evolutions part of the readout. It turned out that she did.

“What the fuck? Level 5!?” I shouted, looking at the stat readout.

Kyrine chuckled quietly. “You’ll get used to it.”

Level 5 was the kind of progression present in special forces in the military. Unlike Astrid, Belinda’s attributes were more focused on Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma, which all made sense given how she acted both during and after the battle.

I thought of Belinda’s performance back when we had fought the soldiers at the roadblock, how she’d transformed into a cloud of black smoke and consumed the very flesh off the bones of the PentaTech goons. I nodded thoughtfully to myself. In all my days of interest in spells and tinkering with magitech, I had only ever scratched the surface. This was the real deal now.

Belinda’s readout also had an Evolution table, much like Astrid’s had. Maybe it wasn’t an anomaly then. Was there some way they could evolve? Was it even possible for a being other than a magical creature to change its very nature? And why had Kyrine never seen this part of the stat readout before? Was this development caused by the fact she had a Keeper now?

Before I could think much further on those questions, or ask Kyrine about them, Belinda suddenly glanced up from the codex she was reading. Her eyes widened in surprise, and she slammed her book shut.

“Jeremy?” she said, sounding excited, and perhaps a little scared. “You succeeded?”

I figured that her telepathic abilities had allowed her to notice my presence looking at her where Astrid hadn’t.

“I did,” I responded.

Although I wasn’t inside my body any longer, she must have heard my reply because she grinned. I hadn’t known the Outworlder woman for very long, but I got the impression she didn’t smile all that much. She should do so more often, I thought—her face was transformed. Normally she looked stern, even dour. Now, the smile made here look quite beautiful.