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.”

“I suppose.” I didn’t understand her cavalier attitude, but I hadn’t been Al’s familiar for a millennium. “I don’t want a familiar,” I said, glad Nick was so distant he couldn’t feel any of this. I was sure if he was close enough, he would’ve called to make sure I was okay. I think.

“You’re doing well.” Ceri sipped her tea and glanced at the dark windows. “Al told me it took me three months to get to where you are now.”

I looked at her, shocked. There was no way I could be better than her. “You’re kidding.”

“I was fighting him,” she said. “I didn’t want to learn, and he had to force me into it, using the absence of pain as a positive reinforcement.”

“You were in pain for three months?” I said, horrified.

Her eyes were on her thin hands, laced about her teacup. “I don’t remember it. It was a long time ago. I do remember sitting at his feet every night, his hand soft on my head while he relaxed as he listened to me cry for the sky and trees.”

Imagining this beautiful wisp of a woman at Algaliarept’s feet suffering his touch was almost too much to bear. “I’m sorry, Ceri,” I whispered.

She jerked, as if only now realizing she had said it aloud. “Don’t let him take you,” she said, her wide eyes serious and solemn. “He liked me, and though he used me as they all use their familiars, he did like me. I was a coveted jewel in his belt, and he treated me well so I would be useful and at his side for a longer time. You, though …” Her head bowed, breaking our eye contact and pulling her braid over her shoulder. “He will torment you so hard and so fast that you won’t have time to breathe. Don’t let him take you.”