I thought about that for a moment. If it wasn’t black, there was no harm in it. And being able to warm up my coffee without the microwave would blow Ivy away. “Is it hard to do?”

Ceri’s smile blossomed. “I’ll walk you through it. Give me a moment; I have to remember how to do it the long way,” she said, extending her hand for my mug.

Oh, gotta slow to the witch’s pace, I thought, leaning forward and handing it to her. But seeing as it was most likely the charm she used three times a day to cook Al’s meals, she could probably do it in her sleep.

“It’s sympathetic magic,” she explained. “There’s a poem to help remember the gestures, but the only two words you have to say are Latin. And it needs a focal object to direct the magic where to go,” she explained, and took a sip of my cold coffee, making a face. “This is swill,” she muttered, her words awkward as she spoke around the drop on her tongue. “Barbaric.”

“It’s better when it’s hot,” I protested, not having known you could hold a focal object in your mouth and still have it be effective. She could do the spell without it, but then she would have to throw the spell at my cup. This was easier, and less likely to spill my coffee, too.

Her face still showing her distaste, she raised her thin, expressive hands. “From candles burn and planet’s spin,” she said, and I moved my fingers, mimicking her gesture—I suppose if you used your imagination, it kind of looked like lighting a candle, though how her suddenly dropping hand related to spinning planets was beyond me. “Friction is how it ends and begins.”

I jumped when she brought her hands together to make a loud pop, simultaneously saying, “Consimilis.”

Similar, I thought, thinking it might be a catchphrase for sympathetic magic. And the pop might be an audible show of air molecules undergoing friction. In sympathetic magic, it didn’t matter how nebulous the relationship was as long as it was real.

“Cold to hot, harness within,” she continued, making another unfamiliar gesture, but I recognized the next finger movement from when I used a ley line charm to break the Howlers’ bat in practice. Perhaps it was the motion that tapped into the focal object for direction. Huh. Maybe there was some sense to this ley line stuff after all.

“Calefacio!” she said happily, invoking the charm and setting it all into motion.

I felt a mild drop through me as the charm pulled energy from the line to excite the water molecules in the cup, warming the coffee. “Wow,” I breathed when she handed me back my mug, softly steaming. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome,” she said. “You have to regulate the ending temperature yourself by how much line energy you put into it.”

“The more energy, the hotter it gets?” I took a careful sip, deciding it was perfect. It must have taken her years to gain this much proficiency.