“Thanks,” I said, feeling the weight of it in my palm. Rain glistened on her fair hair and spotted her shirt, and I felt guilty for making her come up here. “Really. Thank you. I wouldn’t even try this if you weren’t helping me.”

Her green eyes glinted in amusement in the light from the candles, and something about her tonight flipped my warning flags up. It was as if she was up to something. Her voice was casual, but my instincts had been pinged, and I was watching her.

“I’m going to set a circle,” I said over the hush of rain. “Do you want to be in or out of it?”

She hesitated as if to tell me I wouldn’t need a circle, then nodded, probably remembering the first time she had taught me how to scribe a demon calling circle and my aura had unexpectedly pooled out. “In,” she said, and when she stood to move, I gestured for her to stay. I would draw it right around the couch she had gone to sit on.

“You’re fine there,” I said, starting my circle a foot inside the hexagonal room’s walls. My hair made a red curtain between us, and the feeling of wrongness coming from her strengthened. The hiss of the chalk mixed with the rain, and the breeze slipping past the open slats was chill. I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something she wasn’t telling me. Finished, I stood straight and blew my hair out of my way. I met her gaze and narrowed my eyes in challenge. Sure enough, she glanced away.

My heart did a little flip-flop of fear. I wasn’t going to do another charm Ceri taught me unless I knew exactly what it was before I did it. Finding out belatedly that the spells I’d used to go wolf and turn Jenks human-size were actually curses had been lesson enough.

“This isn’t a normal charm, is it,” I stated, and she looked up.

“No.”

I sighed, slumping to sit backward in the folding chair. My gaze went to the chalk in my hand, and I set it on the green marble top of the dresser with a tap. “It’s demonic, isn’t it?”

She nodded. “There is no smut for this one,” she offered. “You’re not changing reality, you’re just pulling on a line. It’s similar to how you almost threw raw energy at Ivy. If you can do that, and pull it back into you without hurting yourself as you did, then you should be able to do this….”

Her sentence trailed off at the end, and I flexed my fingers, remembering the pain had lasted only a moment before vanishing in the chaos that had followed. Demon magic. Damn it back to the Turn.