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“Hold on, Phi,” I urge her. She might be a demon, but that doesn’t mean I want to see her hurting. She’s done nothing to harm me.
Not yet, anyway.
And right now, I need her as much as she needs me. Pushing up to my feet, I scan my surroundings to figure out my next move.
First, I take a page out of Yzma’s book and surround myself in a cocoon of my own magic until I can save Phi and tag her into this fight.
This is going to take some time. I haven’t done this before and have no idea how to forge the bond of a familiar.
“What now?” I ask the raven.
She clacks her beak at me in response, which is no help at all.
“You have to seal it in blood,” Rune calls, his voice warbled beyond the wall of my shield.
Of course.
“Why does everything come down to blood?”
Phi doesn’t answer, and in the midst of battle, with spells being thrown at me, I don’t have the luxury of time to wait for either of us to figure it out. Leaning down, I offer my index finger and pray I still have blood to spare.
Even though I’m expecting the jolt of pain, I still wince when Phi’s beak breaks the skin.
Pressing against the wound to bring more blood to the surface, I draw the binding rune in the dirt between myself and my soon-to-be familiar.
Something clangs off my shield, but I don’t pause to see what. I force myself to stand my ground and finish this. My spell will hold. It will hold. I repeat it to myself until I’m done.
My lines are shaky, but the rune is passable.
Nothing happens, and I lift my gaze to the raven. “Anything?”
Phi caws at me weakly, completely unhelpful.
I sigh. “Yeah. That’s what I figured.”
What did I do wrong?
I’m sure there’s more to it than just a symbol in blood, but I don’t know the ritual words. I look at Rune, but he doesn’t have the answer either. His face doesn’t show any of the worry Finn’s does, and the only thing I sense from our unity bond is a sense of conviction as he watches me.
Grand-Mère always said a witch’s magic was more about intentions than words.
With the tip of my finger still beading a fat red blob of blood, I shut out everything else—the fighting around me, the hollering from Rune, the doubt and fear of taking a familiar—and I focus.
I give it my all this time, all the while praying to Mother Gaia that this is the right decision and putting conviction behind my magic.
The moment I finish retracing the symbol in the dirt, a presence wavers at the periphery of my mind. Phi? I call inside my mind to the entity.
It pulses in recognition, and something within me sings. I reach out to the entity, poking at it hesitantly. As soon as I make contact, a powerful blast of magic reverberates across the courtyard and steals my breath.
Pebbles rumble underfoot with the strength of it. It sends a momentary hush through the crowd and the remaining witches battling. All eyes turn toward where I stand in my bubble with the raven.
I barely notice them, though. As the blast settles, the connection solidifies. A piece of my soul has merged with Phi’s essence, and a piece of hers is now within me.
We are irrevocably joined.
In an instant, I can sense Phi’s wisdom, her age-old knowledge, and a well of untapped power that lies within the raven in front of me.
More than that, I can feel Phi’s presence in my mind. I prod at it again curiously, testing, and jolt when she turns her beak up at me, cawing sharply.
