"My room is the one with the hammock, and Kas sort of sleeps anywhere," Amariah says, when it is finally the hiatus of hug time. "Help yourself to whatever space is going spare and appeals to you."

"Will do."

"I'm really sorry," Amariah murmurs, and she pets his hair.

"...Want to watch me cast a circle?"

"Happily. What pray tell is it for?"

"It's not for practical use. It's a test circle, of sorts - I can draw them on paper but I've got a sense now of whether something is workable if I look at it in the actual material. And also this way I can take a picture and send it to other witches and they'll take me a little more seriously than if I just send them sketches. But the spell is for immortality, like I gave Kas - the kind witches have. To put on humans, and when I have that down I'll work on a bear version."

"I see," says Sherlock. "Handy."

"It is." She picks up the pitcher and begins a steady walk around her bare yard-patch. "The bear version's going to be tricky because they don't have daemons."

"Are daemons an integral component?"

"Of the spell setup, yeah. Most spells that do anything significant to a person incorporate the daemon. Witches and panserbjørne haven't interacted much in the past. I don't know what I'd do if I wanted to cast this on, say, you, although you're already an unrelated kind of immortal, twice."

"Feel free to experiment on me if it interests you. I wouldn't mind the hat trick."

"Ooh, maybe I will," says Amariah. "Although that kind of spell I don't think I would show to the other witches. It wouldn't be the exact same as the bear version - their armor is a little like a daemon to them; I'd probably do a first draft oriented around that - so they'd be puzzled about why I was trying to immortalize a zombie."

"For his charming company, of course."

"I would love to see you explain to a council of witch queens exactly how you manage to be such charming company without a daemon. But I think it might hamper some of my longer-term plans."

He laughs. "Such as what?"

"I want to popularize immortality spells - most especially since I have an embedded dispersal mechanism, namely other witches - and most especially since I can't hook into Downside. And I think it is best if I am seen as inventive and clever, not weird and prone to associating with the offworld undead."

"But you are prone to associating with the offworld undead," he says merrily.

"It's true! And yet not something I would prefer to advertise to the council of witch queens."

"Then I'd better keep myself well hidden, hadn't I."

"Anyone with a lick of magical sensitivity - any witch, most humans - will know something is up with you. Not necessarily the undead part - you look much less undead now than you did before you got your soul stuck on - but the no-daemon part. I suppose if you get bored you could wander into a city and cause a riot, just don't connect it with me or let the stampeding get out of hand."

"I promise not to cause any riots," he snorts.

"If you do want to visit a city we could probably come up with some kind of magical illusion that will fool most people."

"If I do want to visit a city, I'll think about it," he says.

Amariah nods. "I mention it mostly because Kas gets stir-crazy out here in the middle of nowhere, he's always teleporting to this or that metropolis. I don't know if you're prone to that sort of thing."