"What if Isabella wears it and rides around on her cloudpine at two hundred miles an hour?"

"...That would charge it quicker, yes. I would definitely need to calibrate for that, but that'd get you to full in maybe a couple of hours."

"Oh, it has a 'full', that's probably good, I was going to ask what would happen if we forgot about it for ages."

"Yeah, that's the car-flipping, that's full. That ring was on full. Oh, speaking of cars, it wouldn't work that way with cars, only a personally mounted vehicle. Internal reference frames type thing. Not that you probably need a car, if you have a broomstick."

"You sound very hickish when you call it a broomstick," Path remarks. "And no, she can't drive."

"Hey, wizards can't fly, I'm not up on the hip verbiage. I apologize for being witch-racist."

"You don't need to apologize. It's more or less impossible to offend a witch. But it seemed like you might not want to sound like that. Why can't wizards fly?"

"I was taught magic by a man who was both the most powerful wizard living in the United States and the three-year blue ribbon winner of the Missouri Hog-Rearing Bowl. I don't consider 'hick' to be much of an insult. And flying isn't impossible, but it's difficult to lift your own weight for any significant length of time, if you lose concentration you'll probably die, and you can usually get where you're going quicker by taking a shortcut through the Nevernever."

"What's that?"

"It's the spirit world. It's almost-but-not-quite parallel to our own; there's parts where space gets folded in on itself or stretched out, so if you know the Ways you can walk fifty feet from Seattle to Singapore, and if you don't then it might take you through fifty miles of tundra to get from your apartment to the corner store."

"Oh. We just fly everywhere, but it still takes a while to get between Isabella's teacher's house and her parents' across the country."

"Yep. That's what the Ways are for. Less convenient for getting around Chicago, of course, but that's why the good lord gave us cars."

"How do you learn them?"

"A good mentor will teach you the really useful ones, at least a few for each major country. You can find some through trial and error, you can trade with a spirit for some of its favorites, and after a few decades traversing the Nevernever you end up with a sort of sixth sense for shortcuts."

"What do spirits trade?"

"It varies. Usually the lesser entities will want food; pizza usually works well enough for them. Bigger spirits of knowledge will want you to trade them an equal or greater piece of information, the classic trade being either a personal secret or the knowledge of one of your names in your own voice. Obviously the secret shouldn't be something you really don't want getting out, since they'll sell it to someone else just as easily as they sold you what you're asking. But Ways are cheap, so you can usually get a pretty good deal."

"Why do they want your name?"

"If someone pieces together your True Name - every part of your name, said just like you say it yourself - then they've got a little piece of you. They can scry on you more easily, put a curse on you from a distance, or even attack your mind if they're powerful enough. You get a limited degree of that effect even if you've only got pieces of the name, but the whole thing is something you can really do some damage with. So it's pretty dangerous collateral."

"So why was Livingstone so casual about saying four names of yours?"

He shrugs. "You've got to use it to some degree to keep it your name, otherwise I'd be going by John Smith by now. And you're from a different universe, so we're kind of letting our hair down. Plus I doubt you'd sell my third name to Mab or someone, even if you were a local."

"We won't. Why do you want to keep it your name instead of changing names every few years?"

"I mean, if it got out to everyone from here to Arctis Tor, I'd probably have to. But changing your name changes your spirit a little bit, and shifting around too much keeps you from growing right. And I definitely don't want to stunt my magical growth."

"I don't think we know the kind of growing you mean."

"Well, the soul grows in strength with time, as long as you care for it properly. The soul is what produces magic, so as the soul grows strong, your magical power keeps pace. Changing who you are too rapidly gives you spiritual flexibility, but shucks the stability and strength that you'd accumulated. Self-improvement is alright; just changing who you are for the sake of it is the kind of thing that really bites into your power. I would like to keep my power. It is important to me."