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“Like I said. It’s extremely complicated, which is why so few witches have familiars, thankfully.” She huffed out a breath and continued, “No one truly knows for certain what happens when we die, but we do know that some souls stay around. When a soul that hasn’t been reborn naturally is called, it remembers its past life, which works in the favor of the witches.”
“Unless their past life was as a slug,” Charlie mumbled.
“How do you call a soul?” I asked.
“In a similar fashion to calling a demon. By opening a portal through the veil to the afterlife and pulling the first soul that crosses.” Her lips curled in disgust.
My stomach dropped, and I whispered, “I was placed into a cat?”
I felt sick at the thought.My feline body isn’t mine? I’ve taken the place of some other soul?
“No. Your feline body is a part of you. Once the soul is called and the prayers and faith are applied, it forms the basis of the animal god. The shadow realm’s magic creates the form based on the soul’s previous life.”
I let out a sigh of relief.
“This is making my head hurt.” Charlie rubbed his head with a groan.
“Once the animal god has been created, witches must turn that creature from god to slave.” Elizabeth’s voice lowered, and her eyes narrowed.
“Slave?” Zaide asked, his voice equally dark, and his eyes met mine.
I didn’t pause on the word. While Winnie had obviously used me for my power, she never once made me feel like a slave, and I was grateful for the love she gave me as the trauma of my past life lingered in my heart and mind.
I asked, “How do they bond a familiar with a shadow bond?”
“With a tether. Shadows use their own shadow-made tether to wrap around each other, but witches create a magic tether, like the cages we are so fond of, and tie it around the animal,” Elizabeth explained.
Zaide asked with pain in his eyes. “Do you remember any of that, Little Cat?”
“No.” I blinked and tried to recall my first days in this life. I shook my head. “My first weeks alive again are a blur. I was scared a lot.”
Charlie shook his head, his voice serious. “I didn’t tether her. I would have remembered doing something like that.”
He thinks he enslaved me?I tried to reassure him. “It’s all right, Charlie. Our bond is different.”
“Describe to me what you did to save her,” Elizabeth said calmly.
“Zaide told me to imagine a thread and to pull it toward me.” He exchanged looks with Zaide, who nodded.
Elizabeth leaned back into the sofa with a small smile. “You let her tether you, Charlie.”
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“The thread you saw. You tied it from Clawdia to you, did you not?”
“Yes.”
“You are bonded but not in the same way as the shadows, or the witches. Witches tie from themselves and force the connection. Shadows tie each other. You allowed her to tie to you. Although that does mean you are still unbalanced. If you want an equal bond like that of the shadows, Charlie must also tie Clawdia.”
“I don’t feel like we are unbalanced,” I commented.
“The person in control of the bond always feels less. You may not have had time to notice, but it may be duller, quieter than your last bond.”
I thought about that and realized she was right. With Winnie, I was always heard and could always feel her. With Charlie, I had to want to be heard and felt only what I wanted to feel. But he’d felt my extreme emotions even when he didn’t want to. We were unbalanced.
I gave him an apologetic glance. “I just thought it was because Charlie is calmer than Winnie.”
Charlie laughed. “No one has ever accused me of that before.”
