Free Keeley Thomson (Book 3): Mistress of Souls by P.S. Power

what else she should be doing. It wasn't a lot at the moment. She had a medium amount of homework for school, needed to set up some transfers of funds, for which she needed to get with Darla and really... everything else required sister related chatting, didn't it? Except for trying to figure out how to travel the inroads without seventy-plus years of practice. There was no way that jumped to the front in her memories, but there had to be something. A way to accelerate the needed changes somehow maybe?
    That or to fake the walking...
    Which wouldn't work. Everyone felt different on the inroads. She had to at least manage it once in front of everyone at Dan's party. Maybe twice just to show she could really handle it and wasn't a noob. How the heck was she supposed to do that though? The real thing about traveling the inroads, what made it so hard, was that the brain had to restructure over time to be able to see and deal with the eccentric space it was located in. It took decades of exposure and time to heal and reorganize neural structures into a pattern that could make it all work.
    She needed to get that exposure somehow, many times in a few days, and then work out how to heal and change fast enough between times. That part she could do. Healing wasn't exactly the same thing, but as long as she allowed herself to alter to a new pattern each time, one better able to handle the stress of the space in-between, it should work.
    That just left two problems. The first was getting enough food to keep up optimal healing and change rates, which would take some work. The second was finding a way to get the needed exposure. That...
    Well, it was simple really, wasn't it? She just needed to use magic for it. It was like what she did to alter her mood or body, but outside herself. That was, when you got right down to it, what Demons did. They altered reality to their will. There was some science to it too, but for now that was all she really needed. If she could replay what she'd seen Balthias do earlier well enough and project it outside of herself, then she should slip onto the inroads as well. Then it would only take getting back and loads of healing.
    Piece of cake.
    She decided to do her homework first, before trying it. She had no clue how long it would actually require, or how much damage it would do to her brain. There was no time to waste though, past the forty minutes to do her class work. Less if she hurried and ate fast.
    At one in the morning exactly she stood by her bed and made herself focus, first blocking out everything in the world around her, then remembering what it had looked like when Balthias had gone onto the inroads. She added what it had felt like when Finias had done it too... and Darla. Then she tried to press that sense of things on the world around her.
    Nothing happened.
    Not at first. After a while she opened her eyes and saw just the faintest hint of a shimmer in the air, like the reflection of light off of a hot road. She wanted to redouble the effort and try again immediately, but doing that would be foolish. She worked on healing instead, that and changing, trying to bend herself toward being able to understand what exactly she'd really seen.
    Then hour after hour she did it all again. First seeing the shimmer, then healing, the whole thing happening faster each time as she got better at it. On the last round before she had to ready herself for school she managed a whole cycle in less than five minutes. The air in front of her was so distorted and clear at the same time she decided to step into it. It was impulsive, but she had a time schedule, so it was worth risking.
    As long as it didn't kill her, of course.
    She really didn't expect anything to happen, but that was simply wrong. Blinding pain ripped across her mind. She backed out and stood panting, head aching fiercely even as she tried to heal and change, blocking out pain as she went. It was bad enough she was nearly late to school, fighting to