Nervous, I forced myself to the back of the chair beside Dr. Anders’s desk, wondering if Jenks was right and Sara Jane’s coming to the FIB was Trent’s roundabout way to get his claws into me. One thing was certain. Dr. Anders wasn’t the witch hunter. She was nasty, but she wasn’t a murderer.

The two women hesitated in the doorway to the hall, their cat carriers pulling them both off balance. “See you Monday, Rachel,” Janine said.

I gave her a wave, and Dr. Anders made an annoyed noise deep in her throat. The uptight woman put a blank form on top of the stack of papers and printed my name in large block letters.

“Turtle?” Dr. Anders guessed as she glanced at my container.

“Fish,” I said, feeling like an idiot.

“At least you know your limits,” she said. “Being an earth witch, it would be difficult for you to hold enough ever-after to bind a rat to you, much less the cat I’m sure you wanted.”

Her voice was just shy of patronizing, and I had to unkink my hands from their tight grip.

“You see, Ms. Morgan,” Dr. Anders said as she opened the lid and took a peek, “the more power you can channel, the smarter your familiar needs to be. I have an African gray parrot as my familiar.” She brought her gaze to mine. “Is that your homework?”

I stifled a surge of annoyance and handed her a pink folder full of short essays. Under it were Nick’s water-spotted pentagrams, the black paper curling and warped.

Dr. Anders’s lips were so tight, they were bloodless. “Thank you,” she said, tossing Nick’s sketches aside without even a cursory glance. “You’ve got a reprieve, Ms. Morgan. But you don’t belong in my class, and I will remove you the first chance I get.”

I kept my breathing shallow. I knew she wouldn’t dare say that if anyone else was in the room.

“Well,” she murmured as if tired, “let’s see how much aura your fish was able to accept.”

“It took a lot.” My mood shifted to one of nervousness. Nick had looked over my aura before he left last night, pronouncing it to be rather thin. It would slowly replace itself, but in the interim I felt vulnerable.

Dr. Anders kept her opinion of my obvious fluster to herself. Gaze going distant, she dipped her fingers into Bob’s water. The skin on the back of my neck tightened, and it seemed as if my hair drifted in the wind that always seemed to blow in the ever-after. I watched, fascinated, as a blue smear from her hands enveloped Bob. It was ley line power, having turned from red to blue as it reflected the dominant color in the woman’s aura.