It was unlikely that Dr. Anders was drawing upon the university’s ley line. The power had been taken earlier and stored; it made for faster spell casting. I was willing to bet having a sphere of ever-after in her gut was what made the woman so sour.

The blue haze about Bob vanished as Dr. Anders drew her fingers out of the water. “Take your fish and get out,” the woman said brusquely. “Consider yourself flunked.”

Floored, I could do nothing but stare. “What?” I finally managed.

Dr. Anders wiped her fingers dry on a tissue and threw it in her trash can under her desk. “This fish isn’t bound to you. If it were, the ley line force I cloaked it with would have turned to the color of your aura.” Her gaze went indistinct—as if she was looking through me—then her focus sharpened. “Your aura is a sickly gold. What have you been doing, Ms. Morgan, to get it soiled with such a thick haze of red and black?”

“But I followed the instructions!” I cried, not standing up as she began writing on my form. “I’m missing a good chunk of my aura. Where is it?”

“Maybe a bug got into your circle,” she said irately. “Go home, call your familiar, and see what comes.”

Heart pounding, I licked my lips. How the hell do you call your familiar?

She looked up from her writing, putting her crossed arms down upon the page. “You don’t know how to call your familiar.”

It wasn’t a question. I lifted my left shoulder and let it fall in a shrug. What could I say?

“I’ll do it,” she muttered. “Give me your hand.”

I started as she grabbed my wrist. Her bony grip was surprisingly strong. The metallic taste of ash coated my tongue as Dr. Anders muttered an incantation. It was like chewing tinfoil, and I pulled away as soon as her fingers slackened. Rubbing my wrist, I watched Bob, willing him to swim to the surface, or toward me, or something. He just sat on the bottom and swished his tail.

“I don’t understand,” I whispered, feeling betrayed by my books and the spell-casting abilities I was so confident in. “I followed the instructions to the letter.”

Dr. Anders was positively smug. “You will find, Ms. Morgan, that unlike earth magic, ley line manipulation requires more than an unimaginative adherence to rules and to-do lists. It needs talent and a certain amount of freethinking and adaptability. Go home. Make a pet out of whatever shows up on your doorstep. And don’t come back to my classroom.”

“But I did everything right!” I protested, standing up as she made shooing motions and shuffled her papers in dismissal. “I stood on the scrying mirror and pushed my aura off. I got it into the transfer medium without touching it. I put Bob in with it—”