I sat at the lab stool and tapped my ankle against the rungs. "How much longer do you think she can drag this out?" I asked Janine as I tossed my head to Dr. Anders. The woman was at her desk before the blackboard, testing one of the students.
Janine popped her gum and twirled a finger in her enviably straight hair. Her previous fear of my demon mark had turned into a rebellious daring after I told her I got it through my past work with the I.S. Yes, it was ninety percent a lie, but I couldn't bear her distrust of me.
"Familiar evaluations take forever," the young woman agreed. The fingers of her free hand were gentling the fur between her cat's ears. The white Manx had his eyes closed, clearly enjoying the attention. My gaze slid to Bob. I had put him in one of those big peanut butter tubs with a lid to get him there. Janine had "oooohed" over him, but I knew it was a sympathy oooh. Most everyone had cats. One had a ferret. I thought that was cool, and the man to whom it belonged said they made the best familiars.
Bob and I were the only two left to be evaluated, and the room was almost empty, but Janine was waiting for Paula, the student with Dr. Anders. I nervously pulled Bob's bucket closer and glanced out the window to the lights just now flickering on over the parking lot.
I was hoping to see Ivy that night. We still hadn't crossed paths since Nick knocked her out. I knew she'd been around. There was coffee in the pot that afternoon, and the messages were cleared. She had gotten herself up and out before I woke up. That wasn't like her at all, but I knew better than to force a conversation before she was ready.
"Hey," Janine said, jerking my attention back. "Paula and I are going out to Piscary's for some lunch before the sun goes down and the place fills up with undead vamps. Do you want to come? We'll wait for you."
Her offer pleased me more than I wanted to admit, but I shook my head. "Thanks, no. I've already made plans to meet my boyfriend." Nick was working in the next building over, and as he quit today about the time my class was supposed to end, we were going to Micky-d's for his dinner and my lunch.
"Bring him along," Janine urged, her thick blue eyeliner clashing with her otherwise tasteful appearance. "Having one guy at a table of girls always brings the good-looking, single men to the table."
I couldn't help my smile. "No-o-o-o," I hedged, not wanting to tell her Piscary scared the peas out of me, set my demon scar tingling, and was my roommate's uncle, for lack of a better word. "Nick's human," I said. "It'd be kind of awkward."
"You're dating a human!" Janine whispered harshly. "Hey, is it true what they say?"
I gave her a sideways look as Paula finished with Dr. Anders and joined us. "About what?" I asked as Paula shoved her unwilling cat into a collapsible carrier amid yowls and spitting. I stared, appalled, as she zipped the door shut.
"You know..." Janine nudged my arm. "Do they have, uh... Are they really..."
Pulling my eyes from the shaking carrier, I grinned. "Yeah. They do. They really are."
"Yowsers!" Janine exclaimed, reaching to take Paula's arm. "You here that, Paula? I gotta charm me a human before I get too old to appreciate him."
Paula was flushed, looking especially red against her blond hair. "Stop it," she hissed, shooting a glance at Dr. Anders.
"What?" Janine said, not a bit flustered as she opened her carrier and her cat voluntarily went in, curling up and purring. "I wouldn't marry one, but what's wrong with rolling around with a human while you're looking for Mr. Right? My dad's first wife was human."
Our conversation was cut short as Dr. Anders cleared her throat. Janine grabbed her purse and slid off the lab stool. Giving the two women a thin smile, I reluctantly dragged Bob's peanut butter tub off the lab bench and made my way forward. Nick's pentagrams were tucked under my arm, and Dr. Anders didn't look up as I slid the container onto the open space of her desk.
I wanted to wrap this up and get out of here. Nick was going to drive me out to the FIB tonight after lunch so I could talk to Sara Jane. Glenn had asked her to come in so he could get an idea of Dan's daily patterns, and I wanted to ask her about Trent's whereabouts the last few days. Glenn wasn't happy about my angle of investigation, but it was my run, too, damn it.
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.
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 - "
Dr. Anders jerked, turning her thin face up to me. "Scrying mirror?"
"I said the incantation," I continued. "Nick said it didn't matter if I couldn't say it in Latin." Frustrated, I stood before her desk and fumed. If I left, it would be over. It wasn't the money anymore. It was this woman thinking I was stupid.
"Latin?" Dr. Anders's face was slack.
"I said it," I protested, replaying the night in my head. "And then - " My breath caught and my face went cold. "And then the demon showed up," I whispered, sinking down on the chair before my knees gave way. "Oh God. Did it take my aura? Did the demon take my aura?"
"Demon?" She looked appalled. "You called a demon?"
I panicked, sitting there at the nasty woman's desk. I was scared out of my panties, and I didn't care if she knew it. Algaliarept had my aura. "It got through the circle!" I babbled, forcing myself to not clutch at her arm. "Somehow it got my aura through the circle!"
"Ms. Morgan!" Dr. Anders exclaimed. "If a demon got in your circle, you would not be sitting in front of me. You'd be in the ever-after with it, begging for your death!"
Frightened, I sat where I was with my arms clasped about me. I was a runner, not a demon killer.
The woman looked angry as she tapped her pen on the desktop. "What were you doing summoning a demon? Those things are dangerous."
"I didn't," I gushed. "You gotta believe me. It showed up on its own. See, I owe it a favor for taking me through the ley lines after it was sent to kill me. It was the only way to get back to Ivy before I bled to death. And it thought that I was trying to call it to settle my debt, what with the circle and pentagrams that Nick was copying for - uh - me."
Her eyes flicked to the water-spotted drawings. "Your boyfriend did these, did he?"
Again I nodded, unable to outright lie to her. "I was going to redo them myself later," I said. "I didn't have time to do two weeks of homework and catch a murderer both."
Dr. Anders stiffened. "I did not kill my past students."
My eyes dropped and I felt myself start to calm. "I know."
She took a breath, holding it for a moment before letting it out. I felt some kind of ley line force pass between us, and sat wide-eyed, wondering what she was doing. "You don't think I killed them," she finally said, and the feeling that I was chewing tinfoil stopped. "So why are you in my class?"
"Captain Edden of the FIB sent me to find evidence that you're the witch hunter," I said. "He won't pay me if I don't follow up on his idea. You're obnoxious, overbearing, and the meanest thing I've seen since my fourth-grade teacher, but you're not a murderer."
The older woman slumped as the tension drained from her. "Thank you," she whispered. "You don't know how good it is to hear someone say that." She pulled her head up, shocking me with a weak smile. "The not-murdering part," she added. "The adjectives I'll ignore."
Seeing a hint of humanity in her, I blurted, "I don't like ley lines, Dr. Anders. Where's the rest of my aura?"
She took a breath to say something, stopping as her gaze went over my shoulder to the door. I spun in my chair at the tentative knock on the frame. Nick peeked round the open door, and I felt my face light up. "I apologize, Dr. Anders," he said, making a show of his university work ID clipped to his shirt. "Can I interrupt for a moment?"
"I'm with a student," she said, the professional tone back in her voice. "I'll be with you in a moment if you'd like to wait in the hall. Could you shut the door, please?"
Nick winced, looking awkward as he stood in his jeans and casual shirt in the doorway. "Ah, it's Rachel I need to see. I'm really sorry for interrupting like this. I'm working in the next building over." He turned to look down the hall and back. "I wanted to see that she was all right. And possibly find out how much longer it was going to be?"
"Who are you?" Dr. Anders asked, her face blank.
"That's Nick," I said sheepishly. "My boyfriend."
Hunched in embarrassment, Nick fidgeted. "I don't know why I'm even bothering you," he said. "I'll go wait in the lounge."
A flash of what looked like horror passed over Dr. Anders. She looked from me to Nick, then surged to her feet. Heels clacking, she pulled him in and shut the door behind him.
"Stay there," she said as she left him bewildered in front of her desk. Nick's pentagrams sat before us like guilt given substance. Standing before the windows with her back to us, Dr. Anders looked at the dark parking lot. "Where did you get a familiar binding spell that was in Latin?" she asked.
Nick touched my shoulder in sympathy, and I wished I'd never gotten him into this. "Uh, out of one of my old spell books," I admitted, thinking she wanted Nick there for verification. "It was the only charm I could find on such short notice. But I know the pentagrams. I just didn't have the time to do them."