As we finished up the last bites of apple pie, Granny fixed me with her steely gaze and said, “So, what’s the problem?”

“Problem?” I asked, blushing at the thought she might have picked up on my desire for her to leave.

“Did you hit a snag with your training?”

How did she know this stuff? “I was tired yesterday, so it didn’t go so well.”

“You did better today, though,” Owen hurried to add.

It didn’t fool Granny. “Okay, honey, out with it,” she said.

I glanced at Owen before saying, “I started off so well. It was easy. And now, it seems like it’s more of a struggle.”

“Well, you’ve moved beyond the basics. It’s going to be harder. Anything worth doing takes time and effort to learn.”

“But that’s the thing—it is the basics I’m having trouble with now.” I heard the frustration in my own voice. “The things that were easy earlier in the week are a lot harder now, if I can even do them at all. I think I’m losing my touch,” I finally admitted. Owen’s expression was both shocked and concerned.

“Let’s see what we can do about that—after we do the dishes, of course,” Granny said matter-of-factly.

The dishes went quickly with all three of us working, and then we adjourned to the living room. Owen took a seat to the side so he could observe. His worried look unsettled me. “I’m not going to spontaneously turn into a frog, or anything like that, am I?” I asked him.

He quickly adjusted his expression as he said, “I can’t think of any reason you should.”

“There is precedent in your department.”

“He was meddling with dangerous spells. You’re doing the basics.”

“It’s probably just bad technique that you were taught,” Granny said. “Try it my way.”

Using Granny’s techniques did have slightly better results than my office training session that afternoon, but the simplest spells still left me feeling like I’d singlehandedly fought a great magical battle. In spite of their assurances, I knew something was wrong.

“You tell Rod that you’re doing things Granny’s way from now on,” she told me when I called a halt to the exercises and got ready to go home. “How you city wizards get anything done at all is beyond me.”

“We do get lazy and complacent with all the magical energy in the environment around here,” Owen said, which I thought disappointed her. She’d been gearing up for a big argument. I suppressed a smile. Owen might have found the best way of encouraging her to return home in not rising to her challenges.

*

The next morning, I was still haunted by the thought that the elves might have done something to me. My ability to use magic had totally changed after that attack, and I doubted it was a coincidence. I thought I might ask Perdita some general, innocuous questions about elven magic when I got to work, but she wasn’t yet at her desk when I arrived. I took that as a good sign because it meant she was getting back to normal. Showing me that anti-wizard flyer had probably cleared her conscience.

When she still hadn’t shown up by noon and hadn’t called in sick, I started to worry. There were times when I wouldn’t have been surprised if she forgot what day it was and thought it was the weekend, but with a spate of elf disappearances and resignations, I wasn’t ready to dismiss it so easily. I called her cell phone, but the call went straight to voice mail, so I left a message for her to check in with me.

I hadn’t heard anything by the time of my afternoon training session, so when I arrived at the classroom, I asked Rod, “Did Perdita resign? You would tell me, right?”

“She didn’t show up today?”

“Nope, and no call from her, either, which is odd. She’s good about letting me know if she’s going to be out or unusually late. I left her a message, but she hasn’t called back.”

“I didn’t get any paperwork on her. I can’t start investigating job abandonment until she misses two more business days without notice.”

Had she put herself at risk by showing me that flyer? And how would anyone know she’d done that? I hadn’t told where I got it, and no one had been around when she showed it to me.

Owen showed up a moment later carrying a box full of gadgets. “Sorry I’m late. I was pulling some things together.”

“Is that the testing stuff?” I asked.

“Testing?” Rod asked.

“To make sure the elves didn’t somehow put the whammy on me,” I explained.