“I just want to know when this is all going to be over. Where does it stop?” Although Bethany Carlisle’s voice was loud enough to cut through the soft chiming of the ritual bells, her tone bore an unmistakable note of exhaustion.
“C’mon, babe,” growled the other woman in the room. She extended one finger to silence a bell, even as she lit candles with the other hand, touching one flame to the next. “We’ve talked about this. It ends when they’ve all learned their lessons. Every one of them. Not to treat women like objects. And most importantly, not to mess with you or me.”
“Mess with me?” Bethany sounded indignant. “I know you think you’re acting on my behalf, protecting your girl from the assholes. But you’ve changed… how many people, now?”
“Four,” muttered the second woman. The fingers of her left hand, holding the lighter, tightened. “Four, as soon as I do this.” She brought a long, curling strip of wax paper towards a candle flame.
“Wait…” Bethany said, but her voice was too late, too soft, already knowing she was doing too little to stop any of this. The brittle paper disappeared in a quick, hot flash of light. A faint smell filled the room—smoke, burning sage, and something else. After a moment, she ran her fingers through her tangle of auburn hair and found her voice again. “Who was it this time?”
“That creep TA who thought he could take you on in a debate. Now that Dr. Berglund, that fucking men’s rights activist, is out of the picture… the TA is the only one in my way.” The dark-haired woman’s fists clenched, and corded biceps flexed beneath her olive skin.
“Will you listen to yourself? Do you really think you can fix sexism by turning misogynists into women? This is escalating. I don’t like what it’s doing to you, and people are going to find out! Professor Berglund’s been absent from class for days already.” Bethany shook her head, rubbing the bridge of her nose between delicate fingers.
Her girlfriend brought a fist down on the hardwood floor, making a glass bell ring in a discordant clash. The flames wavered for a moment, casting her face into a menacing silhouette. “They disrespected you, Bee. And you’re my girl, so they disrespected me, too. Do you think I hadn’t planned on people finding out? I’ve been counting on it.”
The broad-shouldered woman forced her hand to relax, and she smiled at Bethany, her face a taut mask of simulated calm. “Worry less, all right? Witchcraft thrives on mischief and disorder. And when they see what I’m capable of… you’ll have a better dissertation subject than anything this college could provide.”
“You know I’m not interested in studying magic! I just… I just want this all to be over, Autumn.” She stepped closer to the circle of salt, ashes and chalk that her girlfriend had drawn in the center of their bedroom. “Can’t you just… drop it?!”
The response was a rueful shake of a black-haired head. “How can I, Bethany? I’ve gone too far. I have to face the enemy. If you can’t handle it, leave me alone in the apartment for a day.” She stared down into a bowl of water. “Or at least give me some space. I need to scry and make sure the curse is taking effect. You can watch if you want…”
With that, her attention drifted away from her partner, and her eyes took on the glazed, distant expression that frightened her so much these days. Bethany swallowed the retort on her lips, but knew it was too late—they’d been over this, and over this, and her girlfriend still refused to let go.
“Fine,” Bethany muttered. “But I’m not getting in the way if someone tries to stop you.”
“No need for that, love.” Autumn, the woman she loved even through it all, didn’t look up; wouldn’t look up. “Just stay quiet until it’s finished.”
***
Ryan Andrews hurried across the quad at the edge of campus, brushing a stray hair out of his eyes. He really needed a haircut. It wouldn’t do to be mistaken for one of the latter-day hippies that infested this campus. He’d suffered through classes at SLC, and what passed for social life around here, for three years. All in order to land a research assistant position with the top Supernatural Economics professor in the country. Now he was within striking distance. Just have to pass with a decent GPA, finish one more semester, make a name for myself by winning this debate…
The college senior’s back stiffened a little as he walked, and his hip joints popped. He didn’t notice as his gait changed slightly, becoming less of a purposeful march and more of a swaying saunter.
Across the central lawn, Ryan caught sight of one of the few things that had kept his attention on this campus: Trisha Mullawney, whose blonde curls and long, perfectly toned legs had haunted his thoughts for the past two semesters. She was the perfect high-value dating asset to signal his dominance, but he had gotten exactly nowhere with her—she’d been in a relationship with some asshole frat boy, then went lesbian for a few months. But now, he thought. This semester is my chance.
Ryan didn’t notice how the tips of his hair curled slightly and lightened as they blew in the fall breeze, shifting gradually from dark brown to a honey-blonde. He was thinking about winning, and status, and the way Trisha had smiled at him in his European history seminar yesterday. Preoccupied, Ryan didn’t even notice when his legs lengthened, giving him an extra inch of height as the transformation stretched and smoothed his calves beneath khaki slacks.
He waved to Brad Kerball as he passed, but Brad just gave him a strange look. No big deal, thought Ryan. We’ll meet up after lunch to work out. Brad always looks so cute when he lifts, and scrunches up his face like—wait, what? Cute? No, he meant dumb. He made his way towards the larger fields at the center of campus, dominated as usual by Ultimate Frisbee and lacrosse practice.
***
At the other end of the long green sward that formed a central walking mall for the campus, Agents Belmont and Miller walked slowly down a gravel path, reviewing Susan’s notes.
“So what do we have?” Una asked. “A pair of girls who are practicing black market sex magic with each other; very cute, but doesn’t help us at all. Sandeep’s case clearly involved powerful magic outside his control, which transmuted and conjured clothing on top of the bodily changes.” She pursed her deep-red lips. “Then there was the first student… but is it possible that these are all isolated cases?”
Susan swiped through apps on her tablet. “Hold on… I’ve got a report from New York about that first student, Jason Christansen. The university administration may not want to cooperate, but the OSA has other ways of making inquiries, of course.”
She skimmed for a moment, then continued. “Get this: Jason Christansen was at a movie with a friend, and transformed into a copy of Ruby Jamison, the star of the film. Complete with a tight-fitting leather catsuit. Jason’s friends called it in and reported that Jason was acting unlike himself, but then his parents whisked him home to a private medical facility the following morning.”
Una let out a low whistle. “That sure sounds a lot like what happened to Sandeep. Or to me, for that matter; you’ve seen how riding on others’ fantasies can end with me copying a celebrity’s style.”
“Yes, but we know how those changes happened.” Susan smirked. “You’re a succubus. It’s a matter of myth and record that your kind can transform into whatever your partner most desires. Bakshi and Christiansen were both transformed into a form they’d been fantasizing about. Whatever outside force changed them also seems to have tampered with their minds.”
The dark look on Una’s face spoke volumes, and Susan couldn’t help but recall what her dark mistress had endured at the hands of those who’d sought to brainwash and suborn her.
“Don’t fret, my love. We’ll sort this out.” Susan adjusted her glasses and peered around the quad. “We just have to spot the pattern, the connecting link…”
“There’s clearly some consistency in how the magic works, but no leads on what might be behind it, or how it picks targets.” Una rubbed the bridge of her nose, thinking. “This thing might strike male students… randomly?!” She lifted her hands in frustration as they walked down a gravel path. “Or there could be some other part of the pattern we’re missing. Do you have Jason and Sandeep’s schedule?”
Susan swiped again. “I have the course codes, at least. We’d have to look up the names of classes. Let’s see… two history courses, guitar lessons, and a gender studies class—” Both women stopped in mid-stride, their eyes meeting.
“Gender studies?” Una mused. “But Rachel might have called that major Women’s Studies, I’d guess. That’s what it was called back when I was in school—I mean, when Michael was.” She put a finger on her temple. “Could be something, although the whole ‘TA arguing with a goth girl’ incident sounded dubious at best. And there’s still no connection to Sandeep, who was an Economics and Computer Science major.”
Susan snapped her fingers and turned around. “Wait, just a second! Let’s retrace our steps.” The petite scholar moved quickly in the direction they’d come from; Una hurried after her, confused but intrigued. “I saw something taped up back here…” Susan scanned the sides of the path. “Where was it?”
Una pointed. “Is that it? A flyer?” Susan nodded, and they moved closer to read a colorful paper taped to an old iron streetlamp.
ECON-458 MARKETS OF DESIRE: A DEBATE, the flyer read. Which side are you on? Join teaching assistant Ryan Anderson and PhD candidate Bethany Carlisle for a spirited argument about the ethics of desire. Should we suppress our sexual urges? Follow them unquestioningly? Does the pursuit of pleasure hurt or help the economy and society? Come listen to both sides argue for their viewpoint.
“ECON-458,” said Susan, tapping her tablet. “That’s the exact class Sandeep was in the day before his change. Give me a second and I can check on whether Christiansen was in it, too.”
“It certainly sounds like an intersection between economics and gender studies.” Una frowned, looking at the dates and times on the flyer. “This debate’s tomorrow morning. And Rachel said her Women’s Studies TA was named either Alan or Ryan.”
Susan exhaled slowly. “All right, I’ve figured it out from looking at the online course listing. The class is cross-listed between two different academic departments. It’s running with two codes, ECON-458 and GEND-412, so students from both majors could enroll… including Sandeep Bakshi, Jason Christiansen, and Rachel Marsden. The TA is Ryan Anderson, and it has two instructors: Bethany Carlisle and Dr. Jorg Berglund.”
Una slapped the paper with the back of her hand. “We’ve found ground zero. Do you think Ryan Anderson is involved somehow? Or this PhD student he’s debating? She could be the goth girl…”
“Seems unlikely.” Susan tapped her lower lip. “Rachel didn’t say she knew the goth girl, but at this point in the semester, she’d recognize Bethany Carlisle. There’s more we’re not seeing.”
The long nail of Una’s index finger pointed out something on Susan’s screen. “Check out who else is in the class: Sam Perkins.”
“Sandeep’s roommate?” Susan blinked. “He didn’t seem affected at all… and didn’t mention anything about the class.”
Una shrugged. “He hasn’t been affected yet, at least. And neither of them had any inkling this class might have something to do with it.” The pair looked at each other, both reaching for their phones.
“I’ll call Sandeep and see if he can tell us anything else about the class, or who was arguing. And I can find contact information for the two instructors…” Susan juggled her tablet and phone, concentrating. “But what about Perkins? Should we look up his schedule?”
Una produced a business card with a flourish. “He slipped it to me before he left to study. But with the most awkward manner I can imagine…”
Susan stifled a snort. “Oh, he gave you his phone number! What a surprise.”
“Hey, now,” protested Una. “I’m not about to encourage a twenty-year-old guy to flirt with me. That’d be robbing the cradle in some kind of extreme way, since I’m either fifty-three or nearly nine-thousand years old, depending.”
The bemused scholar only favored her mistress with an enigmatic smile. “And I’m only twenty-seven, remember? I suppose we should come up with come up with an accurate way of calculating your age. Maybe the harmonic mean? That’d put you at just over a century old, I think.”
Una shook her head. “I don’t know what’s weirder: being that old, or not knowing exactly how old I am. I’ll call Perkins if you’ll try Sandeep and the professor?”
Susan nodded and lifted her phone as Una moved a short distance away from the lamppost. As Susan dialed, she heard her lover speaking in an animated voice: “Hello! It’s Agent Micki Belmont again, from the Office for Supernatural Affairs? Yes, hi… I had a couple more things to ask you…” Susan tuned her out, focusing instead on the ringing at the other end of her own phone call. She only reached Sandeep’s voicemail, and the numbers for Bethany Carlisle and Prof. Jorg Berglund both rang without answering.
She hung up, sent some texts while walking towards Una, and wondered if that wasn’t the most significant sign of an age difference between herself and the priest-turned-succubus. Does anyone under the age of forty even answer the phone? Other than Sam Perkins, of course. Susan leaned close to hear the conversation.
“Ryan’s the TA, yeah,” she heard Sam said. “Kind of a jerk, although I missed class last week, so I only heard about this debate thing a few days ago, I guess.”
Una glanced at Susan, who pointed at her phone and shook her head. The succubus furrowed her brows and continued, “We need to find him. Any idea where Ryan would be this time of day?”
The student hesitated a moment, but then replied, “I don’t hang out with him that much, but he’s probably either eating lunch at the north end of the commons, near the dining hall… or working out with Brad Kerball in the gym. Or, you know… on his way between the two.”
Una thanked him and hung up. “No luck with anyone else, huh? I guess we should start looking for Ryan. Sam said he’d be at lunch or in the gym.”
Susan nodded as they hurried northward along the greensward. “I can track down Berglund and Carlisle’s addresses if we can’t find him, but they’re more likely to live off campus, I’d guess.”
With the autumn sun warming the air and the grass, students sat in small groups or pairs, talking and eating. Susan and Una walked along one side of the green expanse, with the shorter scholar taking two brisk paces for each stride of Una’s long, shapely legs.
“I couldn’t help but notice… that was the third time you introduced yourself as Agent Micki Belmont instead of using Una. Are you switching back, or just using your old name for OSA work? I’m fine with either, but… I’m curious.” Susan adjusted her glasses and tried to catch her partner’s eye.
“Well, I…” Una trailed off, then sighed before glancing back at Susan with a wan smile. “Lady Una’s all the rage in the queer Brooklyn underground, right? Ever since Maria started hyping our ability to transform people, I’m not sure if I should advertise my identity openly.” Her gaze flicked down to the pavement beneath her heels. “Especially in a case involving transformations.”
She shook her head, the wings of hair around her face shifting in the breeze. “Micki’s only part of my identity, but it’s nice to let that aspect take center stage sometimes.” She chuckled. “Plus, I’m trying to pass as an ordinary woman who just happens to be a government agent, right?”
“Ordinary doesn’t quite describe how you nearly kicked down those girls’ dorm room! Bu… I noticed how you toned down the horns and tail,” Susan said, tilting her head slightly to appreciate the view of her girlfriend’s ass, sheathed in black slacks. “Still have the little nubs, but I love those. And I love you as Micki, Una, or whatever name you’re wearing.” She stepped quickly to Una’s side and took her arm, leaning into her and reveling in the warmth and strength emanating from the demoness.
“Babe, I—” Una said, but then the screams interrupted them.
***
Ryan blinked as his vision blurred, then swam back into focus. What was wrong with him? It wasn’t as if he’d eaten a heavy lunch, but ever since leaving the cafeteria, he’d felt unsteady. He lifted a hand to his face and scratched at his forehead; his eyebrows itched. Ouch! He really needed to cut his nails, too.
A passing girl wearing a tight denim dress stared at him with a strange expression, and Ryan gave her the side-eye right back. Who does that bitch think she is? Annoyed thoughts raced across his mind as he walked, his gait still unsteady, as if he couldn’t quite stretch out his hips. It’s not like she’s got what I’ve got, he thought, brushing his bangs out of his eyes again. By which I mean… natural beauty, and confidence. Yeah. That’s it.
He glanced back at the girl—some junior he barely knew—and appreciated the bounce of her ass beneath the short blue hemline, showing off a delicious bubble butt encased in leggings that might as well be painted on. The way the fabric stretched as she moved, the muscles of her thighs flexing… God, I’d like to get my hands on an ass like that. Shake it until I’m driving every guy on campus insane… with jealousy, I mean.
Ryan shook his head to clear away the intrusive thought. He wasn’t some creep. He just needed a high-value trophy to parade around—but that would never happen if he didn’t get his shit together.
As he turned onto the side path leading towards the gym, he nearly lost his balance as something heavy settled across his hips. It felt almost as if someone had fastened a weighted tool belt around his waist, with all the mass centered on his backside. The sensation made him pause in mid-step, one foot dangling above the asphalt. He twisted to look over one shoulder, wondering what had happened.
The seams of his black chinos were straining against a swelling curve in his flesh. From his waist, which suddenly looked tiny by comparison, the seat of his pants bulged outwards, barely able to contain the globes of his cheeks. Holy fuck, he thought. That ass. It’s as round and tight as the girl I was just checking out. But how…?
Ryan reached down gingerly and traced the swell of one cheek through his pants. This wasn’t his ass at all—the flesh was soft, pliant, and lush. But a tingle of sensation accompanied his touch, and he shivered with pleasure… which quickly posed a problem as his too-tight pants strained across his front. Oh no. I can’t—I have to get out of here!
He hobbled to the side of the gym building and wrestled with the door for a moment before remembering it was a locked exit. Then he started again and stared at his hand. That’s not my hand, either! The fingers were longer, and far more slender than his hairy knuckles. A girl’s hand had replaced Ryan’s own. His long, neat fingernails—which he’d clipped only yesterday, as he remembered—now gleamed in the sunlight with a fresh coat of red polish. He quickly lifted his right hand to compare—and found it exactly the same as when he’d last looked, thick-fingered and completely covered with short brown hairs. He stared back and forth at the two hands in disbelief, before a sudden noise shattered his reverie.
An Asian man in basketball shorts barged out of the gymnasium door, followed by a petite brunette in a sports bra and yoga pants. Edward Choi caught Ryan as he stumbled backwards and nearly fell.
“Whoa, careful there buddy,” said Ed, catching him by the shoulders. “Ryan? Is that you?”
Caught between an impulse to flee and the desire to plead for help, Ryan looked up and tried to reply. His mouth felt wrong, as if the bones of his jaw were moving. His lips seemed to move on their own, the tongue flicking moisture onto lips that suddenly tasted of cherry. “Um… Uh, hi Eddie…” His voice sounded hesitant, a little unsure, as if coming from somewhere else. He couldn’t think straight.
“What did you do to your hair? Bleach half of it?” Trisha Montgomery leaned forward and stared; hadn’t the dark-haired girl been shorter the last time Ryan saw her? He clutched at his hair and tried to push away the strands of long hair in front of his face, which he realized to his horror was now a vivid strawberry blonde, just as Trisha had suggested.
“Oh my God, Eddie, something’s—something is—” Ryan’s voice cracked, shifting registers. He swallowed heavily, feeling the lump of his Adam’s apple shift down and disappear as his throat lengthened slightly.
Trisha yelped, backpedaling without letting go of her boyfriend’s hand. “Ed, look at his face!”
The expression on Edward Choi’s broad-featured face went from concerned to shocked. “Dude… what the fuck?! Did you take something weird, Ryan? Your eyes… and holy crap, your nose!”
Ryan blinked, feeling a sensation like warm tears rolling down his face. He reached up with his left hand and found that his cheeks and nose were shifting painlessly beneath his fingers, warping like potter’s clay. His nose, which his sister mockingly referred to as a “schnoz,” felt as if it were melting away, narrowing as it moved. He opened and closed his mouth a few times, trying to breathe, but his chest felt tighter than it ever had in his life. The sensation of weight on his hips grew more pronounced, and his arms seemed to shrink and fold inward as he reached out.
Trisha shrieked again, her own voice cracking with panic as she yelled for Eddie. “What if it’s contagious? I don’t want to end up looking like a freak!”
“Wait—wait for me, bitches!” His voice, high-pitched, breathless with fear and shock, sounded like someone else’s, but the couple was already moving away. Alien thoughts raced through Ryan’s mind, crowding out rationality. What does he even see in her? She can’t do proper makeup and doesn’t even know how to style her hair. It’s that she’s tiny and cute, I bet—he likes to lift her up and throw her around like a toy…
Ryan gasped for air and nearly stumbled into a tree as an intense pressure squeezed his ribs, compressing the lungs beneath them into smaller, tighter shapes. The world swam in his vision for a moment, but he managed a single step, then another, heading down the center of the commons. He felt his hips swing from side to side, sending a ripple across his ass that made him shudder and gasp again as the tightness in his chest eased. The sensation of weightlessness in his torso, paired with the new heaviness of his lower body, made him feel unbalanced and clumsy, like a toddler trying to walk.
“Where the fuck is my backpack?!” Ryan snarled, his voice petulant and whining. A navy-blue purse swung from one shoulder, banging against a hip that was still cracking wider, curving outward into a shapely figure eight. The strap slipped down one arm, and another student yelled in alarm and pointed.
Ryan twisted as something happened to his spine, every vertebra popping as they shrank and reconfigured themselves. His proportions shifted, his limbs and torso becoming shorter until the alterations forced him forward at the waist, his hips swaying. The seam of his pants ripped, and one leg tore completely away to reveal a white thigh-high stocking, stretched to the limit over a smooth, creamy leg. At his waist, something was billowing out like a loose undershirt, settling over the curves of his ass—a pleated skirt! A plaid, pleated skirt! The horror of what was happening finally registered, and he screamed in rage and terror at the top of his lungs.
“No! I don’t want… I don’t want to turn into a girl!” Ryan shouted. His words echoed back at him, sounding like a young woman’s voice—his voice—as his lips puffed up and his jaw receded into a smaller, more delicate structure.
Around Ryan, some students beat a hasty retreat, but others stayed frozen in place, staring at him—or worse still, holding out their phones, filming him. The urge came over Ryan to strike at those closest, to scratch and bite and kick until the phones shattered. He tried to move away instead, but the soles of his high-top sneakers had stretched into impractical platform heels, and he stumbled forward and pitched towards the ground.
Two strong, slender arms caught Ryan before his knees hit the grass. He looked up and stared right at a small religious medallion nestled between two impressive, lightly freckled breasts, nearly bursting out of a tight-fitting white blouse with a government badge attached. Ryan’s eyes followed the swell of breasts upwards until he was gazing into the face of a gorgeous woman with strange, amber-hued eyes and full lips.
Agent Una Belmont set the transformed TA upright. “I think we found our man. Or what’s left of him.” She inspected the changing student: one half of his face was still a young man’s square-jawed, angular profile, while the other half was a feminine, oval shape dominated by large blue eyes and a pert little nose. His left hand still gripped a smartphone, but the fingers had thinned, the nails painted with a bright coat of red polish.
Blonde, curly hair spilled out of the right side of Ryan’s head, contrasting sharply with his original close-cropped, dark hair. The student’s jacket seemed to shift and change, cinching itself tighter around Ryan’s slender waist, above wide hips clad in a torn pair of black slacks… but also a white stocking, and a plaid miniskirt that seemed to billow out further by the second as the student sank to the grass again, his feet spread out girlishly.
“Don’t let him out of your sight, Agent M!” Susan fumbled in her bag, looking for something. “I thought we might run into a problem like this, so I brought along… damn! Where is it?” Ryan had backwards, away from the crowd of gaping students on his ample behind, and Una advanced, trying to get the student to take her hand.
“Help—you’ve got to help me. I don’t want to change!” Ryan cried in an escalating contralto, his voice breaking in a familiar adolescent way as his vocal cords tightened further. His eyes glazed over for a moment as he scrambled backwards in panic. Then he said in an entirely different voice, sounding for all the world like a disaffected society girl, “Damn, queen! You have such snatched curves. Did you have those babies done?”
Una glanced down at her cleavage, caught off guard. Then she blinked in surprise as Ryan’s back arched, and flesh rippled across the surface of his chest, swelling one side of his suit jacket until its buttons popped, revealing a pale, plump breast that threatened to spill out of the plunging collar of Ryan’s dress shirt.
“What in hell’s lightless depths…?” Una muttered, even as the other breast surged forward, threatened to split open the remaining buttons on Ryan’s blouse. She kneeled to get a closer look and realized that the TA was now wearing a woman’s bra, a lacy pink number that seemed to fit perfectly.
“Got it!” Susan’s voice pealed, and the scholar was at Ryan’s side a moment later. He looked up at Susan and smiled coquettishly. “Hey girl,” the student said in a throaty purr. “I’m Rian. You interested in pledging Delta Nu?” Rian batted her eyelashes, then winced as her eyes changed shape in subtle ways, widening even as the lashes grew longer and darker, becoming a thick, fluttering fan that emphasized her deep-blue irises. Abruptly, the new girl’s eyes widened in panic, and Rian’s face contorted into an ugly expression as she doubled over.
“Oooh… what now?! Oh shit, my… my son!” Rian’s hands flew to her skirt. Beneath it, Ryan Anderson’s remaining trouser leg slipped down a shapely leg and tightened, growing pale and sheer. Unable to look away, Susan and Una watched as a pair of panties, white and trimmed with a frilly pink edge, developed out of Rian’s plain boxer briefs.
“What are you waiting for?” Una exclaimed, gesturing. “Do whatever it is you were talking about! The kid’s about to lose the last of his manhood!”
Susan never took her eyes off Ryan’s twitching cock, now straining inside the lacy underwear, as she held up a black leather collar with a silver ankh attached. “I’m afraid this won’t do much for him in that regard; it’s really meant to reverse mental overlays.”
She bent forward to fasten it around Rian’s neck, even as the changing girl grabbed at the shrinking organ between her legs. With a final shiver and a squelching noise followed by a pop, the outline of Ryan’s cock and balls disappeared completely, dwindling into a delicate pair of labia that, like their predecessors, were clearly visible through thin white cotton.
Rian sat bolt upright, her hands moving from between her thighs to cup her own breasts. “What… what happened?! I’m not Rian. I’m Ryan. Rian. Ryan Anderson. Why does my voice still sound like a girl’s? What the fuck happened to me?!”
“You tell me.” Una crossed her arms, sank onto her haunches, and fixed the confused college senior with her best interrogation stare. “We need to know about the class you’re TAing in, and why these changes keep happening to other students… and now you.”
Susan kneeled at Ryan’s other side, her tablet out, ready to make notes. The transformed boy looked from one woman to the other, incredulously. “I just changed into a girl. A hot sorority bitch. How am I the suspect here?”
“Because we know you’re the common element,” Una snapped, “and because we have a job to do. Now start talking, Ryan… or Agent Miller will take that cute choker back.”
Ryan fingered the leather band at his slender neck and blanched.
“That’s right,” Una said. “If you don’t want to end up serving drinks and blowjobs to the entire crew team at the Delta Nu mixer, you’ll start talking.” Susan looked askance at Una, who shrugged.
“No! No, I’ll talk,” said Ryan, his fearful voice lapsing back into the soft, feminine register of Rian. “I mean… I’m pretty sure I know who did this, and I’ll take you there if you’ll help me change back!” He stared at the growing crowd of students, some taking video, but most simply standing around, staring and whispered. His face reddened. “But can we please get out of here? Half the school’s looking up my skirt.”
Welcome back! And thanks for the chapter!