** Sorry about the absence. I was renovating, got injured and couldn't take the time to rest and recover. Writing was difficult.
Everything should be back on schedule now.

“I look like an idiot,” I said to my reflection and the empty room.

“What's wrong with Petra?” Ella asked, as her group arrived back at the beach house.

The city street was covered in filthy, black snow. In normal times they would have been shovelled clean. Now, no one had the energy for it. Narrow paths of packed snow led from doorways to a main path. A painfully thin body lay barely visible under the snow. The person was face down, an arm stretched out, like they were crawling for safety.

“OK, Ella, what the heck are you thinking, agreeing to have Reginald the Idiot with us? Do you want us to get caught?” Naomi demanded, as soon as we were inside our beach house.

Sitting down to eat, I couldn't keep my eyes off of Reginald. I wondered what he thought about being surrounded by students from Doom Valley Prep School. He was pointedly ignoring everyone, eating his lightly grilled baby charybdis steak. He hadn't actually looked at me once since he offered to act as my guide, assistant and bodyguard. I still didn't know why Ella had accepted his offer. He would only mess things up.

The figure in the mirror was still a stranger to Keir. Despite having spent weeks in the body, he had not gotten used to it, or let himself study it beyond the basic plumbing problems. It was a perfectly useful body, at least when it wasn't recovering from getting shot and nearly killed. Many people had similar bodies. Still, it wasn't his. Like ill-fitting armour it chafed and pulled in odd and uncomfortable ways.

Keir leaned against the stack of pillows, grateful that he finally had enough strength to weave a simple anti-pain spell. The drugs he'd been given had made his mind fuzzy and kept him too tired to do much more than sleep. He knew he needed the sleep, he was still too weak to leave his bed. But he also had things to do, or at least to plan.

** Sorry about the flaky posting. Was very sick for the last little while, but I'm feeling better, so everything from here on should go smoothly.

Naomi made a very pretty statue, with pink crystal hair, emerald green skin, sapphire eyes, and diamond nails. Her clothes had changed as well, her blouse had turned to a beautiful glittering white opal, with black pearls in place of buttons. A blue gemstone formed her pleated skirt, and her bag was red ruby. The only problem was the nervous look on her face, it wouldn't look good for a statue.

Sitting in the subterfuge office after classes had ended for the day, I gave Bob my best smile. “Hi, I'm hoping you could help me out with something.”

Leaning forward in to put his elbows on the desk, the pudgy faced, beardless dwarf smiled back at me. “Of course, of course. What do you need?”

Ella stood at the head of our usual table and raised her glass of juice. “Everyone, I know that some of you may have thought this day would never come. But by sticking and working together, we have finished our first month at Doom Valley.”

Now that I knew what was going on with me, it seemed as if I was changing even more quickly. Walking with Ella to the nurse's office, I stumbled and almost fell down a flight of stairs as my left leg became a little shorter and my right toes got cat claws. Fangs popped out of my mouth and my breasts shrank to the size they were after my first change.

“I'm going to be sick,” I moaned. The Rapid Transformation Syndrome was making my insides roil.

“Petra,” Ella called. “Come out from under the bed. What's wrong?”

I was huddled in the corner of the Monster Under The Bed's room, clutching my knees to my still enormous chest. The Monster was patting my head with her trunk, making cooing sounds trying to calm me down. One of her long, multi-jointed arms took a cookie from a plate on her table and held it up to me. I didn't take it. I barely noticed it.

Hanging by my skirt, looking down at the mock hydra who was almost close enough to touch, with only a small tree keeping me from falling on top of the monster, I silently sent prayer to every single god and demon I knew of, including my history teacher. It didn't seem to help as the tree cracked again and I got another inch closer to the reptile.

Stepping into combat class, I saw that everyone was lined up by the protection medals. Ameth was crouched on the table watching everyone like a hawk. Getting in line behind Naomi, I asked, “What's going on?”

“No idea,” she said. “I just got in line with everyone else.”

We moved quickly and soon enough it was our turn. “Sign your names for a medal,” the cat girl said.

Hi Mom and Dad,

Just thought I should let you know that I'm still alive. Barely.

Doom Valley has been really interesting. I've been killed about twenty times. Don't worry I got better.

And guess what, have a nemesis. Three of them actually. One of them is a paladin who thinks I'm evil incarnate, he almost killed me.
I've also almost been brainwashed three times, those were from my other two nemesis's? Nemeses?

Drying off after the hot tub, I leaned over and quietly asked Ella, “What exactly is a manicure and pedicure?”

“You really are a boy,” she whispered, her smile taking any potential sting out of her words. “They're going to clean, massage, and colour our hands, feet, and nails. It feels really nice, just relax and go with it.”

In new clothes that actually had a tail hole so I could comfortably wear pants and underwear, we entered the spa which seemed to cover the entire second floor.

“Time to get up, Petra,” Ella said.

Instinctively I mumbled, “I don't wanna die!”

I heard my roommate sigh, then she pulled my soft, warm, safe blanket off of me. “You're not going to die. It's the weekend, time for homework and relaxing.”

In clean clothes and well scrubbed, I met Rocky after class as we once more headed to Sir Grieve's classroom. Once again the older students in the hallway were there making nasty remarks especially about my being a cat girl, openly placing bets on how we'd die, and laughing at how we'd sabotaged ourselves the day before. I just kept looking at the floor, wishing this would all be over.

Even though Victor was down and out for the foreseeable future, Calci and I were still working on our potion to free someone from mind control in Potions class. We were halfway through the process, if we stopped now we'd lose marks. But we were also working on a few other projects to help with detention as we let the anti-mind control potion gently boil off the impurities.

I woke up to someone growling.

New instincts made me leap to my feet, which proved to be a mistake. I somehow jumped too far and slammed face first into the wall. I stood there, plastered to the cold stone for a moment, then fell backwards back onto the floor.