---

“More wine, Cassie?”

I nervously swallowed the bite of pecan-encrusted fish I had been slowly working on and managed to reply, “No thanks... Oliver.”

As a young man, I had considered myself a competent wine drinker, able to sip champagne with hors d’oeuvres, ample quantities of fine wines with my food, and still have the ability to finish off a meal with a glass of 20 year-old tawny port. But I wasn’t a young man anymore: I was a young woman–a woman who looked so young that the waiter at Commander’s Palace had actually had the audacity to check my ID. And as a young woman, I was already beginning to feel the effects of the wine, although it was only my second glass.

Of course, it didn’t help that I was as nervous as the proverbial cat in a room filled with rocking chairs. There I was, sitting across the table from Brett’s father, the esteemed Doctor Oliver Carson. Oliver and his wife Estelle, had been visiting New Orleans for Mardi Gras, and had stayed for a few days to be with their son and, to quote Oliver, “Meet this fine young lady, who seems to have stolen our son’s heart.”

To be fair, Oliver and Estelle had done everything in their power to put me at ease. They were a wonderful couple. They had treated me as a daughter for the last three days, and they seemed genuinely pleased that Brett and I were together. I wondered what they would have said if they had known that just a little over a year ago, I hadn’t been the sweet young African-American girl who graced their table. Instead, I had been a white man, scion of an old Louisiana family that had proudly supported the Confederacy (until it was in their best interests to cooperate with the Union) and, in the finest tradition of wealthy families throughout the South, had owned scores of black slaves.

But of course they didn’t know. Not even Brett knew. As far as they all knew, I, like their family, had grown up as an African-American with middle-class roots. They knew I had a mother and two siblings–a brother and a sister–and that my mother was a professor at the University of Louisiana, and that she was currently dating a New Orleans physician. Of course, what had remained unsaid was that my mother and siblings were not my original family, and that my new mother was dating Papa Bob. True, he was a physician, but he was also one of the foremost practicing Voodooines in the area.

I had certainly done everything in my power to appear as the girl they expected though. I had suffered through a lengthy session at the beauty shop right after classes, during which I had allowed them to do their damnedest to make me into the lovely young woman they thought me to be. Not that I was so bad to start with, but they had done such wonders with making me look my best that I wondered if they didn’t use just a little bit of magic to enhance me. In my little black dress and three-inch heels I had turned the heads of nearly every man in the dining room, and I could feel Brett’s pride as he sat next to me.

Although I had dressed up for Brett before, this time it was different. I had grown accustomed to being a girl for Brett, and he accepted me for who I was (or at least who he thought I was). In the months we had been a couple, I had allowed my feminine side to dominate me, and I knew that I was absolutely in love with him. An eventual marriage wasn’t out of the question. Unless...

I hadn’t worked up the courage to tell Brett who I had been–that I had been transformed against my will, to destroy the budding political career of my ambitious father. The plot had failed though, and my father–or perhaps I should say my former father–now sat in the Governor’s office in Baton Rouge, while I had been forced into a very different life.

I didn’t regret my new life–in fact, I had come to enjoy it. But Brett was a big part of that new life, and I didn’t want anything to happen to spoil that. Yet there I was, sitting across the table from the handsome older man, who just happened to be one of the foremost authorities in the country regarding magical sex changes. I felt as if he would see me for the man I used to be and I would be toast any moment now. Call me paranoid, but there it was.

“Brett tells me you’ve lived your entire life here in Louisiana,” Estelle said suddenly, and I realized I had been woolgathering again.

“Uh... yes,” I managed. At least that was the truth. The questions she had asked me about my supposed girlhood had kept me on edge all evening, since of course I had never had a girlhood.

“All of that time here in New Orleans?”

Except for my time at Harvard, I had lived my entire life in the Crescent City, but my new family had not, so I responded vaguely, “Mom teaches at Louisiana University in Lafayette, Louisiana, a little west of here.” That wasn’t a lie, was it?

“But you would never guess that,” Brett chuckled. “She knows the New Orleans area like a native. I still get lost the way the streets circle around here, but she always knows how to get around.”

I hoped they didn’t notice my grimace. I tried to recover with, “I just have a good sense of direction.”

Estelle put her hand on mine and added, “And unlike our men, I’m sure you aren’t above stopping and asking for directions.” She chuckled then, and I smiled back at her.

“If you’re that familiar with the area, you might be just the person to talk to about Voodoo,” Oliver suggested.

Estelle laughed, “Good lord Ollie, just because she’s from New Orleans doesn’t mean she knows anything about that nonsense.”

“It isn’t really nonsense,” Ollie countered. “Experts in the field of magic have suspected practitioners of Voodoo might very well have naturally tapped into the hidden magical forces that Webster and Kline eventually released. If any of the old Voodoo priests were still around today, they might be some of the most powerful magical practitioners on the planet, since they seemed to have some talents even then.”

“But they are still around,” I blurted out without thinking. The surprised looks on everyone’s faces–even Brett’s–warned me I shouldn’t have butted in. Mama Juno, the infamous Voodoo priestess, had been responsible for my transformation. And whether by magic or just some well-placed bribes, she had managed to avoid prosecution for that and a number of other crimes. That was all pretty powerful magic when you got right down to it. Of course they didn’t know that, but their looks told me they suspected I just might believe in the mysterious old faith myself. Many persons of our color still did–secretly, of course. I had to explain my outburst.

“What I mean,” I backpedalled, “is that it’s common knowledge around here that some folks still believe. There are still shops on South Rampart Street that sell magic powders and Voodoo candles, just as they did a century ago. Graves of some of the famous past practitioners get decorated with Voodoo symbols, and every now and then, some hapless resident ends up with a dead chicken wearing doll clothes on his front doorstep.”

“Ugh!” Estelle interjected, but Oliver just laughed.

“Maybe I should open up a branch of my clinic down here. No telling what some Voodoo priestess might figure out to do with some poor guys.”

Everybody chuckled at that, and the conversation stayed light through the rest of the main course. I was contemplating dessert, debating about what those empty but so delicious calories might do to me when I heard a buzzing noise.

Oliver looked a little embarrassed and reached in his suit coat pocket, extracting his cell phone. “Excuse me,” he murmured, turning his head to one side. The rest of us got very quiet. When a doctor is disturbed while on vacation, the news can never be good. After a few quiet questions he pulled out a notebook and jotted something down. Then he closed the call with, “Yes, I understand. I’ll be there as soon as I can.” With a sigh, he placed the phone back in his pocket, a look of disappointment on his face.

“Don’t tell me you have to go back to Nashville,” Estelle guessed, obviously disappointed to have their vacation cut short.

“Oh, no!” Oliver assured her. “This is a local situation, right here in town. There seems to be a young... well, lady now, at the LSU Medical Center. The FBM has asked me to consult with them on the case. Brett, if you would take the ladies home and I’ll catch a cab?”

It didn’t take a detective to figure out what was going on. Oliver’s experience with victims of involuntary magical sex change, and the way he stumbled on the “lady” reference, spelled yet another case of the sort I was all too familiar with due to personal experience. Add to it the fact that nearly all victims of magical spells were taken to the LSU Med Center and the problem was obvious. Since I had a very personal interest in such cases, I wanted to go too. I know, I shouldn’t have gotten involved, but my heart went out to the poor souls who had their genders stolen from them, and I wanted to help.

I put my hand on Oliver’s sleeve as he was preparing to rise. “Maybe I should go too,” I suggested. “As Brett says, I know my way around town pretty well, and the LSU Med Center can be a pretty easy place to get lost in. If Brett doesn’t mind, I can drive you there while he takes Estelle back to your hotel in a cab.”

“That’s very generous of you,” Oliver acknowledged, “but I might be there for some time. I wouldn’t want to keep you out.”

“Don’t worry, Dad,” Brett interrupted while handing me the keys to his Z-3. “Cassie has had some experience with this sort of thing.”

I must have looked a little shocked for a moment before I realized what he meant.

“Oh yes!” Oliver replied brightly. “Ms. Lagrange’s case. Yes, perhaps I can use your assistance... if you don’t mind?”

“Not at all.” I smiled at him as I collected the car keys. “Let’s go.”

My own phone went off right after we scooted out of the parking lot on our way downtown. Fortunately the top was up (I didn’t want my hair messed up after an afternoon getting it done), so I was able to hear my sister on the other end.

“Cassie?”

“Yeah, Helen.”

“Where are you right now?”

I gave her a quick rundown of what was going on and where we now were. To my surprise she laughed.

“What’s so funny?”

“I was just calling to ask you if you could meet us at the Med Center. The FBM brought Brian and me in to consult on that same case.”

“No kidding?”

“See you in a few,” she said brightly.

“A problem?” Oliver asked.

“No, just my sister,” I told him. “She’s working on your case too, it seems.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. She and her husband are private investigators. They’ve worked on cases like this before.” ‘Including in Helen’s case,’ I added silently, ‘my own sex change.’

I could sense Oliver had other questions to ask me, but fortunately the shape of the LSU Med Center was just ahead. I slowed down and wheeled the car into the doctor’s parking lot, figuring after all Oliver was a doctor. If they ticketed me, I’d sort it out later.

I wondered as I led him through the sterile hallways, why the FBM was letting out all the stops. Both Oliver and Helen were going to be temporarily on the FBM payroll–an odd situation for the semi-secretive agency which almost always kept its investigations private and internal. From past experience, it usually meant the FBM had something it needed handled quickly–something it couldn’t handle by itself. That sounded ominous.

Since my former father had been the local director of the agency until a year ago, I was very aware of the reasons for that. Ever since magic had exploded (almost literally) on the American scene a few years ago, the government had sought to keep a lid on the scope of the problem of magic. Fortunately for them, most magic was minor and rather benign. Magical abilities were nonexistent in most people, and still others never discovered their latent talents, meager as they might be. Even most of those who did discover their own magic talents found them to be virtually useless. My own power as a Pusher meant I could move things with my mind, but not accurately or strongly enough to be of much use. Other than being able to move things into reach from high shelves, it hadn’t exactly made me popular at parties.

But others ended up with considerable magic power, and some had even managed to ‘package’ their abilities, through spells and potions which could be handled by even those with no magical abilities. In other words, a lot more people were at risk from magic users than was generally perceived.

Take sex change spells, for example. No one knew who had developed the first ones. For years, everyone thought changing a person into one of the opposite sex was too complex to pull off. It would take considerable knowledge of biology, anatomy, and three or four other basic scientific disciplines. But then, somewhere, sometime, someone managed to do it.

Then came contact spells, where someone with magical ability could ‘hold’ the spell inside them. If that someone was a woman, she could have sex with a guy and change him into a girl. And unlike other ‘transformation’ spells, like a simple nose job or magical liposuction, a guy once changed into a girl was stuck as that girl for the rest of her life. It had something to do with magic’s inability to synthesize the Y chromosome. Sure, small changes could be done to them–all cosmetic in nature–but they were stuck on the distaff side for their rest of their lives. Just like me. A couple of feminist underground groups had a lot of fun with that for a time until the FBM broke them up.

And now sex changes could be packaged in a simple potion. Just slip it into a guy’s drink and poof! Instant girl. Well, not exactly instant. The changes took several days, but once finished, they were absolutely permanent. One little sip and it was heels and skirts for life.

So it was the sex change spells that were really driving the Federal Bureau of Magic up a wall. Lurid movies, books, and TV shows had guys staying out of the bars so much that it was almost like the old times before magic cured AIDS. Whenever the Bureau got a sex change case, they let out all the stops, but not typically to the extent of going outside for help.

‘This one must be a really sticky case,’ I thought to myself.

When we entered the Magic Ward, Sarah Carmichael was waiting for us, along with Helen. It had been a while since I had seen the lovely redhead who had replaced my father as Director of the local FBM office. She and I had always gotten along, but we sort of ran in different circles now. Besides, since she had been offered the post of Director, I think she had become a little uncomfortable around me, since I had once been my father’s heir apparent before my transformation.

The job had been great for Sarah’s career, but I could see it was wearing on her. I had been female just long enough to tell that her shoulder-length red hair had benefited from a little touch-up to hide the gray. Also, her eyes showed significant signs of lack of sleep. I had heard from Helen and others that New Orleans was going through one of its not-infrequent crime waves, and more and more crimes were being perpetrated by magic–hence, the FBM’s involvement.

She nodded to me but spoke to Oliver first. “Dr. Carson?” She offered her hand. “I’m Sarah Carmichael. Thank you for coming.”

Oliver took her hand and smiled. “No problem, Ms. Carmichael. I’ll be happy to do anything I can.”

Sarah then turned to me and nodded again, a little coolly, I thought. “Cassie? Did Helen call you?”

“Yes,” I answered, adding, “but I was already on my way over. Oliver and I were at dinner together. Oliver is Brett’s father, you know.”

“Of course.” Sarah nodded, as if she had only just remembered that I was dating Oliver’s son. She knew, of course. I was sure my file was still active at the Bureau. Thankfully she said nothing about my transformation, or let on to Oliver how or why I knew the Director of the local FBM office. She tactfully added, “Since you’ve helped your sister and her husband on a similar case, I’m sure you can help us on this one too.”

I reminded myself to thank Sarah later for that setup. I realized suddenly that she wasn’t really being cool to me: rather, she was just downplaying the links between me and the Bureau for Oliver’s benefit.

Once I had introduced Helen to Oliver, he got down to business. “Ms. Carmichael, I know you have a number of sex change cases here in New Orleans. In fact, I understand the Bureau has been swamped with them all over the country for some time. May I ask what made this one so special that you called me in?”

Sarah nodded, equally ready to get down to business. She even seemed just a little relieved, pleased that Oliver was every bit as perceptive as she had hoped he would be. “Dr. Carson, I know you’ve done some work with victims of Slavers.” She said the word very softly so as not to be heard by anyone who might suddenly come upon us.

Oliver grimaced. “Yes. I have two patients who were victims of... those monsters.”

Monsters was exactly what they were, I thought. Of all the magical talents the accidental release of magic had foisted on the world, the Slaver was one of, if not the worst imaginable. It was fortunate their numbers were few, since they had only begun to turn up in the last two or three years and had already caused immeasurable damage.

No one knew why they had turned up only recently. Some of the experts believed that other talents–such as Whispering–had mutated to cause Slavers. They deemed them simply extremely powerful Whisperers, but others weren’t so certain. They pointed out that a Whisperer could modify behavior, but not on as grand a scale as a Slaver. Whisperers couldn’t alter a person’s memories like a Slaver could. Under the influence of a Slaver, an individual could be made to believe he or she was an entirely different person with a changed set of memories, resulting in the worst cases in complete erasure of an individual’s mental existence.

And to make matters worse, the few Slavers who had been profiled often exhibited other talents as well, not unlike an Omni. To make matters still worse, Transformation and Slaver talents often went hand in hand. Slavers were mean mother... well, you get the idea.

Thankfully the media hadn’t caught wind of the presence of Slaver talents, since Slavers generally covered their own tracks remorselessly. Only the FBM and a few other individuals with close ties to either the Bureau or the medical community even knew they existed. None had ever been taken alive. Of course, although the general public had no real knowledge of Slavers, rumors were already beginning...

Slavers had the unique ability to bend others to their will. Sure, Whisperers could do that too, but Whisperers had to be subtle. Slavers had only to demand, and their victims would obediently do anything–even killing themselves, if required. To make matters worse, Slavers were always corrupted by their power. Once they began wielding it, they became malevolent and sadistic. Their sparse numbers gravitated to the S&M community, where their talents were often written off by unsuspecting individuals as just highly-effective doms, but the FBM knew better.

“Who is the victim?” I asked, trying to ignore the sick feeling in my stomach at the mere mention of Slavers.

“She’s a Jane Doe,” Sarah explained, ushering us into a nearby conference room. “We think the Slaver robbed her of her memories and was getting ready to sell her.”

So this Slaver was well-labelled–a true dealer in human flesh.

“And that’s why you called me in,” Oliver surmised, as we all took seats around a small conference table. “I have to warn you that unless you can learn something about her life before her transformation, you have very little chance of finding the perpetrator. Odds are good that the Slaver’s identity is buried in the memories that were stolen from her.”

Sarah nodded. “You were able to restore the memories of such a girl at your clinic in Nashville. As nearly as we can tell, you’re the only one who has been able to do that.”

“Yes,” Oliver acknowledged, “but I was very fortunate. The patient was retrieved before the transformation was complete. We were able to drive a wedge between her programming and her physical nature. Your Jane Doe–how far along is her physical transformation?”

Sarah’s shoulders sagged. “It’s complete. Then you aren’t able to help if the physical transformation is complete?”

“Not necessarily,” Oliver clarified. “Although frankly, the best help I can give her is to help her cope with her new life. I doubt if there’s anything that can be done to discern her original identity, unless we can find some way of getting her to connect with her former life, such as the encouragement of friends or family, or reintroducing her to familiar surroundings. And that will have to be done before any mental programming is completed. Is she still changing mentally?”

“We think so,” Sarah confirmed. “One of the doctors here at the hospital has examined her and done an MMRI. Her brain seems to be going through some changes.”

Sarah turned to Helen. “How about you and Brian? You’ve done some investigation of Slavers. Could the ones who changed our victim be the same ones?”

I looked over in shock at Helen. I had no idea she and Brian had been working on any Slaver cases. If I’d known, I would have warned her against taking the case. From what little I knew of Slavers, they were about the most dangerous practitioners of magic around. The people who had changed me into a girl had been pussycats compared to Slavers, and I had nearly ended up a teen prostitute from their machinations.

Helen took the question in stride. Obviously, she and Sarah had spoken about the Slavers before. “It’s possible,” she allowed. “Since the Slaver talent is very rare, I doubt if there are more than a couple of them in the entire region, let alone right here in the city. This fits the pattern, since the only men reported missing in the last few days are men who wouldn’t be missed. Slavers favor them.”

“Wait a minute,” I broke in. “Why does it have to be men? Why couldn’t Slavers use women and just change them mentally? Wouldn’t it be a lot easier than changing their sex?”

Helen looked at Sarah, and I realized suddenly that there were some things known about Slavers which were top secret. Sarah gave a slight nod, to allow Helen to proceed.

“Cassie, Slavers can change a victim’s appearance and turn them into willing sex slaves,” she began. “I assume you knew that?”

“Sure.” I nodded. “Go on.”

“The problem is,” she continued, “the victim has to be male to begin with for a Slaver’s power to work right. Naturally born women have a higher resistance to Slaver powers: nobody knows just why. That’s just the way it is. The physical transformation is usually the first step. Then, after about five days, the body is settled enough for the mental conversion to begin. That takes another week or so, and is usually delivered in small, measured spells, until the victim is what they intend him or her to be.”

“Him?” I asked.

“I know most people who’ve at least heard of Slavers believe they always turn their victims into women, but that’s not so. They can also turn them into she-males, sissies, delicate little gay males, permanent children–if the victim is a young teen to begin with–or anything else a client’s perverted little mind can imagine.”

I involuntarily shuddered. I had had no idea they could so many perverted things. It was bad enough that they could do to others what had been done to me–changing the victim from male to female–but as for those other things... At least what had been done to me had allowed me to go on and lead a normal life–if not the life I had been born to. But what about some poor teen boy who was, say, turned into a ten-year-old girl for the rest of his life? What kind of monster would do that? Or worse yet, what kind of monster would pay someone to do that to another human being?

“Cassie, are you all right?” Oliver asked me, gently squeezing my arm.

I suddenly realized I must have looked pale–or as pale as my dark skin would allow. There, just for a moment, all of the horror of my transformation had come back to me. “Yes, I’m fine,” I lied.

“No, you’re not all right,” Helen contradicted me. “Cassie, I don’t think you ought to get involved in this.”

Of course, the unspoken reason was that Helen knew exactly what I was thinking about. She and her family had been my mental salvation as I made the forced transition from white man to African-American woman. They had taken me in as one of their family, and I’d always be grateful to them.

And she was right. The last thing I should get involved in was a Slaver case, but I couldn’t help it. After what had been done to me, I wanted to do everything I could to help that poor Jane Doe. I met my sister’s gaze. “I’ll be fine, Helen.”

‘Please don’t slip up and say anything about my transformation,’ I mentally pleaded with her. I didn’t want Oliver to know–or at least not now, not like this.

To my relief Helen backed down. “Okay, girl, but if you feel like backing out, don’t hesitate to do so.”

“I won’t,” I promised. “But what’s this about you and Brian being involved in a Slaver case?”

Helen shrugged. “It was a couple of months ago. We uncovered a couple of young women who were being smuggled out of the country to be sex slaves in the Middle East. Unfortunately their minds were pretty well set in sex-toy mode, so we weren’t able to learn who they had been before, but from the stories they gave the FBM about their transformations, it sounded like a Slaver. We followed up for the Bureau, at least as far as our own client’s case took us, but we never learned anything about the Slaver’s identity.”

“Cassie–last chance. Do you want to bow out of this?” Sarah asked.

“No way,” I replied.

“Okay then,” Sarah replied, visibly relieved that no one had backed away from the case. I think she needed every resource she could lay her hands on with this case. A Slaver ring loose in her city would eat up a lot of time and resources, and if the media got hold of it, it would be a disaster. She needed to crack this case quickly and quietly, or every family in the city who learned about this would feel threatened. “I’ve got a Holo to go through the girl’s statement for us.”

A small mousy woman with nondescript brown hair stepped into the room and sat at the far end of the table. She wore an FBM badge on her gray suit jacket. I hadn’t been aware that the FBM had a Holo on the team. They were even more rare than Slavers, but they were supposed to be invaluable in criminal cases.

“What is a Holo?” Oliver asked me.

I wasn’t surprised that he didn’t know. Even though he obviously got involved in criminal investigations, there couldn’t be more than a dozen Holos in the country. I only knew of them from my former father, and even when he told me about them, there hadn’t been one within a thousand miles of New Orleans.

“They have the power to make a story–or in this case, a transcript–come alive,” I explained. “She had to be present when the girl gave her statement, or it wouldn’t work. Now, as she reads the girl’s statement, we’ll be able to see things as they happen from her perspective–even hearing her voice and inflections. It allows investigators to catch details the victim may have seen, but not really noticed.”

Oliver was obviously impressed. “I hope we figure out a way to enhance that talent in others. I could use one of them on my staff.”

“So could a lot of people,” I told him as the Holo arranged the statement in front of her. “For the foreseeable future though, I doubt if you or anybody outside the Federal government could afford one.”

The Holo looked up at us, as if noticing us for the first time. “I’d like to begin with the statement of Jane Doe...”

As she read the preamble to the statement, her voice was dull and lifeless, and I began to feel as if I were about to nod off. It was part of the Holo’s talent, I realized. As soon as she reached Jane Doe’s actual statement, her inflection would change and we would be thrust into the story. Sure enough, the Holo’s voice seemed to change into that of an entirely different person as everything around me seemed to fade...

Statement of Jane Doe

I don’t remember much from... before.

I mean, I remember being a guy, as strange as that must seem, looking at me now. But I do remember. I remember walking across campus–I’m not sure which campus, though. I remember I was finished with classes for the day and was heading back to... back to... well, back where I lived.

How do I know I was a guy? Well, I was wearing jeans, and they were a little tight in the crotch, and I could feel my dick and balls sort of twisted up there in my shorts, if you know what I mean. And I know I didn’t have these... these... breasts. My chest was flat and masculine.

“Hey, pal,” a voice called out to me. I looked over my shoulder and saw a guy in a black Mercedes. It’s funny, but I think I knew the guy, but it didn’t seem strange that he would be asking me a question like that. It was sort of like things are in a dream, where what’s happening doesn’t make a lot of sense, but you go with the flow. Anyhow, the guy had a map unfolded in front of him. “Can you tell me how to get to the Superdome on this map?”

“Yeah, sure.” I was in an agreeable mood. Everybody usually is around Mardi Gras time. I had a party to get to, that much I seem to remember, but it would just take a minute to show him on his map. But as I leaned over to point the stadium out on his map, I heard the back door of the car unlatch, and the next thing I knew, somebody was pulling me back and covering my nose and mouth with a damp cloth. Then just like that, I was out cold.

I know that doesn’t give you much to go on, and if I understand how all this works, you’re seeing what I saw right now. As for the driver, he was pretty average–dark brown hair, cut close, decent tan, and dark glasses, so I couldn’t see his eyes. Or maybe that’s not right. He may have had longish blond hair and a moustache. I can’t be sure, as the memory of him just keeps shifting, but like I said, I think I knew him. I just can’t settle in on what he looked like or who he was.

As for the guy who gassed me? I guess I didn’t see him at all, but he was damned strong–he jerked me back with no effort at all. I think he may have been a jock, but I’m not sure. Whoever he was, he was a lot stronger than I am–or I guess that should be than I was.

Then there was the car. It was just your standard Mercedes sedan–black but I don’t know Mercedes models well enough to tell you anything more than just that it was a sedan and that it was big and plush inside. Come to think of it, it may not have even been a Mercedes, but it was some sort of luxury car: that much I know. And it was black–definitely black. I didn’t get to look around much, because whatever they gassed me with put me out damned fast.

I don’t know exactly how long I was out cold. It might have been minutes or it might have been days. I didn’t dream and there was no sense of time. When I woke up, I was in this room–the one you’re probably seeing now. Notice though, that there were no windows–just a curtain with light behind it to simulate day and, when they turned the lights down, I suspected it would simulate night. There wasn’t a lot of furniture in the room–just a bed and a straight-backed chair. I was just lying there on the bed. It was a little cool, and then I realized they had taken all of my clothes. God, I hoped nobody was watching me.

“Where am I?” I yelled out. Well, it wasn’t really a yell: it was more of a croak. I figured whatever they had used to knock me out had made my throat a little rough. “What do you want with me?”

It’s funny, but waking up like that, all helpless and confused, it took me a few moments to realize that I had no idea who I was. I was just... me–a guy who had been walking after classes. I couldn’t even tell you for sure where I went to school or what I was majoring in.

I looked down at myself. I looked to be about twenty or so, judging from my body’s appearance, and a typical white male. I yanked out a hair from my head, and it turned out to be brown. That’s about all I could tell, since there wasn’t a mirror in the room. If I had to guess, I imagined I was just an average guy–not real big, but not real small either. You know–average.

I couldn’t see what my face looked like though, and I silently wished for a mirror. Maybe if I could see my own face, I might have some idea who I was, but there was no mirror or anything else reflective for that matter. I felt my face–average nose, average mouth, no whiskers on average cheeks. Again, I was just average.

“Where am I?” I repeated. If the floor hadn’t been carpeted and the walls covered with curtains or nondescript still-life paintings, my voice might have even echoed a little, but it didn’t.

Why was this being done to me anyhow? Since I couldn’t remember who I was, I speculated that maybe I was the son of some wealthy family, and that these people, whoever they were, had kidnapped me and were holding me for ransom. Or maybe I was older than I looked and had been a spy who was about to be interrogated. If I had been a betting man (and I had no idea if I was or not), I would have laid odds on the ransom scenario. For some reason, I didn’t feel like a young James Bond type. Besides, didn’t all spies know how to use magic? At least that’s the way it always was in the movies. I wasn’t sure, but I didn’t think I had much talent for magic.

I sat back down on the bed. It was the only piece of furniture in the room, except for the uncomfortable-looking chair, and I didn’t want to entertain any possible secret watchers by pacing up and down like a tiger in a cage. I figured there was nothing to do but wait.

And I didn’t have to wait long.

As it opened, I could see the door to the room was very thick and probably soundproof. That explained why I hadn’t heard any noises yet. The lock, I noticed, was electronic, as I heard it buzz when the door opened.

I looked into the eyes of my captor, but that’s all I could see of him. He was dressed in a black jumpsuit with a black ski mask over his head. But he was pretty good-sized. Maybe he was the same guy who pulled me into the back seat of the car. Or maybe not. In any case, I was no match for him, especially lying there naked. “Stand up!” he barked in a deep voice.

Not knowing what else to do, I did as he commanded. Then he walked over to me and started examining my arm, while two other similarly dressed men, both armed with what looked like tasers, stood at the door.

“Why are you doing this?” I asked. “Look, I don’t remember if I have any money or not, but I’ll give you whatever I can if you just let me go.”

I could see the man’s face twist up into a smile under the mask, but from his eyes, I could see that it was irony and not satisfaction that made him smile. Then he nodded, as if everything was as he expected, and he told one of the men at the door, “Go ahead and bring him his meal.”

In a few moments a meal was brought to me on a tray table, which was positioned in front of the straight-backed chair. “Eat!” my examiner told me.

I was hungry. I had no idea how long I had been out cold, but it was long enough that I had worked up an appetite. It’s funny: maybe I should have been too upset to eat, but I wasn’t. Maybe they had messed with my mind before they plopped me in the room, I reasoned. That was probably why I couldn’t remember who I was. One of them must have been a Whisperer or something. He probably calmed my mind down, too, so I wouldn’t get all hysterical and cause any trouble.

I sat down as they watched and polished off a plate of what tasted sort of like chicken in a mild sauce. It had already been cut up for me: that way they didn’t have to give me a knife, I guess. In fact, I had to eat with a spoon. Whoever these guys were, they were taking no chances.

Looking back on it, I’m sure there was something in the food to make me sleep. Right after I washed down the last of my meal with a glass of water, I began to feel sort of woozy and had to be helped back to bed. That’s the last thing I remembered–until I woke up again. If I thought I had been given a shock the last time I had awakened, it was nothing compared to the shock I had when I next woke up.

When I next came to, I felt funny–sort of as if everything was out of kilter. I was lying there on my stomach, with my face to one side. Something was tickling me on the side of my face, and my chest felt odd pushed down against the bed. I groaned and rolled over. I sat up and my chest seemed to shift downward a little as I did.

I looked down at myself, trying to figure out what was wrong. Things were different, but not as different as they are now. It took me a moment to realize that all of my chest hair was gone and that my nipples seemed larger. Also, there was a puffiness around them as if I had...

Okay, sure, I’ve read a few porn stories about sex changes. Who hasn’t? And sure, I saw that movie they made last year–what was the name of it?–oh yeah, Jack to Jackie. You know the one–it’s where the guy lets himself be changed into a girl by magic and... uh... okay, maybe you didn’t see it. It wasn’t very good, and a girlfriend of mine–what was her name?–she said she knew a guy who got changed by magic into a girl and it didn’t really work like that.

Anyhow, it became pretty obvious as to what was happening to me. I had been kidnapped for some reason and was being changed into a girl. At least that told me who I probably was, I realized grimly. It’s pretty well known that winos and druggies are scooped up and changed into girls to be used as sex slaves. All the rags have stories on it. I must have been a junkie or a drunk who got picked up and changed. That probably explained why I couldn’t remember who I was. Some of the drugs out there now can cause all kinds of nasty stuff–including amnesia. So maybe I wasn’t a college student after all. Or maybe I was a college student with a drug problem. I had no way of knowing.

I looked down past the developing breasts, fearful that I would find my manhood completely gone. It wasn’t, but that was only a small comfort–‘small’ being the operative word. Everything down there was smaller, like it had been when I was twelve.

Funny, but I could remember being twelve. I could remember being a young boy, riding my bike, playing baseball... But when I tried to remember who I was, or who my parents were, or the names and faces of any of my friends, I drew a complete blank.

As I was mulling that over, the door opened again. I couldn’t tell for sure, but the man who entered looked like the same man who had checked me out the day before.

“Stand up!”

I did as he demanded. It wasn’t as if I had a choice, what with the two other guys standing by the door. Besides, if I was right and they were turning me into a girl, I had probably already lost a significant amount of my physical strength. I was no match for any of them–certainly not now anyway.

Somehow, knowing that my body was now at least partially female made the physical examination even more embarrassing than the one the previous day. He grabbed my ass, apparently pleased that it had grown some. He was less pleased when he looked at my genitals. I didn’t know why, since they were certainly smaller. Maybe he had been expecting some more dramatic changes.

He looked over my face, grunting as if the changes there were about what he expected. Did I have baby blue eyes now with long lashes, I wondered? For that matter, I wasn’t sure what color my eyes had been before, so I suppose it didn’t matter. He rubbed some of my longer hair through his fingers, nodding in approval.

Then he looked at my chest. He gently pressed the tissue beneath my nipples, and I flushed in embarrassment when it became obvious to me that there was actually some development there. Then, with a thumb and forefinger, he rubbed one of my nipples. The feeling was strangely pleasant. Like most men, my nipples had always been only slightly sensitive, but now...

Before I could stop myself, I gave out a little groan.

He smiled. “Liked that, did you? Just wait. When you’re done, you’ll have a lot more to like.”

“Why are you doing this to me?” I asked, more breathily than I had intended.

He ignored my question, turning to the other men. “Bring in her meal.”

The “her” wasn’t lost on me. I resented it, actually. After all, I was still male where it counted. If I remembered rightly, most sex change spells took from three to five days to complete themselves. I assumed that my sexual organs would be among the last to change, so as far as I was concerned, I was still male and I planned to think of myself in just that way for as long as I could. But I didn’t challenge him on that point. I certainly wasn’t in any position to do so.

The meal was set up the same way as the day before. Once again, I found myself very hungry, so I sat down and dug in. It wasn’t until I was about halfway through the meal that I had a sudden epiphany: The food, I realized. I was being drugged. There was something in it to make me calmer and more cooperative. Maybe the food also contained whatever was changing me into a girl. That had to be it. I wasn’t taking any chances. I scooted the chair back from the table.

“Finish your meal,” my chief captor demanded.

“I’m not hungry,” I protested.

I could feel him step closer behind me. “Finish your meal,” he repeated.

What could they do to me? I had already come to the conclusion that I was just a hapless derelict who was to be changed into a compliant little slave girl. Because of that, they would want me in prime condition–no cuts, bruises, broken bones, at least not until they had turned me over to my master. I ignored the command.

The next thing I knew, my chief captor had grabbed my head and forced open my jaws while one of the other men force-fed me. I tried my best to resist, but they were too strong for me. I suddenly realized I was crying, tears rolling down my cheeks like... like... a woman. Frustrated and helpless, my resistance waned, and in short order, they forced the rest of my meal into me.

You know, I really think they could have magically commanded me to eat and I would have done so, but I think they physically forced me to eat just to prove a point–that they were in control of me, and if I didn’t cooperate, the punishments would be unpleasant. The lesson wasn’t lost on me.

I lay there alone after they had left, sobbing softly to myself. Before, I had been confused and disoriented, but now add to that, I had become frightened. Was it the manhandling they had given me, or were the drugs in the food having a greater effect–or both? I couldn’t be certain, but as I drifted off to sleep, I realized grimly that I was well on my way to becoming a frightened, helpless little girl–exactly what they probably wanted me to be.

Now when I said “little girl,” I didn’t mean that literally. I had assumed that they were changing me into someone about my own age...

How old was that, you ask? Well, I’m not sure, but it seemed to me, judging on my appearance when I had first awakened that I must have been somewhere between late teens and early twenties. I can’t be sure, of course, but that age band just seems about right. If I had to make a guess, I would say I was probably eighteen or nineteen–certainly no more than twenty. But I admit, that’s just a guess.

To continue, when I awakened the next day, I sat up and began the daily ritual of seeing what had changed. I now had definite breasts–not big ones exactly, but they felt big since I had never had them before. My butt was also larger, but only relative to the rest of my body. I felt... I don’t know–smaller, I guess.

To test my feelings, I lay back down on the bed, feeling longish hair tickling my ears and my shoulders. I lay my head on the pillow and stretched out, noting where my now smaller feet were positioned. Yes, I was certainly shorter.

But upon rising again, I felt as if I was smaller than I should be–perhaps no more than five feet or so. If I was to be sold as a sex slave (a likely probability, I told myself), I would be awfully short, since I was certain to shrink still more before the process was finished. The doctor told me I’m really five-two, so I guess I wasn’t as short as I thought, but I sure felt short.

Standing, I examined the rest of my body, finding pretty much what I expected: My figure was becoming more feminine. In addition to the small but growing breasts, my hips had widened somewhat and my waist was indenting. My legs and arms were slimmer and hairless. I wondered if they had been magically shorn of hair, or if my captors had come in during the night and shaved me.

Of course I couldn’t see my face, but that didn’t mean I knew nothing about it. With a hand which was becoming daintier, I felt my hairless cheeks, my smaller nose and ears, and pulled a strand of silky brown hair. Had I always had brown hair? I wasn’t sure. Something told me I had, but I couldn’t swear to it. At least I knew it had been brown when I had first awakened in the room.

“Shit,” I muttered, unsettled by how melodic my voice was becoming. I knew that one’s voice always seems higher and less resonant to someone else, but as high as mine sounded already, I was going to sound like Shirley Temple before much longer.

Closer inspection showed me I still had my male equipment, but it was certainly nothing to brag about. If I had gotten into a “who’s longer” contest with a six-year-old, I would have probably lost. I dropped my hand from my crotch as I heard the buzz of the electronic lock once again.

“Like what you see?” my captor taunted me as he caught me with my hand still on my shrinking genitals.

“No.” My reply sounded like a pouting little girl. I reddened in embarrassment.

He stood there admiring me, a twinkle in his eyes. “Well, tomorrow will be the big day. You’ll be all finished then, most likely. At least we’ll be able to start your training then.”

I’m sure the look on my face was one of terror and apprehension.

“Don’t worry,” he laughed. “No one here is going to deflower you or make you do anything disgusting. That’s for your buyer to do. Ah! I can see by the look on your face that you know you’re to be sold.”

“Slavery is illegal,” I said weakly, as if he didn’t know it.

“Oh yes,” he agreed. “That’s what makes buying a girl like you so delicious. Customers tell us it’s a real rush, to buy and train a girl–especially an American girl. They’re all so naíve and pampered. You’ll fetch a good price after we’ve trained you.”

“Why go to all the expense of this?” I demanded. “Why not use real girls?”

“For some men, taming a real girl is too easy. But a girl with the mind of a man is much more fun to train. We’ll teach you the fundamentals–feminine hygiene, how to do your hair and makeup, that sort of thing. It will only take us a couple of days. Then the Boss will sell you to someone–probably from Africa or the Middle East, since some of the men there have a real yen for sweet young American girls–and you’ll be on your way to a whole new life.”

In spite of whatever they were putting in my food to make me docile, I wanted very badly to attack my captor, but I knew it would accomplish nothing if I did. I was too small now, and far too weak to do any damage. After all, what could I do? Scratch him with my growing nails?

As usual, after he had inspected me, my meal was set out. And once again, I was out cold a few minutes after they took the tray away. It should have been the same routine as before, but this time, something happened–something no one expected.

When I awoke, my room was dark–very dark. What woke me was the sound of gunshots.

“Don’t shoot, you idiot!” someone yelled.

“But she’s getting away!” another voice called out.

“You might hit one of us,” the first voice called back.

I sat up, groggy, but getting more alert. I suppose there’s something about gunfire that will do that to a person even under the influence of a mild sedative. As I said, it was dark. I literally wasn’t able to see my hand in front of my face. In fact, the only light I could see was a faint yellow strip in the direction of the door.

The door!

It was open, and there were no lights except what I suddenly realized must be emergency lighting. The power must have failed, I realized, and that meant the doors, held by magnetic locks, had failed.

Okay, I was naked, still a little out of it from the sedatives, and in a body which had become increasingly foreign to me each time I awakened. But I wasn’t so out of it that I didn’t realize that my captors were not at their best either. It must have really been night, I reasoned, and they had been in full light until perhaps only a few minutes earlier. Their eyes were not accustomed to the darkness, and the emergency lights wouldn’t have been sufficient to offset that.

Also, from the banter in the hallway, it sounded as if I wasn’t the only captive in the building. How many others were there–one, five, even more? If all of the locks had failed at the same time, they might lack sufficient manpower to contain all of us. And finally, with their lack of desire to use their weapons, potentially damaging valuable property (in other words, us), the guns would be more of a hindrance than a help. They would be carrying the weapons and thus unable to use their hands effectively.

Without thinking, I dashed for the door.

Sometimes a near-disaster becomes a golden opportunity. In my case I threw open the door at the exact moment one of the guards pushed against it to open it. In the darkness, his weapon precluding the use of his hands to prop himself up, he tumbled to the floor, his gun sliding across the floor and right into my foot. Without thinking, I grabbed it, cradling the unfamiliar weapon in my hands.

I don’t know much about guns, and I suspect I never did, but I thought maybe I could bluff my way out with the weapon. Then a hand clasped my ankle. “I’ve got one of them!” a voice on the floor called out.

Then I did something I don’t know if I could ever do again in a million years, but I was so panicked and desperate that my fumbling hands somehow found a small tab which had to be the safety. I don’t even remember pulling the trigger, but suddenly, only a moment after the guard had grabbed my ankle, there was a loud pop and a brilliant flash, followed almost at once by a surprised yelp at my feet. I don’t think I hit him, but I surprised him enough that he let me go.

“I said no shooting!” a voice yelled from down the hall.

Obviously I didn’t answer, and I knew that once my assailant had overcome his shock, he’d be calling for help. The gun still in my hand, I bolted down the hallway in the direction away from the voice.

It isn’t easy running stark naked through a darkened building–especially in an unfamiliar body. I could feel my new breasts flopping up and down as I ran aimlessly through the darkness. My widened hips caused me to move awkwardly, and even the smallest object on the floor stung when my bare feet stepped on it.

Once, whatever I stepped on was enough to cause me to lose my balance. I lost my grip on the gun and could hear it skittering across the floor into the darkness. There was no time to look for it, though. All I could think of was getting away.

Looking back on it, I think I must have gotten further than any of the guards had expected me to go. And given that there may have been more prisoners than guards–a normal situation I would have imagined–I guessed that my kidnappers had other problems to contend with. In any case, as the confused voices of the guards and the shrill screams of the other captives faded in the distance, I managed in the dim emergency lighting to find another door, only this one looked to be an exit.

I would imagine the main door was also magnetically sealed, for it opened effortlessly, and I soon found myself on the loading dock of a warehouse. There were no lights nearby, so the power failure must have affected everything for several blocks. Beyond the string of other warehouses, I could see the lights of the New Orleans skyline, and I knew at once I was in one of the many storage buildings down on the river.

Parked below the loading dock were three cars. Did that mean there were only three guards? Not necessarily, I cautioned myself. Only one of the cars was a two-seater, so there could be ten or twelve carpooling guards for all I knew. I sure didn’t want to stick around to find out.

Still I didn’t want to be seen running naked down the streets, either. As panicked as I was, I had had little to think about in my brief waking hours for the last couple of days, except my reduced size and strength. I might not remember who I was–or maybe had been–but I had plenty of other memories of rough, dark districts of the city, where even in my male body, I would have feared to walk day or night. I’d be a tempting target for the first lowlife who spotted me. This was a part of the city which could prove dangerous even when the lights were working properly.

Now the warehouse district isn’t what it used to be. What with containerized shipping and all, the old warehouses along the river had been in decline for years. Recently a number of them had been converted into lofts, galleries, restaurants and the like, but I estimated I was a good three blocks from those gentrified areas. That meant three blocks walking down dark streets strewn with debris and where the only pedestrians might easily be predators. If one of them didn’t get me, the tetanus I contracted from stepping on something sharp and dirty would.

Still, what choice did I have? The lights could come on again any moment, and my guards could get the upper hand immediately. Or what if one of them decided to look outside on the offhand chance that one of their prisoners had made it that far? Running was my only option–unless I wanted to contemplate a lifetime of slavery.

I knew I didn’t have much time to make good my escape, but I wouldn’t make it far without shoes or clothing. In desperation, I looked in each of the cars for something I could use. In the second car I checked, a t-shirt, running shorts, and a pair of Nikes lay in the back seat where they had been carelessly tossed. Holding my breath, I tried the door, and to my surprise and relief, found it unlocked.

I slipped on the shoes at once. Of course they were much too big for me, since as a girl, my feet were far smaller than they had been. Still, if I was careful and sort of shuffled as I walked, I managed to keep them on. I was able to find cover in the shadows between two buildings where I could slip on the shorts and t-shirt.

I barely made it in time. As I ducked behind a dumpster, two men rushed out of the warehouse where I had been held prisoner. They were still dressed in black, but their facemasks had been removed. They were too far away for me to see their faces clearly, but from their motions, I could tell they were after someone, and that ‘someone’ had to be me.

As quickly as I could, I put on the t-shirt, wishing that it were any color but white. Once I got away from the darkened area, the sodium vapor street lights were few and far between, but couple them with private security lighting, including a couple of magical halos, and I would be spotted if I ran out into the street. Even in the darkness, they might spy the white t-shirt. The t-shirt was so large on me, it could be used as a dress, and since I soon found the shorts, even with their elastic waist band, fit too loosely over my hips, I decided to forego them and just wear the shirt. After all, in the oversized shoes, I wouldn’t be running fast enough for the shirt to whip up too far and expose my nearly-female genitals.

Since the street was chancy, I fled further back in the alley, hoping there would be nothing to block its exit. My luck held, but as I turned the corner, I could hear voices yelling from near the dumpster. I cursed myself for leaving the shorts behind. They had obviously found them and assumed that I had stolen them.

Still, they hadn’t spotted me. That meant they would have to look up and down the street as well, and with the lack of illumination, that would take time. I paced myself, trying not to panic. If I did so, I would probably run right out of the Nikes, or trip and fall in them. Shuffling as fast as I dared, I covered nearly half the distance to the well-lighted upscale neighborhood ahead before I ran into trouble.

“What have we got here, man?” a creepy voice called out from just across the street.

Coming out of the darkened area and into an intersection where the streetlights still worked had seemed like travelling from peril to safety. It seemed I had been wrong, though. Fearful that my captors had found me, I turned to face them and gasped. Fortunately they weren’t dressed as my captors were, favoring instead wife-beater shirts and jeans. They were white–one with stringy blond hair and the other with a shaved head and a Pancho Villa mustache. But I wasn’t going to run to them. I knew what I looked like, and those guys didn’t exactly look like knights in shining armor.

“Forget it, man,” the blond guy growled. “She’s jail bait.”

“Old enough to bleed,” the other one returned ominously, “old enough to butcher.” He started toward me.

Shit! I thought. There was no way I could outrun them. And from the bald one’s statement, I knew what he had in mind. I had no choice: I had to run again. The street gave way to a sidewalk about half a block away, so I took my chances and ran in the overly-large shoes, figuring the sidewalk would be clean enough to allow me to run barefoot.

It took me only a few seconds though, to realize that I wasn’t going to make it. They were nearly on me when I heard a shot from some distance away and something whizzed over my shoulder. I don’t think it was a bullet: I suspect it was a tranquillizer dart, since my captors wouldn’t want to kill me, but the two toughs pursuing me didn’t know that. It seemed my captors had spotted me and were trying to take me down.

“What the fuck!” one of them screamed–I think it was the blond. His voice was so close I’m sure they would have caught me in a few more steps, but the shot caused them to change their plans.

“It’s the Sultans!” the bald one yelled, identifying my captors as members of a local gang. Of course I was sure they weren’t Sultans, but my pursuers probably wouldn’t have lasted long on the night streets of the city without being just a little bit paranoid. Whoever they were, the Sultans were obviously their rivals.

I head two guns blasting away just behind me as I ran, and I was sure they weren’t firing tranquillizer darts. It was ironic, but my would-be rapists had just become my saviors. I don’t know if they hit anything or not, but I heard a lot of yelling down the street. I let up my pace a little bit, knowing that all of my enemies were now busy with each other. After what seemed like a lifetime, I was on a smooth sidewalk, bathed in light from a nearby street light.

The girl I had been turned into wasn’t very strong, and I was winded. I took a chance that my enemies would be tied up for several minutes and slackened my pace. My body was covered in perspiration, from running and from fear. It was plastered to my body so transparently that I could have easily won a wet t-shirt contest. Also, it had ridden up along my hips, exposing what I suddenly saw in the streetlight my new vagina.

Maybe the fear and the exercise had accelerated my transformation–or maybe I still had something male there that looked female. I didn’t have time to examine myself closely. As far as I knew I was all woman now–or at least all woman for all practical purposes. I tugged the t-shirt back down and pulled it away from my nipples, a little ashamed at how good the material felt sliding over my breasts. It figured that when they changed me, they made my body sensitive. Their plans for me obviously included lots of steamy sex.

My luck held. Within a block, there were the lights of a small convenience store. A few people were milling around out in front of it, but none appeared to be a threat. Nonetheless, I got some pointed stares as I walked past them–the men staring with approval and the women with disgust. I didn’t care. I was safe at last.

The clerk at the little convenience store I rushed into must have been half-asleep, because he jumped up in alarm as I approached the counter. What–did he think a little slip of a girl dressed only in a t-shirt was going to rob him?

“Call the police!” I demanded, trying to make my sweet little voice sound authoritative. He stood frozen, looking at me as if I had just landed from Mars. “Didn’t you hear me? They’re after me. They could be here any minute. Now call the police!”

At last he fumbled with the phone, and stammered the situation to the 911 operator. “Are you okay?” he finally asked, the phone still hanging loosely in his hand. I just wished he had been looking me in the eyes when he asked me. It was disconcerting to have a conversation with someone who wouldn’t look above my chest.

“Yeah,” I managed. “I think so.” There was no sense in telling him that given what had been done to me, it was very unlikely that I’d ever be okay again...

“Cassie, wake up!”

I opened my eyes and looked around the table. Everyone looked a little disturbed, so I hoped they didn’t notice how shaken I was. The girl’s story brought back a number of unpleasant memories, and through her memories, I relived the worst days of my life–days in which I was nearly made into a would-be teen whore by unscrupulous plotters intent on ruining my father.

In the year since my own transformation, I had gotten used to being a girl. The feeling of awakening in the morning with long hair in my face and breasts weighting down my chest had become normal. Applying my makeup and picking out a matching outfit were now second nature to me. And as for what was (or wasn’t) between my legs, well, Brett had given me a new appreciation for female orgasms. If given the chance to return to my privileged life as a white male, I would have respectfully declined. As a young African-American woman, I was content with my new life.

All that being said, I could still empathize with our Jane Doe’s sense of loss and disorientation. I had been there myself. Would she eventually become happy with her female existence? That was hard to say, and perhaps Oliver would be able to help her get there.

“That was... unsettling,” Helen murmured. She looked over at me with concern, probably realizing the feelings I must be having.

“I know,” Sarah agreed as the Holo wordlessly slipped out of the room. “That’s actually the fifth time I’ve experienced a statement under Holo like this–and the second time I’ve experienced our Jane Doe’s. The statements are always disconcerting.”

“But we saw things the Jane Doe just talked about,” I pointed out. “Were they real? I mean, were we actually seeing through her eyes?”

Sarah smiled grimly. “That is something of a legal bone of contention. The answer seems to be mostly, yes. But mostly isn’t good enough for a courtroom. The mind sort of fills in the details even when our Holoed witness can’t remember clearly. That’s why Holoed testimony isn’t admissible in court.”

“Still, it may help you catch the perpetrators,” Oliver pointed out. Of all of us, he seemed the least disturbed by what he had just witnessed, in spite of experiencing his first Holo. Of course, I realized, in his profession, he had probably been involved in a number of similar cases, hearing the sordid details directly from the victims, so he wasn’t quite as shocked as the rest of us. “Have you been able to identify the warehouse from the images?”

“We have the location narrowed down,” Sarah replied. “We hope to have it nailed down by morning.”

“How about the location of the kidnapping?” Helen asked. “Isn’t McAllister Auditorium over on the Tulane campus?”

“Yes,” Sarah replied. “But as you noticed, our Jane Doe’s memories have been scrambled by the Slaver. She could just as easily have been a student on another campus, or it’s possible she wasn’t a student at all.”

“Then I suppose I should go see your victim,” Oliver sighed, rising from his chair. “Cassie, I could always take a cab back to the hotel if you want to go now–unless Ms. Carmichael needs you to see this Jane Doe as well...”

I guess he could see how badly shaken I was after all. He was obviously trying to get me off the hook, fearful that I would be even worse off after seeing the victim. He was probably right, but I couldn’t drop this situation now. Helen had asked for my help, knowing I would want to help her and the FBM find out who was doing this to innocent people. She was right, of course. The victim’s situation had struck too close to home for me to avoid getting involved.

“I’ll be fine,” I assured him. “I’d like to see her.”

In spite of that, I felt my legs wobbling just a little as we made our way through the hallways of the Magical Victims Unit.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Oliver muttered to me.

“I’m fine,” I lied again.

“Here we are,” Sarah informed us, as we came to a room door guarded by two FBM agents. Apparently the Bureau was afraid the Slaver and his gang wouldn’t give up their prey without making an attempt to kidnap her from her hospital room.

Many of the rooms in the MVU were more like hotel rooms rather than hospital rooms. Our victim was curled up on a comfortable-looking couch, reading a book designed for girls going through puberty. When she saw us, she stuffed the book behind her on the couch, as if she had just been caught reading pornographic literature.

She was dressed in a light gray unisex tracksuit that did little to disguise her sex. She had the face and body of a young girl just emerging from adolescence, and her long brown hair, drawn back into cute little pigtails draped innocently over her youthful bosom. She could have passed for fourteen or so. My God, the girl even had freckles! Put her in a gingham dress and she could be Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz.

“Oh, hi,” she said to us in a sweet little voice. She was obviously self-conscious, but she was at least making the effort to be sociable. She blinked her bright blue eyes, long lashes unfettered by makeup fluttering nervously.

“Samantha,” Sarah began, “I have some people I’d like you to meet.” She introduced Helen, Oliver and me, and we each in turn, shook her small hand. I could see why she had imagined she was only five feet tall. The doctor was being generous when he told her she was five-two.

“Samantha?” Oliver asked, smiling at the girl.

“Yeah,” she sighed. “I know that’s not really my name, but I thought it was better than Jane. They called me a Jane Doe, you know? I didn’t really like the meaning of that.”

“Perfectly understandable,” Oliver agreed, sitting in an easy chair across from the couch. He leaned forward. “Sarah here tells me you don’t remember who you were before.”

The girl shook her head, pigtails swaying. “Yeah, that’s right. They... they took all my memories. Well, not exactly all, I guess–just the ones relating to who I was... before.”

“Then what makes you so certain that you were male before?” he asked.

She shifted, embarrassed. “I... I’m not sure how to explain it. I remember changing, though. I know I didn’t look like this. Have you seen the–what do they call it–the Holo?”

“Yes, I’ve seen it,” he replied smoothly, as if it wasn’t a big thing. “And I know you remember being male, but is it possible that your transformation was an implanted illusion, given to you when they replaced your memories of who you were?”

The girl considered that for a moment before answering, “No, I’m sure I was male before. I remember having a...” She looked around the room, as if comprehending for the first time that the rest of us were women. “A... you know.” She blushed. It served only to make her cuter.

Oliver just smiled again. “Would you rather be male?”

“Of course!” There was no hesitation in her answer. The Slaver had been very cruel to her, leaving her not only with memories of being male, but with a yearning to regain that sexual state, leaving her frustrated and off balance–and susceptible to his commands as well, I imagined.

Then Oliver switched the course of the questioning. “Is there anything you can remember about your captors that might not have been in the Holo?”

She shook her head. “No... nothing. Believe me, I’ve tried. Are you a doctor?”

“Yes,” Oliver replied.

“Can... can you change me back into a man?”

Oliver’s smile disappeared. “I’m sorry, Samantha. No one can do that.”

“Not even surgery?”

“I’m not that kind of a doctor,” he told her. It was an evasive answer. Odds were good the magic would override any attempt at sex-change surgery to make her male again. I suspected the spell would keep her from cutting her hair in any but a feminine fashion as well. That’s how it had been for me, anyhow.

“So you’re a shrink,” she surmised, making me remember that although she might look to be only fourteen or so, her mind was a few years older and more mature. “You’re here to help me adjust to all of... this.”

“That’s right,” Oliver admitted. “How do you feel about that?”

She shrugged. “I guess I don’t have much of a choice, do I?”

In that moment, I took an immediate liking to Samantha. Having gone through my own transformation, I had learned after a few days that there was nothing to be done to change me back, and I would have to learn how to be female for the rest of my life. Samantha had come to the same conclusion–maybe even quicker than I had.

“No Samantha,” Oliver agreed, “you don’t have much of a choice.”

“Will I... remember who I was?” she asked timidly.

“We’ll do whatever we can to restore your memories,” he told her. “But in that, we may not be very successful.”

“Maybe it’s just as well,” she murmured. “If I can remember my male life, it might make it harder to accept all of this. I might have been better off if they had erased all of my memories.”

“You’ll work on the case then?” Sarah asked hopefully when we had reconvened in the small conference room.

Oliver nodded. “Yes, I’ll take the case. But I want to warn you up front that my primary concern is for the mental well-being of that girl in there. I’ll do what I can to restore some of her previous memories, but I must tell you I don’t think I’ll be very successful in that endeavor. Unless we find out who she was originally and use that knowledge to retard the Slaver’s commands, there’s no telling what her end result will be.”

Sarah sighed, “Please, just do the best you can. If word gets out that there’s a Slaver loose in the city, there’ll be hell to pay. Anything she can remember may be of help to us.”

“Then let’s hope you can get some clues from the warehouse, assuming you find the right one,” Oliver said.

“We’re doing our best, Doctor,” Sarah replied tersely. “And we’ve started a search of suspected Slaver activity all over the region.”

“Brian’s working on that now,” Helen reported.

“I could help you with that,” I volunteered. I know: Helen had given me the opportunity to withdraw from this case, but after seeing that poor girl, I felt I had to do something.

“Cassie...” Helen began, but I was saved by Oliver’s intervention.

“Actually, I could use Cassie’s help,” he said, surprising me. “I don’t know the city very well, and if I’m able to retrieve any memories of locations or such, she could be very helpful to me. I’d like her to work by my side, if possible.”

Helen was quiet for a moment, but at last, her eyes narrowed as she addressed me. “Okay Cassie, but promise me right now that you won’t be doing any fieldwork on this one.”

I bristled. She was treating me as if I were... were... Okay, she was treating me as if I were her little sister–which was exactly what I was supposed to be. And I had to admit to myself that she was only doing this because she loved me, but I was a big... girl now, and I could look out for myself.

With that, our meeting broke up, but Sarah decided to brief Oliver further in the conference room. Sensing a chance to talk to me alone, Helen motioned for me to join her in the hallway out of earshot.

“Cassie, I mean it,” she emphasized when we were alone. “I shouldn’t have even called you about this one.”

I shrugged. “I would have had to bring Oliver anyway, so either way, I’d still be involved.” She still looked concerned. “Besides, I’ve been in the line of fire before,” I reminded her.

“This isn’t like the Lagrange case,” she shot back. “Slavers are very dangerous, and you could be a tempting target for them.”

“Me? But I’m already a girl.”

“Yes, but if they found out who you were before, you’d be perfect for them. Don’t you see what’s happening here? This Slaver and his cronies are turning males into females for a very special clientele–men and women who get their jollies from dominating former men in women’s bodies. And if the former men were rich and famous–or the sons of the rich and famous–it’s an even bigger rush for them. What if under duress you were to tell them who you were before? You’re the daughter of the Governor of the State of Louisiana. You’d be shipped off to God knows where to be the personal play toy of some rich pervert, maybe with a political axe to grind!”

“Well...” She had a point, I realized. It didn’t really matter that my natural father had disowned me. I was still his son... well, daughter in the eyes of the wrong people.

“So promise me,” she pressed. “You’ll help out the doctor, but you’ll stay by his side and you won’t go traipsing off after the bad guys.”

“Okay, okay,” I grumbled. “You’ve made your point.”

“Good.” Then she gave me a softer look. “How are things going with Brett’s parents?”

“Oh Helen,” I beamed, “they’re wonderful people.”

“I’m glad for you.” She kissed me on the cheek. “Now take care.”

“I will,” I promised. “Give my best to Brian.”

A few minutes later Oliver and I were back in the car. I decided to leave the top up this time though, since it had cooled off a bit and looked as if it might rain. Before I could put the car in gear, Oliver asked me a question that made my heart practically stop.

“Cassie, does Brett know you used to be a man?”

My hand slipped off the gearshift and the engine died. In the silence that ensued, I thought for a moment about lying–denying that I had ever been a man. But I couldn’t do that–not to the father of the man I loved. Besides, if he’d figured out that I used to be a man, nothing I could say would convince him otherwise, would it?

“How did you know?” My voice was trembling. It was as if my worst nightmare had just come true. I had reconciled myself to my new sex, and I had done my best to look and act as if I had always been female. Now, thought, I had been outed–by my boyfriend’s father no less.

Oliver seemed to be reading my thoughts. “Don’t worry, Cassie: it was nothing overt. Most people would never notice, as you appear to be a natural woman in almost all respects. It was just a few little things–gestures and movements that I’ve seen in some of my transformed patients. But the biggest clue was your presence here tonight. Even given that your sister is a private investigator, it seemed odd to me that she would ask you to help on this case unless you had some personal experience to draw from.”

I just nodded slowly, unable to meet his eyes. I should have known better than to try to fool him. After all, he saw patients like me, transformed against their will into women, every day. What made me think I could fool him into thinking I had always been a girl?

“Does Brett know?” he asked again.

Oh why hadn’t I told Brett already? I had meant to innumerable times, but the moment never seemed to be right. Lately, I had even been deluding myself into thinking I could get by with never telling him at all.

I shook my head, unable to speak.

“Why not?” he asked gently.

I felt hot tears forming in my eyes. I owed Oliver an answer. I had fallen in love with his son, and he with me. I gulped, slowly finding my voice again. “I... I wanted to. I know I should have...”

“Did you think he’d love you any less?” Oliver pressed softly.

“Yes... no... I don’t know!” I practically yelled, just before the dam burst and I collapsed into sobs.

Oliver reached over and gently put his arm around me. “It’s all right,” he murmured. “Everything will be all right.”

“You must hate me now,” I sobbed. “I’m not what you thought I was at all.”

“Yes you are,” he assured me. “You’re everything I thought you would be. You are an intelligent, beautiful girl who has stolen my son’s heart. He’s told us a lot about you over the course of the school year, and Estelle and I were pleased to find out he hadn’t exaggerated one bit.”

“I’m awful!” I moaned.

“You’re human,” he countered. “You just didn’t want to disappoint Brett by telling him. Why don’t you let me drive and we’ll find someplace private–someplace where we can talk and have a cup of coffee? I know I could use one.”

“Me... me, too,” I managed to stammer.

We found an open PJ’s, and an isolated table in the corner where we could talk privately. By the time we were seated and I had a sip of coffee, I had pretty much gotten myself back together. I suspected my eyes were still red, though, and I was still having a problem looking Oliver in the eye, though. He remedied that by gently lifting my chin.

When I saw him, he was smiling that gentle smile that Brett often had. I couldn’t help but smile back–just a little.

“Want to tell me about it?” he asked.

I didn’t have to ask what “it” was. He was referring to my transformation. And yes, I found myself anxious to tell him about it. It was a story others knew but that I had never had to tell someone else about.

I told him everything–who I had been and what had happened to make me who I was now. I held nothing back, in spite of the fact that I was violating the agreements made with my former father, which prohibited me from ever mentioning his part in my transformation. I suppose legally I could have contended in court that Oliver and I had a doctor-patient relationship, but I don’t know that I would have won that argument. Still, I felt I needed to tell him.

Oliver remained professional through my entire story, interrupting only to give an encouraging word or to ask a clarifying question. I was beginning to develop considerable respect for his skills as a doctor and counselor. While I had re-centered myself through the love and attention of my new family, I could easily see how those poor unfortunates who had been transformed against their will and cast out by their families (as my original family had done) could gain solace and strength from him.

When I had finished my story, Oliver gave me a fatherly smile. “Cassie, you have done a wonderful job of adapting to your new life–one of the best I’ve ever seen. You are a strong, wonderful woman. If you ever want a job as a counselor with my clinic, let me know. A number of my patients could learn from your example.”

“Thanks,” I smiled back, grateful for his encouragement.

“Now that we’ve settled that,” Oliver continued, “can you think of any reason why you couldn’t tell Brett?”

I saw where he was going with that. “In other words, since I’m a strong, wonderful woman, why not tell him?”

“Exactly.”

But Oliver knew the reason why. I might look, sound, and feel like a woman, but I was worried Brett wouldn’t see me as one if he knew–especially if he learned who I had been before my transformation. I had been born white, wealthy, and male. Now, I was none of those things, but what if Brett suddenly saw me as being a former man–a former white man at that?

“Ask yourself a question, Cassie,” Oliver urged after I had explained all of this to him. “Think if it were the other way around. Think if you were a man who met a beautiful girl and fell in love with her, only to find out that once upon a time, she had been a man.”

I had done some reading on that subject since my transformation. “It could be a problem,” I argued. “It used to happen all the time–and probably still does.”

Oliver nodded. “Yes, I’m sure it still happens. I’ve seen it happen. But if you’re referring to the days when we had to depend upon surgery to make a man into a woman, it certainly happened more often. Although think about this: who is more of a woman, the person who submits to the surgeon’s knife to change the male body into something the feminine mind might prefer, or the man who is changed by magic into a woman, but remains a man mentally?”

“I’ve come to grips with who I am,” I stated just a little more defiantly than I had planned to. “I’m a woman now.”

“Do you like being a woman?”

Did I? No, not at first, but a year in the body of a woman had seriously altered the way I thought. I was too pragmatic to hate my own body, and the estrogen that soaked my system, coupled with my own practical nature, had caused to accept who I had become. Acceptance had given way to enjoyment, especially after I had met Brett. I had indeed come to enjoy being a woman as much as I had enjoyed being a man. Strangely enough though, it was the first time in a long while since I had been asked that question, so I was somewhat surprised by my own conclusion when I replied, “Now, yes, I suppose I do.”

Oliver leaned forward. “Scientists are working on spells which may allow women to become men. Don’t look so surprised: you knew it was bound to be a priority with the spate of involuntary sex changes. The problem has almost become epidemic, and as you probably know, ending epidemics can be very profitable for the magical medical community. If they’re successful, would you ever change back into a man?”

“No.”

He seemed pleasantly surprised at how quickly I had answered. “Why not?” he pressed.

I sighed. “Because I’ve come to appreciate this life more than my old one. I’ve got a better family, a sense of accomplishment that I’m doing what I want to do and not just what is expected of me, and I’ve got B...” My voice trailed off.

“Brett?”

“Yes. But don’t you see? That’s why I haven’t been able to tell him. I don’t... I don’t want to lose him. I just can’t take the chance that if I tell him, he’ll never speak to me again.”

“You have the mind of a woman to match your body,” he assured me. “Use it. Think like a woman for a minute. If you were to tell Brett and he dropped you, he wouldn’t be worth having, would he?”

“I... I suppose not.”

“I know Brett loves you very much,” he told me. “Cassie, he loves the woman you are. As for what you used to be, well, Brett is a bright boy. He’s smart enough to know that what is past is past. What’s important is who and what you are now.”

After I dropped Oliver off, I had a lot to think about. He had made a lot of good points. What was important was not who I had been but who I was now.

But exactly who was I? Even though I had reconciled myself to being female for the rest of my life, I was very afraid that under the surface of my very feminine exterior lay the psyche of a man just biding his time to come to the surface and destroy the life I had created for myself. Foolish? Perhaps, but I had over two decades of male experience lurking in the background. Brett deserved a woman–someone who was all woman. Could I be all woman for him all of the time?

These thoughts were still churning through my mind as I crept into my townhouse. I could hear Brett gently snoring, and wondered what Oliver would have to say if he knew that Brett spent nearly every night with me instead of going back to his own place. We had even talked about getting a place together next school year, and he had never indicated that such an arrangement would be a problem with his family, so I supposed his parents would be all right with that sort of thing. Still, we hadn’t told them of our typical sleeping arrangements yet.

I tiptoed into the bedroom and changed into a nightshirt. Brett always liked me in a nightshirt: he said it was easy to rip off me. My breasts tingled a little at the thought of that. I loved him so much. That’s why I hadn’t told him about my former life. I was so afraid I’d lose him. Even if it was one chance in a hundred... or a thousand... or a hundred thousand, I just didn’t want to take the chance.

“Wazzup?” Brett muttered sleepily as I slipped into bed next to him.

“I just got home,” I told him, kissing him gently on his exposed cheek. It was rough from his whiskers. Who would have ever thought that I’d enjoy kissing a whiskered cheek like that? But I did.

“Whatimeisit?”

“Three,” I lied. It was closer to four. Not a problem though, since it was Saturday morning. Oliver and I had agreed we could sleep in. We had a noon meeting with Sarah, so we’d both be able to get a reasonable night’s sleep.

Brett struggled to wake up. “I waited up for you until two.”

I stroked his cheek, feeling the rising stubble. “Poor baby.”

He rose up and squinted at the clock. “It’s four.”

“Not quite.”

He slipped his arm under me. It felt so good to be held by him. “You need to get some sleep,” he told me.

I rolled over so I was facing him and leaned up to kiss him on the lips. “Not just yet.” I realized suddenly I needed reaffirmation that I was really a woman. “There’s something else I need first.”

I rolled him over on his back. His hands shot up–in protest, I thought, until he tore the nightshirt off my body. He was completely awake as I straddled him. “I need this first,” I murmured.

Overnight progress was made on the case. Concentrating on the area of Friday night’s power failure, New Orleans police officers had found evidence of habitation in a supposedly abandoned warehouse. So the place of our meeting with Sarah was changed to the warehouse where the authorities believed our Jane Doe–now Samantha–had been kept.

“Looks like they cleaned it pretty thoroughly,” Brian commented, looking around at the bare wooden rafters overhead. He had come to the meeting with Helen and had already made his own inspection of the warehouse. “Have they figured out who owns this place?” he asked.

“That’s a dead end,” Sarah told him. “It’s owned by a developer out of Dallas. They have plans to tear this block down and build high-rise condos overlooking the river. They had no idea anyone was using this place–except for the usual derelicts, of course.”

“So they were squatters and they took everything with them last night after your girl escaped,” Brian surmised.

“Pretty much,” Sarah agreed. She nodded at a small number of rooms built to one side of the warehouse. There was a single door leading to them, but from what we had heard, there was nothing beyond the door, except six rooms pretty much the way Samantha had described them, even down to the electronic locks. The warehouse itself was completely clean as well, with only a few recent scuffmarks near the entrance to the rooms, as if a table and chairs had been moved away. That was probably where the guards were posted.

“We did find the remains of some wiring in the walls,” one of Sarah’s men explained. “It was probably for security cameras in the rooms. From the way the dust was stirred around, they must have monitored their prisoners from out here.”

“Do you think it would do any good to bring Samantha out here to see this place?” Sarah asked Oliver.

He shook his head. “Not really. There’s nothing here to connect her with her former life. In fact, visiting this place might even make her worse.”

“Was this place magically cleaned?” I asked.

“No,” Helen answered. “There’s no talent I can think of that would work this efficiently. From the time Samantha escaped, until the New Orleans police found this place, was only about eight hours, and the police were crawling all over this general area three hours before that. They wouldn’t have had much time to clean this place up.”

“How about outside where their cars were parked?” I followed up.

Helen nodded at a plastic tub near the entrance. “The officers cleaned up everything for fifty yards in every direction. Mostly it’s just trash. There were a few cigarette butts, though, but without a suspect, any DNA on them isn’t worth much. Of course we took samples, just in case.”

“We also took tire impressions,” Sarah added. “Unfortunately they weren’t clear enough to be conclusive. We’ve got the magic lab working on them now, but it looks as if they were just run-of-the-mill tires that could be on too many vehicles to count.”

“Shame it’s not like CSMI on TV,” Brian muttered. “Their magic labs always seem to be able to do things the FBM can’t.”

“Yeah,” Sarah snorted. “That CSMI stuff gives us fits. Juries seem to think we ought to be able to do all of that fantasy crap.”

As the conversation continued, I went over to the plastic tub to sift through the junk they had collected outside. It was mostly that–junk. There were scraps of newspapers, a few beat-up soda and beer cans, all too torn up to yield fingerprints, and a few coins. I almost missed something interesting among the quarters and nickels that had been swept up along the street. If it hadn’t been gold, I think I would have missed it. It was about the size of a quarter, but smooth along the front and edges, sort of like a slug. I turned it over and found it had, in fact, been stamped, but it wasn’t a coin.

“Find anything interesting?”

I was staring so intently at the object that I hadn’t heard Oliver approach, and I jumped, nearly dropping it on the ground.

“Sorry to startle you,” he apologized.

“See this?” I said, showing him the object.

“It looks like... yes, the Greek letter omega,” he replied, examining it carefully.

“It is,” I confirmed.

I had Sara and Helen’s interest now as well. “Does it mean anything?” Helen asked me, looking at the coin.

“Yeah,” I said. “It’s a membership token for the Omegans.”

“Who?” they all asked at once.

“It’s a dining club at Tulane,” I explained. Then I noticed their blank faces. Obviously they didn’t know about dining clubs. Had I not gone to an Ivy League school before my transformation, I might not have known either, I realized.

“Dining clubs are sort of like fraternities,” I clarified, “only you don’t live in them as a rule. I suppose they’re a little like the old English gentlemen’s clubs, where you go to dine and relax. They’re not too popular outside the Ivy League, and even there, they’ve been declining in the last few years. There’s only one at Tulane, though, as far as I know, and that’s the Omegans.

“It’s a rich white boys’ club. Every year, ten incoming freshman men–all white, of course–are invited to join. The invitation is a silver coin with an omega printed on one side. If they choose to join, they show up at the dining club and exchange their coin for a gold one. They carry it with them even after graduation to identify themselves to other Omegans.”

“What happens if they decide not to join?” Sarah asked.

I shrugged. “I suppose they just throw the coin away, and the club invites someone else to make it an even ten. However, from what I’ve heard, no one ever declines. It’s considered quite an honor. Not only that, but many powerful men in this region were once Omegans. It can be a real door-opener to get your post-college career in overdrive.”

“How do you know so much about them?” one of the other FBM agents who had gathered around asked.

“I just know what I’ve heard on campus,” I lied. Actually I knew quite a bit about the Omegans. Although like all secret and exclusive societies, they had their little mysteries, but my brother–or I should say my former brother–had told me quite a bit about them–since he was an active member of the Omegans and had been for three years.

Helen knew me too well to let that vague statement go by, though. “Cassie, you know someone who’s an Omegan, don’t you?”

“Let me handle that,” Sarah interrupted, stopping Helen from asking anything further.

Helen looked a little stricken, as she put two and two together. Of course both women, Oliver and Brian knew who I had been in my former life, but the other FBM agents didn’t.

To his credit, Oliver realized the situation at once. To change the subject he suggested, “Ms. Carmichael, I’d like to drop by the hospital and see Samantha. It sounds as if Cassie might be tied up here for a while longer. Could you get someone to drive me over?”

Sarah nodded and turned to one of the other agents. “Dobbs, take Dr. Carson over to the hospital, please. The rest of you get back to the office and get me everything you can on this Omega House.” All three of the agents nodded and dispersed. Brian saw them out. When everyone was gone except Helen, Sarah and me, the director turned back to me. “Okay, Cassie. Everybody’s out of range now. Who do you know in the Omegans?”

“Paul,” I admitted. I didn’t have to say who Paul was. She had known him since he was ten. So had Helen, for that matter.

“So he was tapped as a freshman,” Sarah surmised. “That means he’s been a full member for two years if I understand how pledging works.”

“It’s not exactly pledging, like the fraternities,” I clarified. “As Paul explained it to me, you’re a provisional member for most of your first year, where one of the second year members mentors you. As long as you make your grades and keep your nose clean, you then have full membership for the rest of your time in school. There’s no hell week like in the fraternities, though.”

Sarah turned the gold coin in her hand. “It could be that someone from this Omega club is involved in this. He might have dropped this coin–or maybe Samantha accidentally pulled it out of the car when she was looking for something to wear. You don’t think Paul has anything to do with this, do you, Cassie?”

I had to think about that for a minute. Paul and I had never really gotten along, since as Robert, I had been the eldest son and the heir apparent to the Devereaux clan. He had always envied me. It got even worse when I went away to college, since I was sent to Harvard and he was shuffled off to less-prestigious Tulane. Since then, he and I had barely spoken to each other, even when we were home for the holidays or school breaks.

When I had been transformed, all contact between us had been severed. The last time I had even spoken to him was during my transformation, when he had told me to my face that he was glad this was happening to me. He had even tried to turn me over to our father after I had gotten away from protective custody. I had only seen him a few times since then–once at the Lagrange’s party and a couple of times on campus–but we hadn’t spoken to each other on those occasions, or even acknowledged each other. I wasn’t even certain that he actually knew what I looked like after my transformation had been completed.

But as much as we disliked each other, I couldn’t see him involved in anything as tawdry as magical slavery. He had no motive–with me out of the way, he was now my original family’s chosen heir, over Lance who was three years his junior. He stood to gain too much to be involved in anything like that.

I explained all of this to Sarah and Helen, and they agreed, Sarah adding, “That token may have had nothing to do with the men who kept Samantha here. After all we found it outside and not anywhere in the building.”

“Is it possible that Samantha was an Omegan?” Helen asked. “She did say she remembered walking on campus when she was nabbed.”

“We’ll check that out,” Sarah assured her. “Damn! I wish we could get more help from the local police.”

“They’re not helping?” I asked.

Sarah shrugged. “Yeah, but not much. It seems as if nobody’s been reported missing–at least no one who might have been turned into our girl, Samantha. And with all of the usual crap around Mardi Gras–robberies, fights, rapes, and general disorderly conduct, they’ve got their hands full as usual. To them this is just another magical case where they get asked to do the grunt work and the Feds like me take all the credit.”

“I’ll bet they’d be more help if they knew there might be a Slaver in their midst,” I said.

“Not really, honey,” Helen chuckled. “If they knew anything about a Slaver being in town, they’d probably all put in for leave and get out of town. Nobody in their right minds wants to face a Slaver.”

Well, I supposed she was right, but what did that say about us?

The FBM agent guarding Samantha’s room told me not to go in: he would fetch Oliver, who wanted a chance to talk to me first. That seemed ominous, and the concerned look on Oliver’s face when he came out didn’t help much.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

Oliver guided me over to a quiet corner and warned, “Cassie, some of Samantha’s Slaver commands are starting to surface.”

“Slaver commands?”

“You know the basic different between a Whisperer and a Slaver?” he began. When I nodded, he continued, “It’s possible for a Slaver to plant dozens of post-contact commands in a victim. That is, when the victim is confronted with a given situation, or a pre-determined amount of time has gone by, the commands will kick in. In Samantha’s case those commands are probably highly sexual–even deviant–in nature to please a client.”

Shit. This didn’t sound good at all. “So... what’s happening to her–and can you stop it?”

“I don’t think so,” he said carefully. “It appears she was closer to being delivered to a client than we realized. She’s completely female now, so her new owner probably expected to take receipt of her by now. A mood of helplessness is setting in. That’s a common Slaver trick–that is if anything a Slaver does could be called common. It’s designed to make her feel isolated and vulnerable. That way, even though she remembers being male, she’ll be susceptible to her master’s commands as soon as she’s delivered to him.”

I could see where that was going. The same thing had been tried on me to make me vulnerable to a future as a teen whore. Fortunately a Slaver hadn’t been around, and I had been able to overcome the Whispering techniques with help from AJ and Helen. I shuddered at the thought of waking up changed and isolated in my own body, so bereft of hope that I would do anything I was told to do out of fear of what might happen if I did not.

That gave me a thought. While Oliver had the experience of a skilled analyst in such cases, he had never exactly been in Samantha’s situation. I had–or at least I had been in a similar situation.

“What if I talked to her–told her about what was done to me?” I ventured. “Maybe once she sees I overcame my commands, she might muster the strength to resist a little longer.”

Oliver didn’t have to think about it long. Looking back, he may even have been hoping I’d bring it up. “Yes, it might help. If you told her about your own experiences, you might be able to override the feelings of isolation. But that’s not going to be easy for you to talk about, is it?”

He knew the answer to that, and his question obviously had a second meaning. He was also saying that he realized it would not be easy for me to talk to Brett about my transformation. Was he suggesting that talking to Samantha about it might be a good warm-up for talking with Brett? I supposed he might be right.

“No, it won’t be easy,” I admitted, “but it might be the only chance we have to break the programming.”

“I agree,” he said, motioning toward Samantha’s door.

“Tell me though,” I asked before going in, “is there anything else we can do to keep her from following the Slaver’s will?”

“Maybe,” he allowed. “There’s another technique we could try, but it would be limited in its effect. But let’s try this first. If nothing else, we’ll be able to tell how deeply embedded the programming is.”

So I entered Samantha’s room alone. It would just be us girls–or rather, just us girls who used to be guys. “Hi,” I started out.

She smiled. Nothing seemed unnatural yet. “Hi. You’re... Cassie, right?”

“That’s right.”

She was reclining on the couch, as if she had just awakened from a little nap. As she sat up part way, I began to see subtle signs of what Oliver had been talking about. She was dressed in a light blue sweat suit, but she was doing her best to look coquettish. Her feet were bare and unconsciously in line with her legs, so that her tiny toes posed gracefully. The top of her sweat suit was partially unzipped, and since she wore no bra, the swell of her young breasts was evident. Her hair was no longer in pigtails: it was brushed out instead and draped seductively over her shoulder in a brown wave. In short, she was unconsciously looking like a sweet little tart ripe for the taking. Given how nervous she had been the previous evening, this had to be the work of the Slaver.

I sat down in the chair next to her. “How are you feeling?”

“Okay,” she sighed. Even her voice was sort of sex kitten. The Slaver had really done a number on her. I don’t think she even realized what she was becoming. “But I’m sort of bored...” What it would take to bring her out of her boredom would have seemed obvious to anyone who had ever possessed a penis. The tone of her voice had become downright seductive.

“Samantha,” I began, “I know how you feel.”

She gave a little girl pout. Again, I don’t think she even realized what she was doing. “How could you know how I feel?” she asked petulantly.

“I know you feel alone,” I ventured.

A confused look crossed her face. “Alone?”

The girlish seduction was gone, replaced by uncertainty. I appeared to have struck a nerve. “Yes,” I barged on. “I felt the same way when it happened to me.”

“When what happened?” Things weren’t going the way she expected. I could see I had her interest. More importantly, her programming was giving way to natural curiosity. After all, I wasn’t her new master, there to train her in sexual techniques. I had suddenly become a curiosity.

“When I was changed into a girl.”

“You... you were a man?”

“Oh yes,” I confirmed. “Would you like to hear about it?”

She didn’t say anything, but her pretty head slowly nodded.

I didn’t tell her everything. I left out the names, since my previous identity was supposed to be kept secret–it was part of the legal settlement with my old family. But I did tell her all about my feelings of alienation and disorientation, and how I had nearly fallen into the neat little trap set for me and become the young whore my tormentors had wanted me to be.

I also didn’t bother to tell her that I had been worked on by Whisperers rather than a Slaver. If I had, she would have argued that I had an easier time of overcoming my programming–and she would have been right. It was more important that she believes she could fight off the Slaver’s commands. It would be difficult for her, I knew, but not impossible–not unless the Slaver had been extremely thorough. I doubted if he had been, though. He could never have anticipated what had happened to his victim. By now he would have expected her to be under the power of her master and never being encouraged to overcome the Slaver commands.

By the time I had finished my story, Samantha had regained a more demure pose. Her body language had become less alluring. She still carried herself like a young teenaged girl, but the tart in her had retreated.

It wouldn’t last, though. I knew that. I had to find something to keep her mind off her boredom, or her sexual urges might rise again. So I spent the next hour or so just teaching her things she’d have to know as a young woman–things that Helen had been teaching me over the past year. I was actually surprised to see how much I had learned and was able to teach. Neither of us were bored, as Samantha was an adept pupil.

I was showing her how to re-braid her hair when Oliver came in. I could tell from his expression that he was well pleased with the progress I had made. He gave me a knowing look, as if to make me realize that telling someone about my transformation wasn’t all that hard after all. However, to me, there was a big difference between telling a fellow victim like Samantha and telling my boyfriend. Samantha was a kindred spirit. Brett was... well, Brett.

“I explained the situation to Ms. Carmichael,” Oliver told me. I knew what he meant by the “situation.” He was referring to the suppressed Slaver commands. It meant he had cooked up something with Sarah to keep Samantha’s thoughts away from sex.

“She’s sending Helen over with a car,” he went on. “She thinks since Samantha feels she might have been kidnapped from a college campus, it would be a good idea to drive her over to the area campuses to see if anything looks familiar.”

Now I knew what he meant by “another technique.” That seemed like a long shot to me. It confirmed my suspicion that Oliver and Sarah were just coming up with something to keep Samantha’s mind occupied. Frankly, given her suppressed sexual nature, I was more afraid she’d see some big hunk on one of the campuses and get all hot and bothered. Still, there might be some merit to the suggestion. Oliver had already pointed out that memories of her past life might dull the commands of the Slaver. Anything was worth a shot at this point. I nodded and turned to Samantha. “Maybe you’d better change before we go.”

She motioned to herself. “This is all I have.”

I was afraid she’d look too sexy in the little blue sweat suit. All she had to do was pull the zipper down a little further and she’d be exposing her breasts to every guy on campus. “I’ll scare something up,” I told her.

I managed to scrounge up a med school sweatshirt and some loose-fitting jeans, as well as a pair of sneakers. She was so small, I had actually had to get the shoes from the children’s ward. Once I had her dressed, though, she looked like a typical average young teen and not quite as sexy as before. Even the baggy clothes couldn’t hide all of her attributes though. The Slaver had made her into a prime cut of sexy teenybopper, but the baggy clothes would have to do.

Helen showed up with the car just as I managed to style Samantha’s makeup and hair to make her look more like obvious jail bait. With her hair back in braids and a minimum of makeup, she could have passed for thirteen–a well developed thirteen, but thirteen nonetheless. With any luck at all, any guy who spotted her would think she was just a young kid and not do anything to get her motor running.

“Good job,” Helen complimented me in a whispered tone. “She looks like she’s about twelve.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. That was even better than thirteen. Now I just hoped we didn’t run into any horny twelve-year-old boys.

I volunteered to drive, and regretted it almost immediately. A few months earlier, I had gotten myself a little Mazda Miata. I liked Brett’s Z so much that I had decided to get a little convertible of my own. Brett laughingly called it a “girly car” since it was so small, but I liked it fine, since I could maneuver through places like the French Quarter, where the streets were a little narrow at times. Unfortunately it had been a long time since I had driven anything the size of the FBM’s oversized Ford sedans. I felt as if I were driving a semi.

But there was a method to my madness. Rather than waste time, I planned to head straight for the Tulane campus. That was where the Omega House was. The Omega coin the authorities had found had me shaken badly. If the Omegans were involved in Samantha’s transformation, my brother could be in danger. Just because there was no love lost between Paul and me, I didn’t want to see him hurt, if for my natural mother’s sake if nothing else. My transformation had been a serious blow to her, and if anything like that happened to Paul, it might kill her. If a Slaver was somehow associated with some of the Omegans, Paul could get hurt–or worse.

I know it was something of a leap of logic, but I had already convinced myself that one or more of the Omegans were involved. There was no other reasonable explanation for the gold coin being so near the site of Samantha’s captivity. And Samantha’s insistence that she had been abducted near a campus just added credence to my theory.

We drove slowly around the campus. There wasn’t much traffic since it was a Saturday, so I was able to crawl along. We did get a few strange looks from the few students we saw. The car had official plates on it, and yet neither Samantha or I sitting in the front seat appeared to be out of our teens. If they noticed Helen and Oliver in the back seat and missed the plates, they would probably assume that my father and his young-looking wife were taking their daughter (me) and a friend out to teach them to drive.

None of us spoke as we drove, and Samantha gazed out the window, as if trying to remember something.

“Anything look familiar?” I asked her after we had driven around for several minutes.

“No... yes... I don’t know!” she sighed in exasperation. “It looks... sort of familiar, but not quite–like something I remember out of a dream.”

“Take your time,” Oliver urged. “We just need to be patient.”

And finally our patience paid off.

“Wait! There!” she pointed excitedly.

I braked at once, stopping just beyond a six story brick building with which I had become very familiar over the past year. It was Weinmann Hall–the Law School. “You went to school there? You were a law student?” I prompted.

She shook her head. “No. At least I don’t think I was. I think... I think I was coming back from the library when they...” Her voice cracked and I thought for a moment she was going to burst into girlish tears. To her credit, she held them back.

“Where’s the library?” Oliver asked.

I pointed in that direction, then back behind me. “That means she was heading in that direction.” I was now pointing up Freret Street as it approached Napoleon. It was an old neighborhood, where small businesses shared a tree-lined street with old rambling houses. It wasn’t exactly as cool as the Garden District further down, but it had an ambiance of its own.

And nestled on a large lot just a few steps from Freret Street was the Omega House.

I pulled a u-turn and headed in that direction. “Where are you going?” Helen called out.

“I’m playing a hunch,” I told her.

The Omega House was a reminder of days gone by in New Orleans. While many of the old sprawling brick homes of the district had signs of wear and tear, the Omega House looked like the prospective home of an Antebellum cotton merchant or banker. The mortar was clean and white, the flower beds neatly kept, and the lawn manicured to perfection. A cobblestone drive curved beyond the iron entrance gate, ending at a columned front entrance. Obviously the Omegans were doing very well, thank you very much.

Of course if my brother was a typical example of the Omegans (and I believed he was), the dining club’s members were among the oldest and wealthiest families in the state. In fact it was said that no man ever offered membership in the exclusive organization had ever declined the offer. I was pretty sure the club was extremely well endowed. The alumni probably had a combined wealth of a medium-sized country.

I supposed if I had done my undergraduate work at Tulane instead of being packed off to Harvard, I too, would have been offered a membership in the Omega House. In fact, I would have probably been offered the membership instead of my brother, since rumor had it that only the eldest son attending Tulane was ever given the offer of membership. That would have really pissed Paul off, since he was convinced that when I was his brother, I got all the breaks anyway.

“Anything look familiar?” Oliver prompted from the back seat as we sat in the idling car just across the street from the Omega House.

“Yeah, it does,” Samantha said slowly, causing my stomach to churn. If she had said no, I would have almost breathed a sigh of relief, knowing that my brother was probably not involved. What if all the guards had been Omegans? That would mean–what–three or four members of a club that composed probably no more than two hundred members in the New Orleans area, including alums. I once again forced myself to realize the coin the authorities had found didn’t mean any of the Omegans were involved at all.

“But no one from Tulane is missing,” Helen reminded us.

“Shall we go in and let Samantha look around?” Oliver suggested. “That could trigger additional memories.”

“No,” I cautioned. “That wouldn’t be a good idea.”

“Why not?” he asked.

This was going to be difficult to explain tactfully, I realized. But I had to try. I turned around to face him. “I don’t think we’d be welcome in there.”

Maybe it was my tone of voice, but suddenly his look of puzzlement became one of understanding. “Oh, it’s that sort of club.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “It’s not officially a campus organization, so the rules get stretched a little bit. I’d be willing to bet there’s nothing in their records that excludes non-whites from being members, but my guess is the only African-Americans that ever go in there are the hired help–waiters, cooks, cleaners...”

Oliver nodded. “I get the idea. I’ve seen it all my life. It seems some of the rich white folks like the idea of us black folks serving their meals and such, but they don’t want us as houseguests. I think it gives them a feel of the past when their ancestors were served by the house slaves.”

I said nothing, but I realized shamefully that he had just described my original family. In fact, my real father had even disapproved of my friendship with Helen, and she had been one of his best agents. I had grown up in such an atmosphere, although I liked to think I had been considerably less prejudiced than many of my peers and their families. It was a good thing too, considering the color of the skin I would be wearing for the rest of my life.

“Not all rich white people are that way,” Samantha broke in indignantly. “I...”

Her voice trailed off, and Oliver leaned forward, looking her in the eye. “Go on, Samantha. What do you know about rich white people?”

“I... I don’t know,” she replied, confused. “I had a thought there for just a moment. I think it was a memory.”

“Were you rich?” I prompted.

“I... I’m not sure. I think I might have been, though. I seem to remember sitting at a dinner table.” She frowned at Oliver. “It’s as if I can remember sitting down to dinner with a lot of people in a nice dining room. Most of the people are white, but some of the people are African-American...” She shuddered. “It’s gone. It was just there for a moment. Doctor, does this mean my memory is coming back?”

I could see from his expression that he didn’t want to disappoint Samantha, but as I would have expected, he slowly answered, “Not really, Samantha. Sometimes familiar places or situations can overcome a Slaver’s memory wipe–especially since the Slaver was careful to leave you some memories–the memories associated with once being male. Also, strong emotions can sometimes trigger a past memory. In your case my comment regarding white people’s–some white people’s–foibles regarding racial equality may have caused you to remember something in you upbringing. It’s likely you were taught from an early age that racial inequality is wrong. Perhaps your parents even had friends from other racial backgrounds.”

“So my parents were rich, white and liberal,” Samantha surmised.

“Well, in Louisiana that should narrow it down quite a bit,” Helen wisecracked.

“I wasn’t prejudiced,” I pointed out to my sister.

“No honey, you weren’t,” she agreed. “But how often did folks like us ever dine in your home?”

She had me there. Okay, I had never considered myself to be racially prejudiced when I was white, but I knew my parents would have had a fit if I had brought any of my non-white friends into the house–especially for dinner. And I never crossed them on that point, either. “Is there any way we can use that profile?” I asked.

“Well,” Helen sighed, “I don’t think there’s any database for correlating racially tolerant people with folks who walk around the Tulane campus but probably aren’t students.”

Still it made me feel closer to Samantha. In her previous life she was probably much like I had been–male, rich, white, and a little on the liberal side (although we would have probably not been seen as liberals in the North). I was even more determined than ever to see this case through and get Samantha’s life back together.

We got Samantha back to her room and let Helen take the car back to the FBM. Then Oliver and I headed out to join Brett and his mother for dinner. Brett had actually fixed dinner at my place, with some help from his mother. New Orleans seemed to have grown on him, and like many men in the city, he had found a new hobby in cooking. New Orleans had a well-deserved reputation of being one of the finest food cities in the country, and maybe even in the world. French style and Cajun spicing made local food a form of entertainment, and Brett enjoyed learning to cook it.

Fortunately, since he was a medical student, he managed to cook a bit healthier than most of our local chefs, going easy on the butter and cream sauces and opting for more olive oil and spiced broths. It was a good thing too, or I’d lose the girlish figure I had been given with my transformation and start looking more like the big mamas who waddled down on the lower end of Magazine.

When his parents had left for the evening to go back to their hotel, I updated Brett on the case. And no, I didn’t tell him about my own transformation, nor could I likewise tell him about my former brother and my concerns for him. I knew Oliver was right, and that I needed to tell Brett, but it just didn’t seem like the right time.

“I don’t get it,” he said when I had finished. “If these Omega guys are all as wealthy as you say, why is one of them risking everything by helping a Slaver make new slaves?”

“It’s a good question,” I admitted. I had been wondering about exactly that. Maybe the coin was just outside the warehouse by chance. Or maybe one of the wealthy Omega alums had visited the warehouse to pick up a new play toy. Wealthy men were the obvious patrons of the Slavers, since they could afford to buy a private slave girl and hide her away from view. I could certainly visualize the Omegans being clients of the Slaver rather than henchmen.

“One thing, though,” I pointed out as Brett brought me a snifter filled with a fine brandy. I sipped at it as he sat next to me on the couch and continued. “There seems to be a definite connection with the Omegans. Samantha seemed to remember the Omega House.”

“And some of the buildings on campus,” Brett added. “That doesn’t mean anything. You said nobody was missing from Tulane, so maybe he’s just some poor guy who lived nearby and walked around campus for exercise. It doesn’t sound to me as if the FBM has anything to go on.”

“They don’t,” I agreed, leaning up against him. He felt good. “That’s the problem. Oh, they’ll check on the Omegans, but it won’t get them anywhere. And that’s about the only lead they have since Samantha’s memory of her previous life is gone.”

“Most likely irretrievably gone from what Dad says,” Brett commented. “Let’s just hope he’ll be able to unravel some of the psychological programming so she’ll be able to lead a normal life. Otherwise, it won’t be good for her.”

He was right about that. Normal was good. A year earlier I had been a man forcibly turned into a younger girl of a different race. It had been a horrifying experience, but now it felt so normal, cuddling up against a man, looking forward to the lovemaking we were bound to start just as soon as we finished our drinks. I hoped it would be as good for Samantha someday.

But what about the Slaver’s other victims? Samantha hadn’t been the only victim in that warehouse the night she escaped. How many others had been there? For that matter, how long had the operation been going on? There had to be something I could do–not just to protect my former brother from any potential danger, but also to stop the Slaver before he ruined any more lives.

My thoughts were interrupted by a wandering hand, which slipped up under my rib cage to fondle the bottom of one of my breasts. “You finished with your drink?”

We were both mellow: maybe now was the time to tell him of my own transformation...

No, that could wait. There’d be another time.

I put my hand on his. “All finished.”

But I wasn’t really finished–we were just getting started...

“Samantha, can you hear me?”

I sat completely still on the couch in Samantha’s room as Oliver leaned over the girl, who was staring forward without seeing, her eyes glazed over. I was impressed: with the advent of magic, hypnosis had become passé, but Oliver was obviously well-experienced in its use. In his hands it was probably better than magic.

“Yes...” Samantha’s sweet high voice replied in a dreamy cadence. “I hear you...”

By Sunday afternoon the frustrations with her case continued to build. The FBM had made no progress at all. An interview with Robert Laveau, the Executive Director of the Omega House, had turned up nothing. No members were missing: all within the right age group who could have been changed into Samantha had been located. To make matters worse, there had been an informal party at the Omega House Friday night, and all the present members had been in attendance. The Omega House looked like nothing more than another dead end. If the coin was a clue, it was probably an Omega alumnus buying a new slave from the Slaver. As for the local police, they were no help at all, pleading too heavy a caseload to work on a missing person case when nobody seemed to be missing (or at least nobody of any importance).

When Oliver and I had arrived at the hospital right after brunch, we found that Samantha had taken another turn for the worse again. Although she still retained memories of being male, she was acting more and more like a teeny-bopper trollop. While her actions on Saturday had been sexually charged, they had been somewhat subtle. On Sunday though, she was absolutely blatant. To make matters worse, there was the smell of sex in her room, indicating she had been stimulating herself quite a bit. Oliver had put her into a hypnotic trance almost immediately in an attempt to find some way of blunting what appeared to be strong Slaver commands to be a little tease.

“Samantha,” Oliver commanded, “you will hear nothing more that anyone says until I say the word ‘artichoke,’ do you understand?”

“Yes...”

He turned to me. “She responded to you yesterday when you told her your story. I need for you to tell her to ignore the Slaver commands.”

“Me? I don’t know anything about hypnosis.”

“No, but she listens to you. You’ve established something of a link with her. All you have to do is tell her she can ignore the commands to be a sexy little slut. Can you do that?”

I nodded and leaned forward as Oliver gave the key word. “Can you hear me, Samantha?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“It’s me, Cassie,” I said. “I want you to do something for me.”

“Cassie?”

“Yes. Can you do something for me, Samantha?”

“Yes.”

I sighed. I only hoped this worked. “I want you to forget about acting sexy. I want you to act like a more mature person. Can you do that?”

“I... I don’t know... It feels so good...”

Oliver broke in, “Samantha, what were you commanded to do by the Slaver?”

Her budding resistance died back down. “I was supposed to act... all girly.” She giggled at that. “You know... real girly.”

“But you were still supposed to remember being male,” he countered. “Why weren’t you told to act male?”

“I... I’m not male, silly.” She giggled again.

“No, you’re not,” he agreed. “But you used to be male, weren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“And you know Cassie used to be male too, don’t you?”

“Yes...”

“Then why don’t you act like Cassie does?”

“I... I... he doesn’t want me to,” she stammered, as if she was fighting to say something she wasn’t supposed to say.

“Who is ‘he’ Samantha?”

She was silent. We weren’t going to learn anything from her that way. Well, it had been worth a try.

Oliver returned to the original subject. “There’s really no reason why you can’t act like Cassie, is there Samantha?”

“I... No... I guess not.”

I sighed in relief. The conflict in her seemed to have abated–at least for the moment. There was no telling how long it would last, but she seemed more calm and collected.

“Then you’ll try to act like Cassie?” Oliver pressed.

“All... all right.”

Then a thought struck me. “Do you think she might remember anything else about her previous life while she’s in a trance?” I whispered to Oliver.

“I should have thought of that,” he replied in a whisper of his own. “I was so anxious to get her stabilized though. The staff here said she was starting to come on to the orderlies overnight. You seem to have something in mind. Go ahead and ask, but try not to ask anything too directly. She’s resistant to the direct approach, as you saw when I asked about the Slaver.”

Okay, so that meant asking her directly who she had been or who had done this to her was probably out. There was one thing I had been wondering though, that had nothing directly to do with her kidnapping and transformation. It might provide a clue if we used it right.

“Samantha,” I began, “why did you choose that particular name?”

“My sister...” she replied in the hypnotically-induced monotone.

“It’s your sister’s name?”

“It was,” she corrected. “She’s dead now...”

My heart leapt. It wasn’t much of a lead, but it was the first break we had been given to re-establish her true identity. “What was her whole name?” I prompted.

“Samantha Jean...”

I could see her struggling to come up with a last name, but obviously that was part of something that had been blocked in her mind. I quickly asked another question to stop the turmoil the previous one was causing. “What does... what did she look like?”

“Like me...” she replied.

I looked at Oliver, who seemed about as puzzled by that answer as I had been.

After that we let Samantha rest for a while, meeting up with Helen and Sarah in the conference room.

“Maybe we were wrong,” Helen ventured after we had debriefed them. “Maybe she was female all along and just made to think she used to be male. Maybe that’s what she meant when she said Samantha looked like her.”

“It’s a thought,” Sarah said.

But I didn’t think so. “Why would you think that?” I asked.

“Well,” Helen explained, “we’ve been looking for a missing man, young enough to be turned into a girl of thirteen or fourteen. What if she was a girl all along, and just given the false memory of being male? Then the Slaver could peddle her to some pervert who was into young girls who used to be boys, and we’d be looking for a young man instead of a young woman.”

“But we wouldn’t be looking for anyone at all,” I pointed out. “Whoever did this to her didn’t expect her to get loose. Besides, I can tell. I see her going through the same adjustment problems I went through. She used to be a man: I can feel it.”

“I agree,” Oliver backed me up. “Samantha used to be male. There are telltale gestures and phrases she uses which tend to be more male than female. I’ve seen a number of cases very similar to hers.” Fortunately he didn’t mention that he had detected just such gestures in me.

“So who was she?” Sarah asked in exasperation. “If we knew who she was, we might be able to trace her male identity back to the Slaver. Without that, though, all we’ve got is a ward of the state and a bunch of dead ends. We need to find that Slaver, or he’ll just start this all over again.”

“I still think it may have something to do with somebody at the Omega House,” I said. “We have that coin, and Samantha remembers the place.”

“We’ve already checked the Omega House,” Helen reminded me. “No one is missing, all the members were accounted for Friday night when Samantha was still in captivity, and there’s no reason anybody with as much money as the average member of that club has that they would be involved with a Slaver.”

“Besides, Robert Laveau is a powerful man in this state,” Sarah cautioned. “He’s well connected throughout the business community and up in Baton Rouge. He even knows the governor–plays golf with him from what I’ve heard. Unless we had substantial proof, rather than just a hunch and a gold coin, we’d have every official in the state and half the ones in Washington down on us before we could even say Slaver.”

I was just thankful Sarah hadn’t called the governor my father. I had no use for my father, and if Robert Laveau was his friend, well... Now that she mentioned it though, I could remember the man vaguely. He was tall, with dark hair and beard and a Mediterranean complexion–denoting a Moorish ancestor or two I imagined. Like many of us (or in my case, formerly “us”), he boasted of French ancestry which had settled in the area a good century before the coming of the Americans. Yes, I remembered him, but of course, he wouldn’t remember me–or at least not the current “me.”

And that gave me a thought.

“I think I know a way to learn more about the Omegans without ruffling Mr. Laveau’s feathers,” I began.

All eyes were on me. Then Helen got one of those protective looks on her face. “Oh no, Cassie. I know what you’re thinking...”

Unfortunately my adopted sister really did know me too well. “I can take care of myself,” I promised her. “There’s no danger, really. I’d just be another one of their staff.”

“Staff?” Oliver repeated.

“I see where she’s going with this,” Sarah sighed. “You want to get hired on at the Omega House.”

“I’d just be part of the cleaning crew,” I explained. “I’m sure they’re always hiring: there’s a lot of turnover in menial jobs like that. Usually it’s college students like me who fill them, just to make a little extra money for school. And even if I didn’t get hired, I’d get a chance to look around.”

“But if someone in the Omega House is working with the Slaver and knows your connection with us, you could be in danger,” Helen pointed out.

“Who would know?” I shot back. “There’s only one person in the group who might know me, and last time he saw me, he didn’t even recognize me.”

“You’re referring to Paul. Maybe he recognized you and thought it best to ignore you,” Helen argued.

“Wait a minute!”

We all quieted down at Oliver’s command. We did it so quickly, I wondered for a minute if he was actually a Whisperer. He looked at me. “Cassie, who is this person who might recognize you?”

“Oh,” I said with a start. “I guess I didn’t tell you everything about my old family. One of the members is–was–my brother before I changed.”

In spite of the fact that I had told Oliver everything about my former life, I don’t think he really realized until that moment just how wealthy my old family had been. But we had all told him the Omega House was made up of representatives of the wealthiest families in the region. Now he knew I had been a part of one of them.

“Cassie’s right,” he confirmed without commenting on my revelation. “People tend to overlook menial help, like cleaning crews and wait staffs.”

“Not someone as cute as Cassie,” Helen countered.

I blushed.

“But at least it won’t be her face they’re looking at,” Sarah grinned, nodding toward my breasts.

I blushed again.

Oliver tapped his fingers together in thought. At last he said, “It’s not a bad idea–assuming she can be protected in case something goes wrong. After all, we really don’t know if any of these Omegans have anything to do with Samantha’s transformation. In fact, I rather doubt that they do.”

That surprised me. “Why is that?”

“Well,” he explained, “if what you tell me is true about these people, they’re the cream of New Orleans society. They’re wealthy–or at least in line to inherit significant wealth–and they would seem to have the world on a string. Why would any of them be involved with a Slaver?”

“Maybe it’s an alumnus who’s fallen on hard times,” Helen suggested.

“Or maybe the coin that was found outside the warehouse has nothing to do with this case,” Oliver countered. “If Cassie can get in there and eliminate any of these Omegans as suspects, we can move on to other leads.”

“That’s the problem, Doctor,” Sarah informed him. “There are no other leads. This whole case is a dead end. Slavers can usually cover their tracks pretty well. So all we’ve got is a victim who doesn’t know who she was and no missing person to help us find the right identity for her.”

“And that is a big problem,” Oliver concluded. “Unless we find something for Samantha to anchor herself onto from her former identity, she’ll slip further and further into her programmed identity. We can only stave that off for a short time. Eventually her programming will win out. In a few days she’ll remember being male once, but she’ll be reduced to acting the part she was given–that of a young teen girl with a very large sexual appetite. Unless that appetite is satisfied, she’ll be mentally unstable within a few days.”

“Mentally unstable?” Sarah asked.

Oliver nodded. “That’s right. She’ll literally go insane from the inability to execute her program.”

“Doctor,” Sarah asked warily, “you aren’t suggesting we allow a–what–fourteen year old girl to have sex, are you?”

Oliver looked a little uncomfortable. “I’d certainly rather entertain other options first.”

No one else said anything for a moment, but I’m pretty sure what we were all thinking. Oliver hadn’t exactly said that letting Samantha have sex–maybe even pretty kinky sex if the Slaver’s programming demanded it–was out of the question.

I’m the one who finally broke the silence. “Well, it looks like I’ve got a job to apply for tomorrow...”

I worked up a quick resume on the computer while Brett whipped up a light dinner. It was a simple dinner–some raw oysters, crackers, and a bottle of wine, but since Brett insisted on shelling his own oysters, it was a chore.

“Want a glass of wine before dinner?” he called out.

“Sure!” I continued typing.

“Uh... you’ll have to come get it. I’ve got gunk from the oyster shells all over my hands.”

“No I don’t,” I said with a grin. I turned around facing the kitchen concentrated on the filled wine glass on the kitchen island and watched with satisfaction as it floated across the room to me. It was a little bit chancy, since it required very fine control of my Pusher power, but I managed. Fortunately the wine was a white. I wouldn’t have dared try it with a red wine. If I had lost control, I would have had serious wine stains all over my rug.

“You’ve been practicing,” he noted with admiration. “You didn’t spill a drop.”

“Yeah,” I agreed, sipping the wine. It was Conundrum–one of my favorites. It was just what I needed to relax me after spending over an hour whipping up a phony resume. “I’ve fine-tuned my control.”

“So how heavy an object can you pick up now?”

“Pick up or just move? I can move about a hundred pounds–maybe more if I really tried–but I can levitate only about thirty or so.” Actually, I could probably move several hundred pounds, but that would only be a couple of feet and with no control whatsoever.

“That’s still pretty good,” he said.

I flushed with pride. My Pusher powers had grown steadily since my sex change, as could be expected since women usually had more magical ability than men. Of course Brett was impressed, since he had no magical power. Or maybe he did. He was a Detector–someone capable of Detecting magic spells. There was significant debate among magical scientists as to whether Detecting was the result of magical ability or the total lack of magical ability. Either way, it was impressive to me.

“Wait until later,” I promised seductively. “I’ll show you what else I can levitate.”

He grinned in anticipation. “Then I’d better eat lots of oysters.”

“Can you come in and read my resume?” I asked, changing the subject before we both decided to forgo dinner entirely. But I loved fresh raw oysters almost as much as I enjoyed sex, and I knew I had both to look forward to that evening.

“Sure. Just a minute.”

I could hear the water running as he cleaned his hands. Then he looked over my shoulder and read what was on the screen.

Most of it was the truth, insofar as my life as Cassie went–Harvard undergrad, Tulane law student, as well as personal information on my new family. The work history though, was completely fabricated. I was sorry to say that except for playing gopher when my father headed up the local FBM office, I had never really worked a day in my life. Even if I had gotten a job in my former life, it wouldn’t have been janitorial. Sarah had given me a couple of names to use as former employers. They’d vouch for me if references were checked, but in truth, they were FBM employees.

I was fortunate that the Omega House hired its own cleaning crew instead of using an outside service. If an outside service came into play, more people would have to be in the loop on this. The fewer people who knew about who I really was, the better. If any members of the Omega House were involved in a Slaver operation, the stakes would be high, and while I had already had my sex changed, that didn’t mean I had nothing to fear from these people. Odds were good they’d kill me in a heartbeat if they thought I was threatening their operation.

“Sounds good,” Brett said after he perused the resume. “Cassie, are you sure you don’t want me to apply, too? You could get in serious trouble if one of the Omegans really is involved in all of this and figures out you’re doing this for the FBM.”

“Who’s going to find out?” I asked as lightly as I could. “The only person who could blow the whistle on me...” I stopped. I had almost told him about my former brother. Damn! I was going to have to tell Brett about my former life soon. It was getting too dicey to try to hide it much longer, especially now that his father knew.

“Who could blow the whistle?” Brett prompted.

“Oh, just an Omega in my law school classes,” I lied. “But don’t worry. Even if he recognizes me, it wouldn’t be out of character for me to be working there. Lots of students work part time. And I’m not going to put myself at any great risk,” I assured him. “I’m just going to be a fly on the wall and listen. I won’t put myself in any danger.” I hoped I wasn’t lying about that, too.

“Okay,” he said reluctantly. “But I worry about you, Cassie.”

“Oh, that’s so sweet.”

He smiled, then headed back to the kitchen. In a few moments he had put out two plates of oysters on the half shell and some of his special sauce on the side. He was sweet. And I could hardly wait to get dinner over with and prove to him just how much I appreciated it.

I’ve heard that all that stuff about oysters being good for sex is hogwash, but Brett must have believed it, because he was really at the top of his game when he playfully dragged me off to bed. I lost track of how many times I came, but I think it was three–no four.

Brett was a sensitive lover, too. As a man I had never really had an appreciation for why women liked to be cuddled after sex. Now of course I knew. Physical contact after sex prolonged the female orgasm, allowing women to bask in a warm glow. That’s what Brett did for me.

As I drifted off in his embrace, I thought about how fortunate I had been. Although I had been made into a woman against my will, I had managed to find a sensitive, accomplished lover, who had made me appreciate my new sex in ways I would never have imagined a year earlier.

Then I thought about Samantha and her fellow victims, and what a different experience a sex change had been for them. Maybe a few of the Slaver’s victims found gentle, caring owners, but it was probably very few. After all, any man who would stoop so low as to buy a woman to have as a sex toy was hardly the sort of man who would have any concern for a woman’s feelings. And if what was happening to Samantha mentally was any indication–and I was certain it was–of the future the Slaver’s victims could look forward to, the victims would probably have miserable lives.

I felt so helpless observing Samantha’s plight. I guess that’s why I pushed to become a spy at the Omega House. I only hoped my service would pan out. It was something of a long shot, though, and I knew it. I just had to do something to help.

“Mr. Laveau will see you in just a moment,” his secretary told me in her breathy voice as she wiggled back to her desk in her tight skirt and three inch heels. She was quite the beauty, I had to admit, with her long red hair, fair skin and absolutely perfect body. Apparently Mr. Laveau had an appreciation for the finer things in life, and I had the uncharitable suspicion that she did more for him than secretarial duties. Not that I could blame him. If I were still male, I’d be downright envious.

But I wasn’t male, I reminded myself. I had the same equipment she did, and I only hoped I was attractive enough to draw his eye as well–at least enough so that he would hire me. I had been a woman long enough to know that when it came to getting any job–even a janitorial job–being an attractive woman was a definite advantage.

Keeping that in mind, I looked down at myself one more time. I hoped I hadn’t overdressed for the interview. I was wearing a powder blouse and navy blue skirt, with black heels and a matching purse. I wasn’t wearing a jacket, though. I thought it looked dressy without looking too dressy. After all I wasn’t applying for the job of business manager.

The secretary’s phone buzzed softly, and she picked up the receiver. After a moment she said, “Yes, sir. I’ll send her right in.”

When I was ushered into Robert Laveau’s office, I recognized him immediately. Although I had only been introduced to him in passing by my former father, he looked exactly as I remembered him. He was tall, for he stood up when I entered the room, with a dark beard, neatly-trimmed hair, and a bronze complexion, which denoted not only a probable Mediterranean ancestry, but an active outdoor life as well. He didn’t offer to shake hands: for many Southern men shaking hands with a woman was ungentlemanly. Instead, he motioned me to a comfortable chair at a small conference table.

“Ms. Davis, please sit down,” he said, walking over to take a seat at the small table. He had my resume in his hand, but seemed familiar enough with it that he didn’t have to look down at it. “I understand you’re a law student.”

“That’s right. I’m just finishing my first year,” I replied as I sat down and arranged my skirt before crossing my legs. The skirt was maybe just a tad too short for the interview, but its navy blue color seemed right for the conservative Omegans. Besides, it gave me the opportunity to show off those new three-inch black pumps. Oh God, I was becoming such a girl.

The interview was fairly short and concise. Mr. Laveau was a good interviewer. He urged me to do most of the talking, with his open-ended questions, only occasionally commenting just to show that he was listening carefully to what I said. I was able to paint the picture of a competent young woman who was working her way through college. Nothing came out that would have clued Mr. Laveau that I was actually well off and had no real need for a menial job.

But as it turned out, I had done too good a job. As the questions ended, he leaned back and shook his head. “Ms. Davis, I really don’t think a young woman of your abilities would find a job with our cleaning crew particularly rewarding...”

My heart sank. I should have just worn jeans and a sweatshirt to the interview. I had made the mistake of appearing overqualified.

Then, to my relief, he went on, “However, I do have a position I think might be more in keeping with your talents. I need a new hostess.”

“Hostess?”

“Yes, for the dining room. Our hostess seats our members and takes care of their needs.”

“Needs?”

“You know, a clean fork or a fresh napkin, or refreshing their drinks. The work isn’t particularly difficult, but it does take a young woman skilled in gracious social interaction.”

The Omega House actually had a hostess for the dining room? How much did it cost to eat there? This was more elaborate than any of the dining clubs I knew of in any of the Ivy League schools. My club certainly hadn’t had a hostess, anyway.

It wasn’t the job I was looking for, and it would make me too visible. There was a much greater chance that my former brother would recognize me. Still, if I wanted to check out the membership, it was probably a more efficient way to do it than to try to eavesdrop while polishing the silver. After all, I’d get the opportunity to meet and speak with each of the members and try to determine if any of them could be involved with the Slaver.

The job didn’t pay much as it turned out, but that wasn’t important. I wasn’t taking the job for the money. Besides, if everything went all right, I wouldn’t even be there a full week.

“I’d like the job very much, Mr. Laveau,” I said with as sweet a smile as I could muster.

He smiled back. “Excellent. You can start tomorrow at lunch. You did say the schedule wouldn’t interfere with your classes, didn’t you?”

Actually I would have to cut out of a class ten minutes early, but I didn’t expect to be working the job for more than a week, so that didn’t really matter either. “The schedule is fine. What should I wear?”

“Without your coat, what you’re wearing right now would be almost perfect,” he told me. “Although we like for our hostess to wear a white blouse instead of a colored one, and dark skirt and heels.”

“Fine,” I replied, rising. I’d have to buy a couple more white blouses if I kept the job for more than a couple of days. Maybe I could get the FBM to buy them for me?

“Then I look forward to seeing you tomorrow, Ms. Davis,” he said, once more not offering to take my hand but nodding slightly.

“Please call me Cassie,” I offered.

“Fine, Cassie.”

He didn’t ask me to call him Robert, though.

Sarah and Helen were both uncomfortable with my taking the job, much to my surprise.

“But I thought you were both okay with it,” I told them, puzzled.

“A cleaning job, yes,” Helen clarified. “But this is different. Everybody in the Omega House will see you and even talk to you. What if your brother sees you?”

I looked around, suddenly panicked, afraid that Brett had overheard, but he was still in Samantha’s room with his father, well out of hearing range from our gathering point at the end of the hall. The FBM guard outside her room may have heard, but that didn’t matter. Most of Sarah’s agents knew who I had previously been, so no biggie.

“I agree with Helen,” Sarah chimed in. “Paul probably wouldn’t see you or notice you if you were on the cleaning crew. He can’t miss you if you’re the hostess in the dining room. He’ll see you every day. There’s a pretty good chance he’ll recognize you.”

“But he didn’t recognize me at the Lagrange party,” I pointed out.

“Cassie, have you ever thought that maybe he did recognize you, but just didn’t want to admit he knew you?” Helen asked.

“Then this would be the same situation,” I returned. I tried to sound confident, but Helen’s question had shaken me. Actually I hadn’t considered that at all. But I went on, “As far as he will know, I’m just earning some extra money for college. I doubt if he knows how much of an inheritance I was given as part of the settlement, so maybe he’ll just think I need the money.”

“Cassie,” Sarah said softly, motioning for both Helen and me to keep our voices down, “I know you don’t want to consider this, but if someone in the Omega House is working with the Slaver, it could be your brother.”

“Paul?” I laughed. “No way. He may be an asshole, but he wouldn’t have anything to do with a Slaver. Why should he? He’s rich–or he will be. My grandfather’s will provided for my brothers as well as me. And he’s still in line to inherit from my original father as well. Besides, if there’s one thing I’ve learned as a girl, it’s that with the right makeup and hairstyle I can look like a different person. I’ll put my hair up and do the makeup a little different. He’ll never recognize me.”

“I thought you said everybody at that Omega House was rich,” Helen countered. “You know, it’s possible somebody over there isn’t just working for the Slaver. One of them could be the Slaver.”

“I know.” I had considered that. It was a pretty good possibility, actually. “But I know for certain it isn’t Paul. His Webster-Kline scores are pitiful. He has very little magical talent. Look Helen, I’ll be careful. If there’s any chance of something going wrong, I’ll call Sarah, okay?”

The argument had died down by the time Oliver and Brett joined us, and the net of it was that I’d take the job as I had planned, but call Helen immediately after my shift ended every day. Sarah went to check a few things with her agents, so she wasn’t there to see how tired and discouraged Brett and Oliver looked.

In fact Brett looked downright stricken. “What’s wrong?” I asked him.

“She... she propositioned me,” he muttered.

“I wanted Brett to see her,” Oliver explained, “since he’s helped me with some cases back in Nashville. He has a lot of empathy for victims of these sex change spells...”

Was it my imagination, or did he look right at me when he said that?

“...and sometimes he notices things I don’t. Unfortunately, bringing him in this time was probably a mistake. Samantha got quite excited...”

Brett could do that to a girl: I knew that from first-hand experience. Of course I knew that wasn’t natural this time. Samantha’s programming was what was getting her all hot and bothered.

Brett looked at his watch. “I’m afraid I have to go. I have a study session with one of my professors.” He gave me a quick hug and kiss and headed off for his meeting.

By that time, Sarah had rejoined us. “How is Samantha?” she asked.

Oliver shook his head. “I’m having problems keeping the Slaver’s commands at bay. I’ve been able to suppress some of the commands with a couple of potions and an old-fashioned non-magical compound called Valium. But I can’t keep her medicated forever.

“If we could learn something of her previous life, I might be able to anchor her to a lost memory. That’s still our only good solution. Then, with therapy and some milder magical medications, I can wean her away from the Slaver commands. It will take time even at that. But without anything on her identity...” He shrugged helplessly, adding, “Have you had any luck tracking down this dead sister?”

“None,” Sarah sighed. “We’ve gone back thirty years looking for a dead girl named Samantha Jean who had a living brother who is missing.”

“And you’ve found nothing?” I asked, incredulous.

“Oh we’ve found plenty,” Sarah explained. “Or at least we’ve found a number of Samantha Jeans who died as infants or toddlers. Some of them have living brothers–or at least did at the time. The problem is that all of those brothers so far have been accounted for. Of course we concentrated on the ones from Louisiana and surrounding states. A national search will take a bit longer.”

“Can I see her?” I asked Oliver. When he nodded, I hurried to her room, tapping lightly on the door.

“Come in.”

“How are you doing?” I asked her when I entered.

She looked up from the magazine she had been reading. I was surprised to see it was a woman’s magazine. I had the same issue at home, but I had been female for a year now. She flushed when she saw that I recognized the magazine, although it wasn’t as if she had been caught reading a Playgirl. Stretched out on the couch in a pink t-shirt and jeans that molded tightly to her body, there was nothing incongruent about her choice of reading material.

In spite of that, she felt obligated to explain, “I figured as long as I was going to be stuck like this, I’d better figure out what to do with... you know... my hair and stuff.”

I nodded, but didn’t comment on the fact that I could see the page she was reading, and it had nothing to do with hairstyles. Instead, it was an article on how to be sexier for your boyfriend. I had gotten a couple of good tips from the article myself.

“Sure,” I said, sitting down in a chair near the couch. “So how are you doing?”

“Okay... I guess.” The way she said it–like a bored little teenybopper–emphasized Oliver’s concern. There was nothing apparently left of the young man she had once been. If it wasn’t for the extreme sexual urges Oliver anticipated with her programming, it might have been just as well. She wouldn’t have nearly the trouble I had had fitting into her new sex. Or at least not at first. I had a hunch the Slaver hadn’t given her this mindset to make the transition easier for her. God only knew what he had programmed into her over the long run. Whatever it was, I was sure it wasn’t going to be in Samantha’s best interests.

“Dr. Carson says you’re taking a job at the Omega House,” she began. When I confirmed that, she said softly, “You should be very careful, Cassie.”

“I will be,” I replied glibly, but there was something in her warning that gave me pause. It was as if she was speaking from personal experience rather than expressing a general admonition. “Do you... remember something–something about the Omega House?”

“Not exactly,” she said. “It’s just... call it a feeling.”

I waited for her to elaborate. It didn’t take long. “Cassie, I think there’s somebody bad at that house.”

“Do you know who?” I prompted.

I could almost see her straining to remember. But whoever she was referring to had done too good a job on her. No name was forthcoming. “I... just please promise me you’ll be careful?”

“I will,” I promised her.

I shuddered, remembering her words the next day as I reported to the Omega House for the midday shift. The stately house reeked of money and power, and it was going to be just little old me going up against it.

“Are you sure you want to go through with this, Cassie?” Brett had asked me as he dropped me off.

This wasn’t the time for an honest answer. In fact I didn’t want to go through with it at all. Sure, it had sounded like a good idea earlier. After all I had gone undercover at the Lagrange party and that had gone fine. But this was different. I wasn’t dealing with a single individual who had transformed a deserving asshole into a girl. Instead, I was dealing with a vicious Slaver and his minions who had transformed an innocent and unwilling victim into a sexual play toy, undoubtedly to sell her to a perverted client who would use her thoughtlessly until she was of no further value to him. The stakes were much, much bigger this time, and the penalty for failure was unimaginable.

Then there was my former brother. Sure, he hadn’t recognized me at the Lagrange party, but there had been lots of servants and even more guests there. Helen and Sarah had been right about that. Would he still not realize who I really was? Of course he had never seen me again after my transformation was complete, except at the Lagrange party, and I had learned how to dress like a girl and apply makeup since the time he had seen me when my transformation was still in progress. And he didn’t know my new name–or at least I was pretty sure he didn’t...

“Cassie?” Brett prompted.

“Yeah, Brett, I’m sure,” I replied as confidently as I could. Then I kissed him before he could say anything else and popped out of the car.

Mr. Laveau met me at the entrance to the dining room. “Five minutes early,” he commented with a small smile. “I like that. Now let’s get you ready for lunch.”

He gave me a quick once-over, approving of my black skirt and white blouse. “I’m glad you decided to wear your hair up,” he commented. “It’s more appropriate if you have to visit the kitchen.”

I nodded. Of course I had really worn it that way to be less recognizable to my former brother, since I normally wore it down about my shoulders. It had made my face look leaner–something I had emphasized with my makeup. I didn’t think Paul would be able to recognize me.

He introduced me to the rest of the food service staff. Like me, all of the kitchen staff were Afro-American. They were all friendly and welcomed me aboard. I noted that a couple of the male staffers were looking at me with open approval, and I was pretty sure I’d have to turn them down for dates before my stint at the Omega House was over.

Mr. Laveau then took a few minutes to instruct me in my duties as hostess. They were really quite simple. All I had to do was seat the members as they came in for lunch and look in on them to make sure they had their drinks and make sure the wait staff promptly served the food and took away the dirty dishes. Since there were only forty members–and not all of them would attend each meal–it wasn’t too hard. I did realize that I would be doing enough walking about the ten four-man tables in the dining room to make my feet sore in the heels, but since I had been a girl for a year, it wasn’t unanticipated.

The first day I had determined to play the part of a good little employee. I wouldn’t be doing any spying, as I was certain Mr. Laveau would be monitoring my performance. Besides, as the new girl on the staff, I expected the membership to be looking me over as well. They might all be lily white, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t appreciate women like me as well.

Naturally I still listened as much as I could, hoping to glean something from the table conversations. Since four members could sit at each table though, if I had been expecting to hear something incriminating, I was likely to be disappointed. To my chagrin, the dining room was far too public for any of the membership to talk about illegal activities. I was beginning to realize that the dining room wasn’t going to be a likely place to gain incriminating evidence, but that didn’t mean I wouldn’t try.

My former brother showed up about ten minutes after we had started serving. If he recognized me, it would be a problem if he managed to figure out that I didn’t need the money the job provided. In that case he would certainly wonder what I was doing there, and I didn’t want to make anyone suspicious. I nearly held my breath, but managed to smile in preparation for showing him to a table.

He looked me in the eye. “You’re new here,” he commented.

“Yes,” I replied as calmly as I could. “I’m Cassie.”

Rather than continue to look me in the eye, his eyes wandered down to my breasts and never came back up. “Pleased to meet you, Cassie.”

And that was all there was to it. I had worried about him for nothing, I thought. I showed him to a table which was already half full and went back to greet the next diner.

“So he didn’t recognize you at all?” Helen pressed when she, Sarah and I met at the hospital that evening.

“I think he was too busy looking at my breasts,” I said smugly. I had tried to put on an “I knew it all the time” front with the two of them, but the relief I felt in not being recognized by Paul was even greater than the incredulity in Helen’s eyes.

“Well that’s one thing that went right today,” Sarah sighed.

I frowned, sitting back in my chair at the conference table. That remark hadn’t sounded very promising. “Why? What went wrong today?”

“Just about everything,” she replied. She was silent for a moment, gathering her composure to give me the bad news. At last it came. “In fact I’m going to have to pull you out of the Omega House.”

“What? Why? I haven’t even had any time to look around there yet. And I haven’t even met some of the members This was just my first day. I thought we agreed I’d be there for at least a week–maybe longer.”

Sarah shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. We don’t have anything on them except that stupid coin, and from the inquiries we already made about it, you’d think we’d accused the entire organization of being in partnership with the Slaver. I think half of the alumni members of the Omega House have called me or–worse yet–called my boss in Washington to lay off the organization.”

At my confused look she continued, “Look, Cassie, do you have any idea how many powerful men were members of the Omega House?”

I shook my head. “I went to school out of state, remember?” That wasn’t really an answer. Sure, I knew the Omega House had a number of powerful members, but apparently I didn’t comprehend just how many.

“Yeah, I know,” she said. “Well let me enlighten you. Five members of the state legislature and one U.S. Congressman, two Federal judges, and more corporate executives than you can shake a stick at were Omegans. In addition, there are men like your father–I’m sorry: your former father–who have sons in the Omega House now. They’re all saying the same thing: investigating the Omega House casts a shadow on them as well. You see where I’m going with this?”

“But what other leads do we have?” I asked pointedly. I wasn’t about to give up on the only one we had without a fight.

“None,” Helen replied for Sarah. “That’s why we’re all so frustrated. This Slaver has the tightest organization any of us have ever seen. If it hadn’t been for that power failure and Samantha’s escape, we wouldn’t even know about him–or her–except for a few rumors.”

I had just one more shot to try. “But look, none of these powerful men know you’ve got a plant in the Omega House, right? So I can continue to work there unless they find out.”

“But if they find out,” Sarah countered, “we’ll all find out what happens when we disobey an order from Washington. I can tell you what will happen to Helen and me. I’ll be fired and Helen will never consult for the FBM again. As for you, I’m sure my superiors will find some equally unsavory punishment as well.”

“But...”

“No buts, Cassie. You quit tomorrow. Understood?”

“All right,” I agreed reluctantly. I took a couple of deep breaths and decided I had better do what she said. It wasn’t as if I had much of a choice.

“How’s Samantha doing today?” I asked, chagrined that I had been so worked up about being pulled off the Omega House mission that I hadn’t thought to ask about her.

“Not good,” Sarah replied. “Oliver has her over in the lab for a few tests right now. But even without the tests, she’s continuing to change mentally–even with the medication. She’s acting more and more like a little teen slut every time we see her. She’s... losing herself in the role. I think this was the Slaver’s plan for her–to have her start out acting like a man who got turned into a young girl, and then to act more and more in the character of a teen slut as time went on. That would make her owner feel like a big man. Unfortunately Oliver suspects that inside, she is disgusted with herself. That’s probably why they allowed her to remember being male.”

I nodded in agreement. I could imagine how the client who bought her might react. At first, he would have a reluctantly transformed girl on his hands, but under his tutelage, she would change into a suitably submissive sexual toy, making him feel more powerful. So what if she would have become submissive without any effort on the part of her owner? The objective was to make a happy customer–one who would probably eventually tire of his little slave and be in the market for a new one. It was enough to make me sick.

I wanted to do something to help. I couldn’t stand the thought of the bad guys winning on this. I decided to try my luck one more time. “Look, just let me keep working at the Omega House until the end of the week,” I proposed. “If I haven’t overheard something by then, I’ll quit.”

“Absolutely not,” Sarah replied, shaking her head. “You’re out of there as of now. Call them in the morning and quit. End of conversation.”

I kept silent. I realized Sarah had made up her mind–or rather the powers above her had laid down the law to her. I suppose it was the same thing, really. Maybe she was right, I realized. The coin was a pretty weak clue, and even if one or more diners from the Omega House were involved with the Slaver, he or they could hardly be expected to blab about it to his fellow members. The only real chance had been if I were to find a couple of the members acting suspiciously. It had been a plan born out of desperation with almost no chance of success.

So that was it. The Slaver would continue to operate, the only change to his operation being a battery backup for his electric locks in a new location. Sam’s real identity would remain unknown, and she would slowly but surely sink into the role the Slaver had chosen for her, beyond Oliver’s help.

That point was brought home to me when I ran into Oliver as he escorted Sam back to her room.

“Hi Cassie!” she greeted me with a vacuous little giggle.

“Hi Samantha. How did your tests go?”

She rolled her eyes and sighed with mock exaggeration, “Bor-ring. He made me, like, take all these math and English tests. Like, who cares?”

I tried to ignore the Valley Girl cadence. “So how did you do?”

She shrugged. “Okay, I guess. Wanna come in?”

“In a few minutes,” I promised her. “I want to talk to your doctor first.”

“Yeah, okay,” she said with a little disappointment, as if wondering what Oliver might have to say that would be more interesting than doing girl things together.

When she had closed her door, I asked Oliver, “She’s getting worse, isn’t she?”

He nodded. “Yes. We’re running out of time, Cassie. The personality the Slaver was overlaying just before she escaped is finally taking hold in full. She has some moments of lucidity, but they’re getting rarer and rarer. In a week, there won’t be anything I can do for her, even if we were to find her true identity.”

“Can’t you lay a new personality on top of this one?” I asked.

“No. It’s just not that simple. Cassie, you know how when a man is changed into a woman, her new body is set–unchangeable by any spell we are aware of?”

“Yeah, I know,” I replied, maybe just a little bitterly. It had something to do with the chromosome change. You could change a man into another man, or a woman into another woman, and then change them over and over again. But when you changed a person’s sex (and that could only be from male to female, of course), nothing major could be changed ever again. Even minor changes, such as personality or minor changes in skin tone or physical features, took someone with the power of a Slaver.

“Well Samantha is locked in mentally as well,” he explained.

“Wait a minute,” I stopped him. “When I was changed, all sorts of mental curses were placed on me–paranoia, ignorance, an accent... I was able to overcome all of those things. Aren’t we talking about the same thing with Samantha?”

“No,” Oliver replied. “That’s a common misconception. Most of the changes are ancillary–like yours. The body is changed with a separate spell. Then, in your case, a Whisperer makes some minor changes in how you see things, but the changes are temporary. What was done to Samantha was much... deeper–her personality changes are tied directly to the transformation spell. Only Slavers can be that thorough with their spells. It’s what makes them different from any other practitioners.

“Frankly, even if we’re successful–and that’s becoming increasingly unlikely–the most we will be able to do is anchor her to her former life sufficiently that she can fend off some of the stronger aspects of the spell. She’ll need the support of her family–if we can find them. Otherwise she’ll become exactly what the Slaver wants her to be–a man locked in the body of a young girl, unable to act in any way except as the teen slut she’s been programmed to be.”

I was too upset after Oliver’s explanation to see Samantha for long. I was afraid I’d be unable to hide my emotions and she’d see how upset I was, so instead, I just popped in her room and said, “Samantha, I’m sorry, but I really can’t stay.”

She seemed disappointed, and I almost changed my mind and stayed. But then she said, “It’s okay. All that test stuff made me kind of–you know–tired.”

She wasn’t acting tired, though. Instead she was slipping her hand into her panties underneath the hospital gown she had been wearing for her tests. I could smell her sex from the doorway. I was pretty sure she wanted me out of there so she could play with herself. The Slaver’s commands must have been overwhelming. If she had been delivered to the Slaver’s client, there was no telling what she’d be doing for him by now.

I warned Oliver, but he just shrugged in defeat. “What can we do, Cassie? She’s been commanded to be this way. If we don’t let her relieve the sexual pressure, no male in the hospital will be safe from her. Just do what you can to help the FBM find out who she is. Right now, the only chance she has is to get a piece of her old life back to anchor onto.”

I drove home, taking surface streets since I was afraid the mist of tears in my eyes would cause me trouble on the freeway. I hadn’t felt this powerless since the days of my own transformation. Samantha was a nice girl, and I suspected she had been a nice guy before her transformation. Now we were watching her slowly transform mentally into a bubble-headed little sexpot and there seemed to be nothing we could do to stop it, or even to find the perpetrators.

Naturally I felt empathetic as well as sympathetic. Her transformation had occurred almost exactly a year after my own. Of course unlike me, she had no idea who she had been before, but remembering that she had been a man was terrible by itself. Maybe it was even worse. After all, her entire sense of identity had been stolen from her–except for knowledge of her former sex, which was hardly a good thing. And like me, she had no family to help her. Of course my family had deserted me, but Samantha’s family was of no help, due to circumstances beyond their control, of course since they didn’t know what had happened to their son. Somewhere out there, there was a family missing a son, and it must be hurting them deeply.

Or did they care?

Since no one had reported a suitable candidate as missing, it was possible that Samantha had led a previous life whose erasure would cause no undue concern. Had her male self been a drifter–someone who would not be missed? It was puzzling–and frustrating. Why couldn’t we find out who Samantha had been?

If Sarah and Helen had only come up with some new leads...

If they had, I could quit my job at the Omega House with no misgivings. However, it was still the only lead we had, tenuous as it might be.

As I pulled into my parking space, I came to a conclusion: no matter what Sarah and Helen had said, I would not quit my job–not yet, at least. I mentally gave myself a deadline: if I hadn’t discovered anything by the end of the week, I’d quit anyway. If I hadn’t learned anything by then, it would probably be too late for Samantha anyhow. It was only four more days. I wouldn’t tell Helen or Sarah. They’d never find out, unless I came up with something to help with the case.

It depressed me a little to realize that I couldn’t tell Brett either. If I told him everything, he’d side with Helen and Sarah and tell me to quit. Poor baby, he’d just be looking out for me. And if I didn’t tell him anything about the order to quit, he might innocently say something to someone–most likely Oliver–which would get back to Sarah and Helen. I didn’t want that to happen either. So my only recourse was to keep silent on the matter of continuing my job. I’d just tell him that Sarah had demanded I quit and I would do so.

The problem with that was that I would have no backup. If anything went wrong and my real purpose was discovered by the party or parties in the Omega House who could be involved, I would be in real trouble. I was risking my life for a boy-turned-girl I scarcely knew. But it had to be done. Otherwise, the next Jane Doe I met I wouldn’t even be able to look in the eye.

Brett met me at the door with a glass of red wine. Thankfully I took it from his hand, sipped it, and kissed him, letting the flavor of the wine waft on his lips. “Merlot,” he smiled. “I believe it’s one of your favorites.”

“Plebian!” I laughed. “I’m not worth a decent cabernet?”

“I’ll open one of those too,” he suggested with a leer.

“No, one glass of this is all I can handle. I have classes tomorrow.”

“And work?”

“No,” I sighed. “Sarah and Helen want me to quit. They think the Omega House thing is a dead lead.” Damn, I was getting good at lying. If Brett had listened more carefully, he might have noted that I never said I would actually quit–just that Sarah and Helen wanted me to quit.

“Good!” he exclaimed, hugging me so closely I nearly spilled my wine. “I was worried about you.”

“Worried?”

He managed a small smile. “Sure. All those rich white boys might start looking pretty good to you.”

“I thought you were rich, too. Why do you think I’m with you?”

“I’ll show you why,” he replied, guiding me to the bedroom.

I remembered an old racist joke from my own rich white boy days: ‘Once you go black, you’ll never go back.’ Well, I didn’t know about that, but it was hard to imagine any man–black or white–pleasing me as much as Brett did. I was already tingling in all the right places as I turned out the bedroom light behind us.

It was harder being sneaky than I thought it would be. Since my schedule at the Omega House called for me to be there for both lunch and dinner, I had to give Brett some pretty thin excuses for not meeting him for either lunchtime or dinnertime. I made up something about special study sessions for moot court. Actually, I wouldn’t have to worry about moot court until my second year of law school, but Brett didn’t know that. Or at least I hoped he didn’t. Besides, I reminded myself, it would only be until the end of the week. I had promised myself that if I discovered nothing by then, I’d quit for real.

And it was starting to look more and more as if I wouldn’t discover a thing. I would have liked to have had a little time to wander around the house, maybe even a quick look through the offices, but the closest I came to learning anything was from the bulletin board that hung on a wall just outside the dining room.

Unfortunately there was nothing on the bulletin board such as ‘Needed: Volunteers to help Slaver watch Kidnap Victims’, or ‘Has anyone seen my missing Omega token? I lost it somewhere in the Warehouse District.’ It was just the usual stuff posted around campus.

Also, no one said anything suspicious. In fact, no one said much of anything–just a few mumbled greetings among the members, but nothing like I would have suspected from the membership of an exclusive organization. Even my former brother, who I remembered as being normally quite loquacious (if obnoxious), seemed quiet and withdrawn during the meals. But while everyone’s behavior was a little taciturn, it was hardly criminal.

It wasn’t until Thursday evening at dinner that I got the uncomfortable feeling that someone was watching me. Oh sure, I was cute and well-dressed, so all of the guys took a peek at my bust line or legs whenever they could. I had been a girl long enough that I was used to that.

But what I felt was that someone–or more than one someone–was watching my every move. I would turn my head suddenly and sense that a door open just a crack was suddenly shut. Or that the conversations, as sparse as they were, would suddenly cease whenever I was close. Maybe I’m just being paranoid, I thought.

Classes were almost a relief that week. The rest of my time seemed to float between paranoid feelings as work or emotional despair as I visited Samantha.

Samantha was getting worse, if such a thing was possible, losing herself more every hour into the bimbo part the Slaver had assigned her to play. Oh, she could still hold herself together, but barely. I was pretty sure Oliver was right: if we didn’t find out something which led to her former identity, she was doomed to be a sexual plaything for the rest of her life. But with no leads on who had done this to her, it was becoming less likely we’d be able to save her. And time was running out. If I didn’t come up with something to save her by Friday, there’d be no one left to save.

Unfortunately, by Friday, Samantha wasn’t the only one who needed to be saved.

I went in early on Friday to turn in my resignation. I almost didn’t do it, because although a week of eavesdropping and spying on the membership of Omega House had produced no clues whatsoever, I still held out irrational hope. But every logical cell in my body told me I was beating a dead horse.

But that isn’t to say I wasn’t still suspicious. I was beginning to wonder if there wasn’t something to feminine intuition. Since the first day I had reported to work at the Omega House, something just hadn’t seemed right, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. I was still convinced someone in the Omega House had something to do with Samantha’s kidnapping and transformation, but who? And how would I prove it?

At the risk of sounding like Inspector Clouseau, I was beginning to suspect everyone and I was beginning to suspect no one. By rights, there wasn’t a single member of the Omega House who would have aided a Slaver. That wasn’t because of their high moral standards, but rather that every one of the members I was able to identify was wealthy without being on a Slaver’s payroll. After all, I knew many of them from my previous life–or at least knew their families.

It was possible that one of the members was a Slaver, but even then, why risk it, given that he would have been wealthy already?

On the other hand, every one of the Omegans seemed a little... odd. They were all more taciturn than I would have expected, almost as if they had something to hide. Compared to my dining club at Harvard, I considered them a bunch of duds. Or maybe it was just that they didn’t like to talk when the hired help was around. They all seemed quieter when I was nearby, and I didn’t flatter myself by assuming that my great beauty had struck them all speechless.

Either way, what I wouldn’t have given for a look through the membership files, I thought to myself as I sat primly in Mr. Laveau’s office as he carefully read my letter of resignation. I suppose I didn’t have to write one for the menial job I had taken, but it just seemed like the right thing to do.

Mr. Laveau looked up from my letter. “We’ll be sorry to lose you, Cassie,” he said sincerely. “I hope one of the members didn’t do anything that would cause you to leave us.”

I had been a woman long enough to understand the real question. He was making sure no one had harassed me, leading to an eventual sexual or racial discrimination suit.

“No,” I assured him. “I just found... I needed more time to devote to my studies.”

He nodded. “I understand. But if you’d ever like to return and we have an opening, I’d be happy to have you back. Will you at least be staying the remainder of the day?”

“Yes,” I told him. I wasn’t about to miss one more chance at looking around the Omega House. Maybe I’d get lucky and get a crack at those membership files. After all, it was my last day. So what if they caught me snooping? They’d just think I was trying to steal something on my way out the door.

So there I was–down to my last day at the Omega House. Brett was already getting suspicious of my activities, and I hadn’t made any progress at all. One of my afternoon classes had been cancelled, and I decided to cut the other one. With that extra time I planned to make myself scarce after my lunch shift and snoop around. If I got caught, I’d just say I was saying my goodbyes before leaving for good.

I shouldn’t have been concerned about being noticed. It wasn’t all that difficult be unobtrusive. The Omega House was virtually deserted on Friday afternoons as it turned out, and few of the members even bothered to show up for dinner. Mr. Laveau was out of his office, and his secretary was MIA as well. I strongly suspected they had a little afternoon tryst going on–and not for the first time. Since the two of them were the only staff, the offices were empty. I would never have a better opportunity to see those membership files.

I said goodbye to the kitchen crew, promising I would see them at dinner. Then, I pretended to head out the front door and on my way to classes, but when I was certain no one was watching, I tiptoed across the foyer and tried the door to Mr. Laveau’s office. As I expected, it was locked, but standard locks are of little consequence to a Pusher like me. Mentally I moved the metal parts until the lock clicked open. I entered quickly, re-locking the door behind me.

My target was those membership files. I needed to find something in them that might indicate who the likely members were who might be involved with the Slaver. Since the members all came from well-off families, I was looking for something which might indicate they had financial problems at home–or perhaps a drug habit they were hiding from their families, requiring them to have cash. Maybe I’d find something to indicate one of the members lost his token and had to have it replaced. Sure, it was a long shot, but I was desperate, and time was running out.

Fortunately I was in no particular hurry. I was sure Mr. Laveau and his secretary were gone for the day, and most of the members were either in class or away from campus. I knew the cleaning crew came Mondays and Thursdays, so there was no chance of being discovered by them. In short, I had the office to myself. Since I had relocked the door, no one would suspect I was there.

I found the files with little problem. They were in a locked filing cabinet, but again, the simple tumblers proved no problem for a Pusher of my refined skills. What I found surprised me. The files for active members were divided into two sorts. The first sort–the smaller one–showed only the names of four of the new members. Each file had a date written in pen on it. Two of the dates had been crossed out with later dates appended.

The remaining files contained information on the rest of the membership. My former brother’s file was among them. I pulled it first.

The first few pages were standard stuff–name, social security number, address, and so on. It was the papers in the back of the folder that caught my eye. They contained information about an entirely different individual–one far different from my former brother. The information was on a Maxwell Dawson, a man with a very lengthy criminal record from the looks of it. According to the sheet, he was wanted in connection with a number of armed robberies and at least one murder. Although only in his mid-twenties, he had apparently cut a swath across the Midwest, robbing banks, armored vehicles, and a couple of jewelry stores. It was in one of the latter that he had met resistance and killed a store manager.

So what was his information doing in Paul Devereaux’s file?

The final sheet in the file answered that question. As I read it and absorbed the information, a chill ran up my spine. The sheet contained the name and address of a resident of New York’s ritzy upper west side. A dollar amount–well into seven figures–was typed neatly below the information, as well as a picture of what I first assumed to be a nude woman standing as if in a trance before the camera. Blonde, leggy, and curvaceous, only one thing kept the subject from being Playmate of the Month, and that was an obvious male appendage.

“Your brother turned out quite nicely, didn’t he?” a mocking voice called out from behind me. It was the deep baritone voice of Robert Laveau.

Then, before I could turn, another voice said smugly, “I told you she’d go right for my file.”

As I turned I saw my former brother standing beside Mr. Laveau. He was grinning maliciously. “Paul?” I managed.

“Not really,” he replied nonchalantly.

“You and your friends have been very troublesome,” Mr. Laveau spoke up. “I had a feeling they would try to insert someone into the house even before you came here. Our Paul here confirmed that when he identified you the first day. Oh yes, he knew what you looked like now. He was given a picture of you when he took over your brother’s life–and he recognized you when you were playing the part of a maid at that party. He just found it prudent to not say anything.”

I flushed. I felt like a complete fool. Paul–or whoever he was–had recognized me from the first. But that meant the real Paul had been replaced–months ago it seemed.

“Where is Paul–the real Paul?” I demanded.

“I believe you already know,” Laveau told me. “But I’ll answer you anyway. He’s in New York now–the young pet of one of our clients who has... interesting tastes. As you can see from the picture, he’s still male, after a fashion. Our client prefers him that way. Our client knew your father, by the way. When your father became governor, he cost our client a considerable amount of money, so having your brother as a little playmate was sort of icing on the cake, don’t you agree?”

“You’re sick,” I growled.

“No,” he corrected with a faint smile on his lips. “Perhaps our clients are a little... unusual, but I’m just a businessman providing the market with what it wants and needs, just as my family and others have done for generations.”

I snorted. It was an old argument I had heard before from every sort of seedy dealer of drugs and flesh. I was beginning to understand what was going on now, but as I soon learned, I had had no idea of the scope of the depravity.

“So you and some of the Omegans are in a slavery ring. What? You catch unsuspecting guys on campus and turn them into sex toys?”

“Yes, but we’re highly selective,” he informed me. “We take only the finest to transform–after they’ve been replaced by our own people, of course. It wouldn’t do to kidnap and change someone unless their absence could be covered up. And it would certainly be difficult to cover things up without a replacement.”

“I’m like that guy in the baldness ads,” the Paul look-alike added with an evil chuckle. “I’m not just an employee–I’m a customer.”

“Yes,” Laveau smiled. “Some of our clients are looking for a new life. For a price–a significant price, I might add–we provide it. Just think–one of our clients can have the life of a wealthy young man, heir to fortunes. All we ask in return is a deposit, help while they are in school, and a substantial donation once they’ve come into their inheritances.”

I gasped as I understood the magnitude of the enterprise. There weren’t just a few Omegans involved in the Slaver ring: all of them were involved. “So you take in the ten most promising young men every year...”

“And replace them,” Laveau finished for me. “That’s right. It’s not all that hard, you know. We gather knowledge on them from a variety of sources–other members, alumni, and a little subtle interrogation of our victims which we can easily make them forget. People change somewhat when they go away to school, so even if the replacements make a few errors, they’re usually minor and explained away by friends and relatives as changes brought about by the college experience. We spread the transformations out through the year, by the way. We still have four more to go this year. I’m afraid your interference has caused us to delay two of our replacements.”

“Forgive me if I don’t apologize for that,” I sneered.

It was a slick operation: I had to admit that. Wealthy perverts have always been willing to pay high prices for custom toys. Young men were changed into sexual fantasies, probably remembering as Samantha did that they had once been men, but stripped of the details of their lives. Then, replacements–men who wanted to disappear–paid their way into the organization. That way, there were no missing persons–except for wanted criminals who were expected to be ‘missing.’ Once they graduated and assumed the full lives of those they had replaced, they were wealthy and powerful enough to endow the Omega House and protect its leader. Maybe some of them even purchased new slaves for themselves in the process.

“How long have you been doing this?” I asked, trying to look around a little for a possible exit.

“Exactly twenty years,” he replied. “And never a problem–until now.”

Twenty years...

That meant two hundred of the Tulane’s wealthiest young men were counterfeits. Some would be in their early forties now, probably in positions of power–businessmen, politicians, and community leaders. I probably knew a number of them through my original family and had never suspected. For that matter, since the phony Paul knew who I was on sight, he might have even been in place last year when I had been transformed and I hadn’t even suspected it. No wonder some powerful people had demanded the FBM investigation be dropped. If anything were discovered, hundreds of lives would be affected. If the Slaver’s records were confiscated by the authorities, some of the most powerful men in the region could be disgraced and imprisoned.

Laveau smiled. “I see you comprehend the beauty of our plan–as well as the danger you present. But once you’re out of the way, I don’t anticipate any additional trouble. In fact I suspect we’ll even be able to get Ms. Solomon back.”

“Solomon?”

“I believe she’s calling herself Samantha now.”

Then I recalled he had said something about me being out of the way. That sounded ominous, indeed. “But if you do anything to me,” I pointed out nervously, “you’ll be under suspicion again.”

He laughed, “Oh, I don’t think so. From what my sources tell me, you were ordered to give up this charade. I doubt if you told anyone you hadn’t done so. Besides, nothing will seem to have happened to you. We’ll simply replace you. Don’t look so shocked, Ms. Davis. We have women clients as well, but it’s not always easy to work a woman’s life into our system. Your duplicate paid very well for the opportunity to be you. She was particularly intrigued with your FBM contacts. Since she’s presently wanted for several magically-related crimes, that was a big plus.”

“My friends will know she’s not me in a heartbeat,” I told him haughtily, but I think he could tell it was all bravado.

He shrugged. “We’ll know by tomorrow. Then, if everything goes well and we don’t need any additional information from you, we’ll get you changed and off to your new home.”

I had expected him to kill me, but I suppose he just couldn’t stand to let potential merchandise go begging. I knew, though, that he couldn’t change me physically. When my DNA had been changed into the African- American woman I now appeared to be, it became impossible to change me any more–sort of.

He grinned. “I see in your eyes once again that you realize there are a number of things we can do to you that don’t involve changing you physically,” he commented. “I think I’ll give you a little preview of what will be done to you. I have a very good client in Port-Au-Prince. He likes lighter skinned black girls like you. I’ll give you a French- Caribbean accent and a nice high sex drive. He may even hook you on heroin: he’s been known to do that to his little pets before. That’s why he wears them out so quickly.”

I nearly wet myself at the thought of it. He was talking about ancillary spells–spells which could work just fine on me, since they didn’t change my DNA. By the time he got finished with me, it would probably take a geneticist to determine my true identity.

“I’ve already called him and he’s very excited about you,” Laveau went on, obviously enjoying every moment of my growing fear. “He asked me if I could do a little more work–make you illiterate so you’ll fit in better. So few girls like you’ll be can even read, you know. I suggested that we dull your wits a bit, too, so you won’t be quite so feisty. He liked the idea, I’m happy to say.”

So that was his plan. As soon as he was confident that my replacement wouldn’t be detected, he would start work on me. In a matter of days–perhaps hours–I’d be on my way to Haiti, a stupid little sex toy about to spend the rest of her short life in virtual slavery. Tears of frustration welled up in my eyes, but that only caused Laveau and the false Paul to chuckle more.

“Take her to the safe house,” Laveau ordered. “Take Hendricks and Kimmel. Watch her closely: I suspect she can be creative when it comes to getting out of jams.”

“Then why not dull her down right now?” the Paul clone suggested.

“I may need to tap her mind for information,” Laveau told him. “Don’t worry. I’m sure we can get started on her by tomorrow.”

The Paul imposter drove while I was uncomfortably wedged in the back seat between two of the Omega House’s biggest guys. Hendricks actually played tackle on the football team and Kimmel was nearly his equal in size and presumed strength. Laveau was taking no chances on me surprising anyone and bolting out of the car. Yet I had to do something, for once I had reached their safe house, I’d probably find myself securely confined until Laveau was ready to change me into a little Caribbean bimbo. The key was if they got me to the safe house.

“Shame Laveau can’t make her tits bigger,” Kimmel muttered, looking down my blouse. He had ‘accidentally’ ripped off the top two buttons when he threw me in the back seat. At least he hadn’t copped a feel–but Hendricks did. I silently fumed–not just because of Hendricks’ big, meaty paws on my body, but because I thought I had pretty nice breasts.

“I thought Laveau could do anything,” Hendricks replied. “After all he’s got all that old Voodoo gris-gris from his great grandmother.”

“It’s great, great grandmother,” Paul called out from the front seat. “And I don’t even think Marie Laveau could have physically changed a girl who used to be a guy.”

Hendricks gave me a funny look. “You used to be a guy?”

Was it my imagination, or had Hendricks moved away from me just a tad?

“Yeah,” the driver confirmed. “She used to be ‘my’ brother.”

Hendricks began chuckling as he looked down my blouse. “Well damn! That’s pretty funny, you know? I’ve never screwed a girl who used to be a guy before.”

“No screwing until Laveau says it’s okay,” the Paul clone cautioned. If I had anything to say about it, that wasn’t going to happen.

They kept talking, but I wasn’t really listening. I was absorbing what Paul had told us about Laveau’s ancestor. I knew all about Marie Laveau, though. Marie Laveau was without a doubt the most famous practitioner of Voodoo in the history of New Orleans. For that matter, she was one of the most powerful figures of nineteenth century Louisiana, and numbered among her clients many civic leaders and dignitaries who would have, if questioned, publicly disavowed any connection with her or the dark arts she practiced.

So the theories must be true, I thought. I remembered our dinner conversation at Commander’s Palace just a few nights ago as we discussed that exact issue. No one had ever offered definitive proof that those who practiced Voodoo were actually tapping into magical forces long before Webster and Kline had unwittingly tapped into them and released them on the unsuspecting world. But if what Paul said was true, and Robert Laveau was a direct descendant of Marie Laveau, he might have genetically inherited incredible power–the power, I reminded myself, of a Slaver.

The last name had been a clue, but not a decisive one, I thought to myself. Sure, Marie Laveau had been black instead of white like her descendant, although some had described her as having significant white ancestry as well as a large number of white lovers. The elite young gentlemen of nineteenth century New Orleans often had mistresses who were quadroons–people who were three-quarters white and only a quarter black. Say, for the sake of argument, that Marie Laveau had just one black parent and got pregnant by a white man. If Marie Laveau gave birth to a quadroon baby, and the baby grew up to marry a white, by the time Robert Laveau was born, black ancestry could be down to one-thirty-second–entirely indistinguishable from a completely white man.

But Robert Laveau must have known all about his ancestry. While in present day New Orleans, it was hardly a topic of polite discussion, his father and grandfather might have been a different matter. I could imagine him growing up in the shadow of the discriminatory social climate of the Deep South and growing to hate it. What better way to seek his revenge on all slights–real and perceived–than to debase the scions of some of the region’s finest old families? Of course, it didn’t hurt that he was getting rich while he did it.

I nearly shuddered just thinking about what that meant. Privileged sons of many fine old white families had been kidnapped and transformed for the last two decades and then replaced by criminals. I hadn’t even known that sexual transformation by magic was possible that many years earlier. In all likelihood, neither had anyone else, except someone with the power of a Slaver. No wonder Laveau had been able to build up such a powerful organization in that time. No one could even conceive of the possibility.

But musing about that would have to wait. We had already bypassed downtown and had entered the infamous Ninth Ward. Probably nestled in its conglomeration of industrial buildings and poor residential neighborhoods consisting of monotonous files of shotgun houses was my prison–where I would be mentally transformed into an ignorant little Caribbean whore. When I left the Ninth Ward, probably within the next day or so, I’d be unable–or maybe even unwilling–to ever free myself. Time was running out.

“Why are we slowing down?” Kimmel asked as the car’s speed decreased considerably.

“There’s a cop car ahead,” Paul explained.

“So?”

“So I want to stay behind him. Don’t you think he might kind of wonder if he sees me pull up playing chauffeur to the three of you in the back seat?”

At that I felt both of my seatmates tense up a little, pushing against me to make sure I couldn’t wave frantically at the police to get their attention. As if that would work anyhow.

But there was something else that just might work...

I didn’t know if Laveau’s information on me included the fact that my own magical talent was Pushing. Probably not, I reasoned, since my Pusher powers were limited. They had been much more limited though, when I was male, so even the false Paul probably had no idea how much my Pusher power had grown. I had once managed to move a loaded filing cabinet, but not very far. Even I wasn’t really sure of how much Pushing power I had. Of course, desperation might just increase my abilities just a little...

Actually, ever since I had been discovered, I had been looking about for some way to use my power to get away. Unfortunately I had limited options. Sure, I might be able to find something heavy enough to clunk one of my captors with, but so what? There would still be two more of them left, and pushing something big enough to take out one of them would probably leave me too tired and depleted to do anything else to the other two.

I had pretty much given up, deciding to wait until we got to their safe house and try my luck at Pushing open a door or window to escape. The problem with that is they would have to leave me alone long enough to accomplish the Push–something which I strongly suspected was not in the cards. But what else could I do?

We pulled up behind the police car at a stop light. Over the car’s front bench seat I could see our driver cautiously pull up just behind the police car, leaving plenty of space between the cars with his foot loosely on the brake.

That’s when I had an idea, but I’d have to work fast.

I knew I’d get one shot at this, so I concentrated with all my ability on the accelerator pedal. The engine revved a little at first, but not enough to move the car. Our driver, though, looked down at the accelerator to see what was wrong, and in doing so, accidentally let up a little more on the brake pedal. I had a pretty good idea now of how much pressure I needed to apply, so I mentally slammed the accelerator pedal to the floor, feeling the lurch of the car as it shot forward.

The car didn’t have far to go. Just a few feet in front of it was the waiting police car. With a sudden crunch our car rammed right into the rear of the police car, pushing the white and blue cruiser forward about five feet as the trunk lid sprung from the pressure of the impact.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Hendricks yelled out, but our driver didn’t answer. The imitation Paul had been looking down at the floor when the two vehicles collided. In an instant, his head had been slammed against the dashboard and then thrown back when the airbag exploded into action. Airbags weren’t designed to accommodate drivers who were bent over looking at the floorboards at the time of impact. He lay half-propped up in the front seat with his head lolling at a macabre angle, indicating that his neck was probably broken.

“Shit!” Kimmel yelled out as he saw two police officers–two very angry police officers at that–sauntering out of their cruiser and heading our way. I suppose flight was his only option, and he must have realized it, too. He threw open the door, and before Hendricks could even plead with him to stop, he bolted from the car and took off running.

“Stop!” one of the police officers called out, but Kimmel was already half a block away. The big guy could certainly run, I thought. The officer immediately gave chase.

Meanwhile the other officer, the driver of the cruiser and a large dangerous looking African American, had his eyes set on Hendricks. He unstrapped his holster and pulled out his pistol since Kimmel’s attempted escape had made him justifiably wary. My captor had the good sense to realize this wasn’t looking good for him. Still I could see him prepare to bluff it out.

Hendricks got out of the car slowly. “Officer,” he began, “I’m glad you’re here. I need your help. I’m Walter Hendricks, Junior...” ‘Walter Hendricks? Senator Walter Hendricks of Mississippi’s son?’ I wondered. I hadn’t heard my captor’s first name before. “These three people have kidnapped me.”

The police officer looked a little uncertain for just a moment, and that was the moment Hendricks jumped at him.

To be frank, I hadn’t expected that. When someone points a gun at me (and believe me, I speak from experience here!), I don’t plan on taking them down. Of course I had forgotten that Hendricks was a tackle on the football team, and that in his previous life before becoming Hendricks, he had probably been less respectful of authority than would be expected of a US Senator’s son.

I wanted to stop them, but what could I do? Either of the men rolling around in the road could have snapped me like a toothpick. I suppose it didn’t matter anyway. Before I could have thrown myself into the fray, there was a muffled explosion from the police revolver and Hendricks yelled out in pain, a deep red blot staining his white shirt.

The police officer pushed my captor away and quickly radioed for an ambulance. While he did so, I rolled Hendricks over and pressed my hand on the growing bloody wound. From the position of the wound, it appeared to have entered his side away from any vital organs, but I was certain it hurt like hell.

Good.

“How bad is it?” he groaned.

“You’ll live,” I predicted, hoping I was right. He might have been a son of a bitch, but I didn’t want him to die. “Where’s the safe house?”

“Huh?”

“The safe house–where is it?” I repeated. I knew Laveau would head for there as soon as he could–unless Kimmel had called him to warn him off. I doubted that, though. Kimmel seemed to be too worried about saving his own skin to bother calling his boss.

“Either tell me or I’ll pull my hands off this wound and let you bleed to death,” I bluffed. Before he could reply, though, the police officer was standing next to me.

“The driver’s dead,” the officer told me, confirming what I had already thought. Well, no matter how this all came out, at least an imposter would no longer be part of my old family. Still, I felt badly for my original parents. They had lost two sons now, although they had lost me more by choice than anything else.

“This one will be okay,” the officer said, confirming my diagnosis. “It looks like the bullet went in and out without hitting any major organs.”

Just after he told me that, I could hear the insistent sound of an ambulance siren growing steadily closer.

“You mind telling me what happened here, miss?” he prodded.

I shook my head. I had decided that the fewer people who knew about this for the moment, the better. Instead I said, “Call the FBM right now. Ask to be put through to Sarah Carmichael.”

“What...”

“Please, Officer, just do it. Tell her that Cassandra Davis has made a break in the Slaver case.”

I chanced a quick look at the officer’s face. The way I had said it, it sounded as if I was an FBM officer on the case. The problem was I looked a little young to be an FBM agent. But after I used the word “Slaver” the officer looked as if he couldn’t wait to get this situation into someone else’s hands. “Yeah, sure,” he said, hurrying back to the cruiser.

“Shit!” Hendricks said. “You’re FBM?”

I knew what he was thinking. Kidnapping anyone was a serious crime, but the FBM frowned upon anyone molesting one of their agents. I saw no reason to relieve his anxiety. So I just graced him with a feral grin and enjoyed myself as the rest of the color drained out of his face and he fainted.

Great, just great, I thought. Now we’d have to wait until he woke up to find the location of the safe house.

“What the hell did you think you were doing?” Sarah screamed.

I got the idea she wasn’t pleased. Neither were Helen and her husband, Brian. They had already unloaded on me, but only because they got there before Sarah did. They had been following up a lead on another case and were only a mile or so away when Sarah called them.

“But we were getting nowhere,” I argued motioning over to where the paramedics were stabilizing Hendricks before taking him to the hospital. “And I got us a lead–a solid lead.”

“Nearly at the cost of your own life,” Sarah pointed out. I didn’t reply, since she was absolutely right. I had come within hours of become a sex slave in Haiti. Even if the authorities had managed to rescue me–a remote possibility at best–I would have been damaged psychologically for the rest of my life. Maybe physically, too.

“And now you want to go face this Laveau again?” she yelled. “Are you crazy?”

“Look,” I argued, “you’ve got Hendricks and Kimmel both in custody. As I understand it, Kimmel didn’t call anybody and Hendricks sure as hell didn’t. He was too busy getting shot. Laveau told them he’d join them at the safe house as soon as he could. If we can get them to tell us where the safe house is, we might get lucky and catch Laveau before he knows anything is wrong.”

“Listen, Cassie,” Brian broke in. “I chased a Slaver once when I was still with the Bureau. She managed to kill two of my team and nearly killed me before we got her.”

“But that Slaver was a woman,” I argued, well aware of the whole story since Helen had once told me about it. “Women almost always have greater magical abilities than men. Look at me. If I had still been male, I probably couldn’t have jammed down the gas pedal like that. Sure, Laveau’s strong, but not as strong as your woman Slaver.”

“The answer is still no,” Helen insisted.

I thought about reminding her that she was my sister and not my mother, but that sounded petulant and childish, so I just said, “Sis, this Slaver has wrecked hundreds of lives and been responsible for the escape of more felons than you can imagine. If we don’t find him and stop him, he’ll just set up shop someplace else. This may be our only chance to nail him.”

Helen started to reply, but Sarah stopped her. “Wait a minute, Helen. She may be right.”

“Right?” Helen scoffed. “She was almost shipped off to be a Caribbean love slave today. She would have been replaced by that imposter who tried to kill one of your agents before she got taken out.”

Helen had already told me that my would-be replacement had been found at my condo, after the info I had given Sarah. She apparently panicked and tried to shoot her way out, with fatal results. My condo was now an official crime scene, which probably had the neighbors in a tizzy. It looked as if I’d be sleeping at Brett’s place tonight–if he’d still have me.

“Look, we don’t have much time,” I pressed. “At least find out where the safe house is and stake it out. It would be better if I were there for bait, but...”

“Bait?” Helen and Brian exclaimed at the same time.

Before anyone else could put in their two-cents’ worth, Sarah’s phone beeped. She motioned for us all to be quiet and carried on the conversation with short yes-no answers. When she was finished, she told us, “That was Oliver. Samantha is just about over the edge, acting like a mindless bimbo. Nothing he’s tried has worked. He thinks maybe Cassie can keep her from falling completely under the spell. If not...”

“Me?”

“Oliver’s pretty impressed with you,” Sarah explained. “According to him, Samantha seems to feel you’re sort of a role model for her. Look, Cassie, he’s about at the end of his tether over this case. He’s holding out hope we’ll find something in Laveau’s files that tells us who Samantha really is. That way, he can anchor her with information about her family. But that may take a little more time. For now he thinks you’re her only hope. We’ll check out the safe house–if we can pry the location out of one of the boys. In the mean time you’re needed back at the hospital.”

“Wait a minute!” I interjected. I had been so shaken up by the kidnapping and rescue, I had forgotten to relay to Sarah the information Laveau had told me about Samantha’s family. I quickly gave her what I knew.

“Solomon, huh?” she said. “We’ll check it out. But right now Samantha needs you. Do you feel up to going to the hospital?”

I nodded reluctantly. As much as I wanted to be there if they nabbed Laveau, Samantha’s well-being was a more immediate requirement. It had been my sympathy with her situation that had dragged me this far into the case, so there was nothing to do but go to the hospital. “I’ll need a ride to the hospital,” I said at last.

Sarah got an agent to drive me. We hit rush hour traffic on the way back to the hospital, but that was fine with me. It gave me a little time to call Brett and tell him I was okay, in case he had tried to reach me earlier. I found out that he had and was also aware that I had pulled the wool over his eyes regarding keeping my job at Omega House. He obviously wasn’t too pleased about that, but he was so happy to know I was safe that he didn’t chew me out. I was beginning to think he was the only one who wouldn’t be lecturing me that day.

“So where are you now?” he asked.

“On my way back to the hospital,” I told him. “Your father is waiting for me and wants my help with Samantha. I guess she’s just about over the brink. I’m afraid the Slaver may win that case, Brett.”

“Well, if anybody can help her, it’s you and Dad,” he told me.

“I hope so,” I replied softly.

After I hung up, I tried to reach Helen to see what was happening at the safe house.

“Absolutely nothing,” she told me, dashing my hopes that Laveau might be caught unawares. “The place is completely clean. It doesn’t look as if it was ever occupied.”

Laveau was certainly a slippery one, I thought as I hung up. But then again, he came from a long line of slippery characters, I realized. His ancestor Marie, had been followed by her daughter in the practice of Voodoo. And while the daughter had not achieved the notoriety of her mother, she must have passed on her knowledge to her own descendants up to this very day. Coupling the Voodoo legacy with the powers of modern magic, Robert Laveau was probably the most dangerous practitioner of magic in the region–if not in the entire country. And since most magic was centered in North America, that meant the entire world.

I imagined he was still in the city. His power base was in New Orleans, and he could probably hide out as long as he wanted. Perhaps he was even at expert at glamours or shape changing. No one really knew the extent of his powers. If so, he could be back in business in no time under a new name. Sure, we had broken up his tidy little Slaving business, but unless the FBM had been able to act quickly and retrieve his files from the Omega House, no one would ever know for certain who many of Laveau’s clients were.

At least I had seen enough of my brother’s file that a good Holo could probably pull the details out of my memory. He–or was it she now?–could be rescued from captivity, although given how my father had treated me, I doubted whether Paul would have much to look forward to from my former family. But as for the others...

Of course, even if the FBM found Laveau’s files, there was going to be hell to pay. I knew through my former father that the FBM preferred to keep a lid on particularly disturbing magical crimes. The average American had few magical talents and a justified fear of what a really good magical practitioner could do. That was why they suppressed data on magical sex changes for as long as they could, but eventually, there were so many that they couldn’t keep it secret anymore.

Slavers were the latest secret the FBM sought to keep. It was bad enough that a few spelled drugs or words could change a man into a woman, but to know that there were Slavers out there who could change memories and mentally control their victims as well with little more effort than it took most people to chew gum was enough to scare the collective socks off the American public. It was certainly enough to scare me.

But if Laveau got away and the story of his little empire hit the media, it would be Panic City. No one would feel safe–and perhaps rightfully so. Laveau was as powerful as the fictional wizards of high fantasy fiction, and a danger to everyone.

I tried once more to call Sarah as I entered the hospital, just to see if there was any word from Laveau’s office, but there was no reply. I cursed myself silently for forgetting that cell phones didn’t work in hospitals, except for a few designated areas. Apparently not only did they interfere with some of the medical equipment, but they also played havoc with a few magical treatments. As a result, every hospital magically repressed cell signals. I should have called her from the car, but I was so worried about Samantha that I had forgotten to do so. I put the phone away, hoping that Oliver would have heard something.

He was waiting for me, a concerned, nervous look on his face. “How is she?” I asked Oliver as soon as I saw him outside Samantha’s room.

He shook his head. This case was obviously taking its toll on him. He even looked a little shorter, apparently slumping under the weight of Samantha’s inevitable decline. “Not good. But I think seeing you may help her. You seem to be the only one she responds to very well. When she sees a man–even one as old as me, she...” his voice trailed off.

“Of course,” I agreed, fully aware of how Samantha had begun to act around men. If Oliver hadn’t kept her on a short leash, she would have propositioned half the men in the hospital by now. “But first, have you heard anything from Sarah? Did her people get there in time to get Laveau’s records?”

Oliver shook his head sadly. “I’m afraid not. When they got there, the files had all turned to dust with no chance of recovery. This Slaver is one of the most versatile practitioners of magic I’ve ever seen.”

“Damn.”

Oliver nodded sympathetically. “You had a chance to see the files, though. Do you remember which ones you looked at? There may be a chance the FBM can recover those memories and save a few of Laveau’s victims.”

“I saw my brother’s file,” I told him. “They made him into a...” I couldn’t even say “she-male.” That just sounded so tawdry. “He looks like a girl, but he’s still...”

“I get the idea,” Oliver broke in to help me. “You know, that may be for the best.”

“Huh?”

“I just mean,” he explained, “that if your brother is still genetically male, there may be some hope of restoring him.”

That raised my spirits just a little. Then I thought about the scores of other victims of Robert Laveau and felt frustrated that I could do nothing to help them. If we could find any more she-males, they might have a chance to be restored, but those who had been made completely female were that way to stay.

“Do you remember any of the other files?” Oliver prompted.

“Sort of,” I replied. “I sorted through several of them, but I guess I just zeroed in on my brother’s file.”

“The FBM may be able to pull some latent memories from you,” he suggested. “We should call Sarah and tell her.”

“Shouldn’t we go in and see Samantha first?” I asked.

Oliver nodded. “You’re right, of course.”

Samantha was lounging in front of the TV, watching some vacuous quiz show when we entered. She looked up at me and gave me a sexy little smile. “Hi Cassie. Did you come to take me to party?” She looked at Oliver. “My mean old doctor won’t let me out of the room,” she pouted, “even to see that big hunk of a guard outside the door.”

“We’ll talk about that later,” I promised, trying to keep my composure. Samantha had changed into a textbook definition of a bimbo in just a few days. There seemed to be nothing left of the brave, intelligent girl I had met such a short time ago. “How are you feeling now?”

“Great!” she exclaimed, jumping up and smoothing her dress as sexily as she could. Her smile was sparkling, but the look in her eyes was vacuous. “I’m just soooo bored.”

“We’ll see that you aren’t bored much longer,” Oliver said suddenly, surprising me. I turned and looked at him. He looked... different. There was a gleam in his eyes that I had never seen before.

“What...” I started, but with a wave of his hand, I found I couldn’t move, let alone speak. It was a strange sensation: mentally, I was still myself. I was alert and aware of my predicament. I kept sending signals out from my mind to my body as usual, but nothing seemed to happen. I was physically calm in spite of the fact that my mind was in turmoil. ‘This must be what it’s like to be completely paralyzed,’ I told myself.

“What’s wrong, Cass...” Samantha started, until she too was frozen with a puzzled expression on her face.

Oliver smiled. “There. That will take care of any interruptions from either of you. You know, Cassie, I should have done this to you back in my office. I should never have depended on those three oafs to get you to the safe house. But I suppose I just wanted to have you squirm in captivity, never dreaming you could actually get away. You are far more resourceful than I could have ever imagined, but we’ll change all of that very soon.”

‘Oh crap!’ I thought. This wasn’t Oliver at all: it was Robert Laveau. Well, I had theorized that a magical talent like his probably included glamours. Unfortunately I never thought I would become a victim of one of them. Laveau had fooled me and everyone else it seemed. I only hoped the real Oliver hadn’t been harmed.

Oliver–or rather Laveau–grinned. “I see you’ve figured out who I am.”

The fact that I couldn’t answer him only seemed to delight him more. “This time there’ll be no escape for you. In an hour, we’ll be on a plane headed out of the country, and then I can take my time introducing you to a whole new life. I had wanted to do this differently, but perhaps this way is best. I’ll have the opportunity to change your disposition more slowly. It will be more entertaining that way–don’t you think?”

I couldn’t move, but he had to have sensed the fear in my eyes as he continued to taunt, “You’ve cost me a literal fortune, Cassie, and I plan on getting it back in trade. Oh don’t worry: I still plan to sell you to my client in Haiti, but I’ve informed him that there will be a few days delay. During that time I’ll put you through your paces–maybe even using your friend Samantha here for some of the fun.” His grin turned absolutely vicious. “By the time I’m finished with you, you’ll be looking forward to your life in Haiti.”

He didn’t give me any of the details, but then again, he didn’t have to. I had been a woman long enough to know that a determined man–particularly one with magical talents–could make life for a woman a living hell. I was certain over the next week, my body would be used in every depraved fashion Laveau’s evil mind could imagine. He couldn’t alter my body in any meaningful way, but my mind was a fertile playground for his perverted imagination. And once we were on a plane headed out of the country, there would be no chance of rescue.

He shrugged then, his expression turning neutral. “All of that must wait until later, though. Right now we need to get out of here before the real Dr. Carson shows up.”

That actually relieved me just a little. I had had visions of Laveau coming upon Oliver and disabling or even killing him to take his place. Apparently, he must have waited until he saw Oliver leave the hospital and simply used a glamour to change his appearance. I doubted if he was being altruistic though. Chance must have protected Oliver, for I had no doubt that Laveau would have mercilessly killed him to further his own plans. Oliver probably had left his patient just long enough to go have dinner with Estelle.

I wondered how much of what he had told me outside Samantha’s room was true. I was pretty sure he had really destroyed all of the records. Otherwise, he would not have been so curious as he was about what I remembered. In essence, I had told him that I only remembered my brother’s file. I cursed myself, realizing that as soon as Laveau got the opportunity, he would call his client who had purchased my brother and see to it that the evidence–my brother–was destroyed. I suddenly realized that I had probably signed my own brother’s death warrant.

We were directed to move to the door and wait until Laveau had the FBM guard under his power. To my dismay, that didn’t take very long at all. He simply told the guard that he was taking us out to see if Samantha’s memory could be jogged by taking her back on campus. The excuse alone might have been enough for the guard to pass us through, but the glazed look in the guard’s eyes meant that he, like Samantha and I, was under Laveau’s spell.

I wondered for a moment just how many people Laveau could keep under his control at any given moment. I had known some powerful practitioners of magic, and very few could handle more than one person at a time–especially when projecting a glamour on everyone at the same time. Laveau was without a doubt the strongest magical practitioner I had ever seen, but even he must have some limits, I assured myself.

No one questioned us as we walked to the elevator and then got out on the ground level, heading for the main entrance. Why should they? The staff around the hospital had gotten to know all of us pretty well. Besides, Samantha had been in FBM custody, and few if any staffers were likely to question people like Oliver and me, who obviously had the confidence of the FBM.

Then everything changed in an instant as four men wearing FMB magical flak jackets barged through the entranceway. They were also wearing silver eye shields to ward off any hypnotic commands–a wise decision given how easily Laveau seemed to be controlling Samantha and me. “Halt!” their leader ordered as four pistols were trained on Laveau.

The next thing I knew, I was being pulled closer to Laveau, and suddenly I felt cold metal which I was pretty sure was the barrel of a gun, pressed against my carotid artery.

“Keep back!” Laveau ordered, holding me loosely while somehow commanding my legs to move slowly forward. Samantha was left behind, as he concentrated on using me as his shield.

My would-be rescuers stepped back, their automatic weapons lowered slightly. They had lost the advantage of surprise and now looked uncertain as to what to do. I could understand that. Surprise was the best weapon against a Slaver as powerful as Laveau.

I looked around as Laveau forced my body forward. I had no freedom of movement of course, but as I was moved, or forced to move, I was looking for anything which would allow me to use my own power. Laveau didn’t seem to be aware of what I could do magically, or maybe he was just so powerful he thought any magical talent I might have wasn’t worth worrying about. So maybe there was a chance to catch him off guard.

No such luck, though. Even if I could find an object to hit him with, he would be able to shoot me first–an action I was sure he would not hesitate to take. As for moving the gun itself, I might be able to nudge it, but there was a chance I’d move it in a direction which caused him to put pressure on the trigger.

In those few moments, my mind seemed to be working overtime, assessing possibilities in the time between heartbeats. I suddenly reached the conclusion that there was only one object I could move that might get me out of the line of fire:

Myself.

I remembered a time when I was a boy, and along with my brothers tried to move a car just to see if we could do it. We were too young then to realize that with the car securely held by the parking brake, there was no way we could move it. We tried, though, putting our backs into it, but the car didn’t move. Instead we moved, our feet sliding down the driveway away from the car, as our own force was turned against us.

‘Why wouldn’t that work with magic?’ I thought. My body had become an object no different in mass from the filing cabinet I had once moved with my mind. No, that wasn’t true: I was considerably lighter than that filing cabinet. So what if I tried to move a wall? What would happen then?

A Pusher’s magical ability is completely under the control of the mind, as is nearly all magic. Laveau had, to my knowledge, done nothing to control my mind–only my body–so I should have full control of my power.

In moments we would be outside, and I’d be too far away from any stationary object to have the backlash effect I needed to move myself. Without further deliberation, I sent the command from my mind, concentrating all of my force on moving the entryway wall I could see.

The effect was all I could ask for–and more. My body lurched, completely out of control. I was pushed away from Laveau’s grasp before he realized what had happened. Just for a fraction of a second, I was rewarded with the shocked look on his face as he tried to swing the gun to cover me once again.

He never got the chance, though.

The FBM agents saw him raise his weapon, and they raised theirs, but as trained professionals they were both more efficient and accurate. Laveau’s body jerked as half a dozen slugs cut through him. I had heard the expression “he died in a hail of bullets” before, but never appreciated the meaning of it until that moment.

Samantha fell to the ground as Laveau dropped, and I was afraid for a moment that she had been hit too, in spite of the fact that she was several feet away from him. I realized abruptly that she was okay–just no longer under the Slaver’s control. This was brought home to me as I realized that I too, could move.

I rushed to Samantha’s side as the FBM agents surrounded Laveau’s body. I prayed that she wasn’t hit by a stray bullet, and to my relief, it seemed she had only passed out when Laveau’s control was released.

“Where’s Oliver?” she murmured, and I realized in her confused state she had no idea what had just transpired over the last half hour or so. Maybe that was for the best. Laveau’s body shimmered as he died, ending the illusion he had created and restoring his original appearance. My own body was shielding her view of Laveau’s body, so at least she wouldn’t be traumatized further.

She closed her eyes. “I’m sooo horny.” Then she passed out again.

A nurse took charge of Samantha while I got to my feet, a familiar voice calling out my name.

“Cassie! Are you all right?” Brett was rushing into the hospital with a worried look on his face.

I squeezed back some happy tears and threw myself into his open arms. “I’m okay–just a little shaken up,” I told him. Then I looked up at him. “How did you know I was in trouble?”

“Dad called right after I got off the phone with you. He told me he and mom were going over to the Quarter for dinner, so I realized there was no way he could have asked you to come to the hospital. It had to be a trap. I tried to call you back, but I guess you were already in the lobby and I couldn’t get through to your phone. So I called Sarah and she dispatched a TT at once.”

A TT–a Teleport Team. Thank God for Sarah. A TT could build up enough power to Teleport up to thirty miles, but once they had done so, they had to recharge. They wouldn’t be able to Teleport again for a couple of weeks. I really owed Sarah one. If she hadn’t sent the TT, I’d be on my way to Haiti before a regular team showed up at the hospital.

“How’s Samantha?” Brett asked, and my relief was replaced by a feeling of helplessness.

“Not good,” I told him. “I think she’s just about gone. With Laveau’s records gone, we may never know who she was, and that means we can’t find anything of her past life to anchor her.”

Looking back at that scene, I’m happy to say I was wrong.

“Stop right there!” Samantha called out, her voice suddenly excited.

“Woman driver!” the guy in the car behind me yelled out as I slammed on the brakes of my Miata. But I was too happy to let him bother me. Samantha had identified the first house that we had driven by. Hendricks and Kimmel had told us the truth.

Because the Omega House was not a campus organization, there had been no records of its membership in the administration’s database, and no trace could be found of Laveau’s records. He had managed to destroy them all and take the details of his crimes to the grave. But that didn’t mean it was impossible to trace some of the membership.

My two would-be kidnappers, Hendricks and Kimmel, were singing like divas at the Met. And while their knowledge was very limited, they managed to identify several of the current members of the Omega House. Of course, we already knew Samantha’s last name was Solomon. Laveau had mentioned that, so finding her family by combining her known last name with what our two songbirds told us had been easier than we had thought.

Four of the new members hadn’t been changed yet, and when they were contacted, they were more than happy to identify a few more members, past and present. Adding them to our prisoners’ list, we came up with over forty names in addition to the current student members. Of course, most of the student members had fled the minute they found out Laveau was dead.

Word was certainly getting around quickly. Prominent men from as far away as Washington (where an aide to the President had skipped town suddenly) were hurriedly arranging extended trips to countries without extradition treaties with the United States. Since many of those countries were relatively unpleasant places, at least they were getting some punishment just by fleeing to them.

Some of the imposters decided to stick it out though, and bluff their way through. As much as I hate to say it, the odds were quite honestly in their favor. This was especially true of some of the Omegans who had graduated several years before. The recollections of our prisoners and the unchanged new members netted mostly recent graduates and current members. Even at that, many of them escaped the FBM net. To date only three had been caught, and thirty of the forty imposters Sarah’s people had managed to identify were known to be out of the country.

Even more depressing, the number of victims identified was woefully small. The FBM Holo managed to delve in my memories and get the information on where my former brother had been sold. Interestingly, he was located at the New York Upper West Side residence of one of my former father’s political foes. And since he had been transformed to a she-male, his male genetic code remained in place, so he would be able to be transformed into a fully functioning male again. Laveau hadn’t been lying when he told me that while disguised as Oliver. And, as a ‘bonus,’ his owner was one of the ones caught trying to leave the country.

The news about Paul wasn’t all good, though. His body could be repaired, but his mind was a mess, thanks to Laveau’s conditioning and the treatment he had received while condemned to slavery. He was currently at Oliver’s Nashville clinic, where it was estimated he might be looking at six months to a year of intensive magical and psychotherapeutic treatment. After that, he’d probably need therapy for several years.

But at least he would recover eventually. Only three other victims were found, and they would remain female for the rest of their lives. All had been transformed within the last year or so, so Oliver felt they would have a fair chance at leading normal female lives, once their therapy had been completed. None would be returning to their old homes, however. Apparently my former father wasn’t the only asshole in the state of Louisiana.

So even though I was happy Samantha might find fragments of her old life in the stately home we had driven up to in Ascension Parish, I was sorry that she was one of only a few victims who might find peace. We were about an hour out of New Orleans in an area of rich farmland dotted with old mansion houses, some dating back before the Civil War. Arboles Verdes had been owned by the Solomon family since the early nineteenth century. A little research had shown that Samuel Solomon, the only child of Isaac and Rachel Solomon, was a freshman, attending Tulane University. Further research showed that the Solomons had filed a Missing Persons report with the local police just a few hours earlier.

“I want to go in!” Samantha said with all the glee of a little girl out on her first excursion. She was practically a different person from the frightened but intelligent individual I had first seen right after her escape. By now she had become what Laveau had expected her to become–a vacuous little bimbo who, if left to her own devices, would quickly be the naíve little sex toy of the first man who wanted one. But when she saw the house, a little bit of the old Samantha came back into being. Oliver had been right about that–familiar surroundings might be the only way to cure her.

Hendricks and Kimmel had remembered Samuel’s case well though, and had told the FBM that he (now she) was supposed to be sold to a business rival of Isaac Solomon. The rival had planned ‘train’ his new toy himself, although Laveau had set a timed spell on the new girl which would make her become a bimbo over a few days of supposed training by her new master. So in fact, as we had suspected, what we had witnessed with Samantha was just part of the service. She was designed to become compliant, while underneath remembering that she had once been a young man. In other words, every day would be a new hell for her.

Of course that meant that underneath the bimbo personality she now exhibited, the old Samuel was seething inside. Oliver had said that that was actually good, because once she was returned to her family, the Samuel inside of her would help her to reconcile the Samantha outside without being a bimbo.

Of course, all of this depended upon whether or not the Solomons would accept their changed son as their new daughter, and based upon past experiences–including my own–that was not a foregone conclusion.

“We need to wait until Sarah and Oliver are finished,” I told her, nodding at Sarah’s FBM sedan parked in the carriageway.

“Are they really my parents?” Samantha asked tentatively.

“Yes,” I confirmed. Sarah had called the Solomons that morning and made an appointment to see them. I really didn’t envy her the task of telling the worried parents that their ‘son’ was not missing, as they assumed when he had disappeared the evening before. They had suspected foul play, but the FBM now knew that he had fled to Brazil on a late night flight, barely evading the dragnet that might have seen his capture. Then they had to explain what had happened to their real son–that he had been kidnapped and changed against his will into a young woman who would be a virtual slave to her father’s rival.

Oliver emerged from the house, spying my car down the street just before the entrance to the carriageway. He nodded his head. Samantha didn’t see the nod. She was too busy taking in her surroundings, and I could see from her eyes that memories of the place were starting to seep into her mind. I saw the nod though, and drove up to park behind Sarah’s car.

Leaving Samantha in the car for a moment, I joined Oliver. “How did it go?”

“As well as we could have hoped,” he sighed. “Apparently the Solomons have been worried about their son for the last few days. They said he didn’t seem to be himself, which of course is ironically true. They’re upset, naturally, but they want to see Samantha.”

“That’s a step in the right direction,” I sighed. My own parents had wanted no further relations with their son-turned-daughter–something which would always be painful to me.

Oliver nodded. “Yes, it is. I assume your own parents were not so understanding.”

It was certainly hard to put anything past Oliver. “Yeah.”

“Don’t worry about it, Cassie,” he told me, with a gentle touch to my bare arm. “You have a wonderful family now, if Helen is any indication, and Brett loves you. Many families just can’t face what has happened to their sons. It’s really their loss though, you know.”

I sniffed a little, but managed to nod and smile. He was right, I realized. But still I couldn’t help but be a little envious of Samantha.

“Why don’t we bring her in?” Oliver suggested.

So together, we guided Samantha into the house she had grown up in. She looked around as we slowly walked in, taking in every vista and every object, her mind slowly associating each item with her past life.

“Oh, Sam!” an attractive, middle-aged woman with hair nearly the color of Sam’s cried out when she saw her.

Sam looked startled for a moment, before murmuring, “Mother?”

Her mother gave a worried glance at a very fit middle-aged man who had to be Sam’s father. Sarah stood when the Solomons did, gentling squeezing Mr. Solomon’s hand. He nodded to both Sarah and his wife, saying, “Welcome home, Sam.”

Sam’s mother rushed to her new daughter and hugged her, sobbing gently as she embraced the startled girl. “I... I live here?” Sam asked incredulously.

“Oh yes!” her mother assured her, holding her out where she could take in the new girl’s appearance. We had dressed Sam in a casual feminine style, with a sleeveless white top and a short blue corduroy skirt. She wore heels, but low ones, and no hose, displaying her slim, smooth legs. It had been Oliver’s suggestion. He wanted Samantha’s parents to understand in no compromising terms that they now had a daughter instead of a son. “You look lovely,” her mother added with a maternal smile.

Her father hugged her next, and again I was hit with several emotions. I was of course, happy for Samantha. She had found her home and her family ready and waiting to take her back. Then there was a pang of envy for the family I had lost. While my rational mind knew I now had a better, more loving family than I had ever had before in my life, there was still residual pain. My real family had deserted me. If I had been white, perhaps they would have accepted me, but they hadn’t been strong enough to embrace an African-American daughter.

And the other emotion was more pragmatic. Oliver had made certain in the hospital that no men touched Samantha, for if they did, the sexual urges implanted by the Slaver would come to the surface, turning Samantha into the vacuous little sex machine that she nearly became anyway. To my relief her father’s touch was accepted in the spirit in which it was given, and for the first time since I had met her, I felt Samantha was really on the road to recovery.

“Thank you for all of your help,” Samantha’s father said graciously to all of us. His face showed considerable strain, but his words were from the heart and carried with them the relief of a father who had found his missing child safe at last.

“Yes, thank you for bringing our daughter home to us,” her mother echoed. There was no hesitation in her voice when she called Samantha her “daughter.”

We stayed a bit longer, just to make sure Samantha would be comfortable when we left. She sat between her parents on a large expensive couch and seemed quite at home, and as we continued to chat, she looked more and more relaxed. It seemed also that her native intelligence was resurfacing, and I suspected that someday she would be a well-adjusted, intelligent young woman. But at last, it was time to leave.

“Will I ever see you again?” Samantha asked me as we hugged goodbye.

“Of course” I promised her. “I’ll visit you as much as I can.” It was a promise I meant to keep. Witnessing Samantha’s recovery would remind me that what I had done to help her had all been worthwhile.

Oliver shifted uncomfortably in the passenger seat of my Miata. He was also getting a little wind with the top down, so I drove slowly back into the city. Sarah had stayed behind to finish up some of the details of the case with Samantha and her parents, so Oliver had hitched a ride back with me. Unfortunately, he wasn’t used to riding in a car as snug as the Miata. For my size, it was the perfect car, but it was a little small for most men. Brett had complained about it, too.

“Are you going to keep on seeing Samantha?” I asked him once we were back on the highway.

“Oh yes,” he assured me. Then he grinned. “It gives me the perfect excuse to visit you and my son.”

I grinned back. In many ways, Oliver was an older version of Brett. If I had been into older men and Elaine weren’t married to him, I might have found Oliver to be my cup of tea. “We’d love to have you stay with...”

“You were about to say ‘with us’, weren’t you?” he asked seriously. Then, when he saw the stricken look on my face, he laughed, “Don’t worry, Cassie. Elaine and I figured the two of you had moved in together.”

“Well, not exactly,” I stammered, flushing. “I mean, he does spend a lot of time at my place, but he still has a place of his own.”

“Don’t worry, Cassie,” he soothed, “Elaine and I lived together for two years before we were married. We won’t be bothered if Brett actually does move in with you.”

“I just can’t lie to you, can I?” I teased.

This time, he actually was serious. “Most of the time, no. For example, I know you’ll make good on your promise to see Samantha often.”

“Yes, I will.”

“She’ll need your support,” he added. “At least she has a ready-made role to step into.”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh!” Oliver exclaimed. “I thought you knew. Sam’s sister, Samantha, was his twin sister.”

I understood what he meant. Samuel would be able to step right into his sister’s role. It would be as if it were an alternate reality, where Samuel had died as an infant and Samantha had lived. That would actually make it easier for her parents to accept as well. They had probably always wondered what might have happened if Samantha had lived instead of Samuel, and now they would have the opportunity to find out.

“That’s right,” he said, smiling, as if I were an apt pupil. “She’s got a long ways to go, but I’m pretty sure she’ll make it. Victims like her do well when surrounded by a loving family.”

I think he knew where my thoughts led me after that statement. My family had been anything but loving after my transformation–including my brother Paul. I wondered how he felt about me now, or if he even knew about me. I wasn’t entirely sure whether he had been changed into a she-male before or after my own transformation. If he did know about me, I suspected he would be much more sympathetic about my transformation.

“How are the other victims that have been located doing?” I asked.

“The ones we’ve been able to find should all recover,” Oliver assured me, then adding, “especially Paul Devereaux–your former brother. The doctors have already started the spells to return him to a fully male appearance.”

“That’s good,” I said noncommittally, but I think Oliver knew a lot more than he was saying. I suspected he was shielding me from the psychological problems Paul would face.

So my part in the Laveau slavery case was over–or at least I hoped it was. Laveau was dead, several victims of Omega House had been rescued, and my brother was safe if not yet entirely sound. All in all, everything had turned out as well as possible. Now it was all in the hands of the FBM, which would do its best to find the remaining victims, punish the imposters, and somehow try to keep the entire affair as quiet as possible, so as not to alarm the general public with the sordid details of such a spectacular magical crime.

I should have felt great, but I didn’t. After I dropped Oliver off and headed home, I realized that I needed to mend some fences with Brett. I had lied to him, about quitting my job at Omega House, and more importantly, about who I really was. How could he ever trust me again? Of course come to think of it, I had been lying to him about more than my job at Omega House. I had lied to him about who I really was–or had been.

Oliver was right, I thought to myself as I pulled up to my condo. I owed Brett the truth. Like the transformed clients of Omega House, I was an imposter, and while I had not replaced someone else and stolen their wealth, I had certainly stolen Brett’s love.

The door to my condo opened, and Brett stood there in just a pair of running shorts. To my relief he smiled and took me into his arms and kissed me long and hard. The resolve I had mustered to tell him the truth melted in the warmth of his body, and I could feel my nipples tingling and my vagina moistening.

“I missed you,” he said.

“Brett, I’m so sorry I lied to you... about the job, I mean.”

“It’s okay,” he soothed. “Dad told me how things worked out. You’re a hero.”

He forgave me! Or at least, he forgave me for one lie. I wanted him so damned badly: how could I possibly tell him the rest? But the floodgates had opened. I had addressed one lie, and now I had to address the other, before I lost all of my will again. One more kiss would destroy my will completely.

He looked at me with concern as I was still wrapped in his arms. “Is everything all right? You look like you’re crying.”

My eyes were tearing up: he was right about that. He wouldn’t let me go until I told him what was wrong. I had to do it, or there could be nothing further between us. I only regretted I hadn’t told him sooner.

“Brett,” I began solemnly, “I have something I need to tell you...”

The End