Fine. Starting with my shoes, I systematically stripped down. At least he was polite enough not to watch. The entire time, I reminded myself I could trust Lon. He wasn’t going to be looking at me as if I were a three-layer cake, which was pretty much how I’d been looking at him.

“You can leave your bra and panties on if it makes you feel better,” he said.

Oh.

I glanced at said items on the floor. Too late now. And with my luck, he’d catch me trying to put them back on. I licked dry lips and quietly shuffled onto the tarp. At least the magick was solid; I could definitely feel a soft prickling sensation when I stood inside the ward, much in the same way I felt electricity.

If that were all I felt, it would have been fine. But my mind had emptied itself to make room for all the blind panic it was brewing up. It was as if the rational part of my brain had woken up and realized that it had fallen asleep and left the stupid, foolish part of my brain in charge, and now the house was on fire.

“I want to see you shift,” he said. “Might learn something we didn’t know.”

“All right,” I said, voice cracking. “I’m ready.”

Lon turned around. When his head tilted up, his lips parted.

Just for a moment, my shield of panic dropped, and I could have sworn no one had ever looked at me like that in my entire life. But maybe I just wanted to believe I’d seen something more than I had. Because when I blinked, all I saw was his usual poker face.

He stopped in front of the tarp, expectant, not saying a word. I wasn’t sure what freaked me out more: standing in front of him naked or standing in front of that camera. “This better not end up on the internet,” I mumbled. Then I shut my eyes to concentrate.

Most times I’d called up the Moonchild power, I’d done it in a panic and under duress. But now I reached for it gingerly. The same instincts I used to sniff out electricity kicked in, and it took some effort to push past that and aim for the bigger source of power. It came rushing at me, fierce and chaotic. I did my best to slow it down. A little like trying to reel in a shark instead of a trout. Hard to do that delicately, but I managed.

The power streamed into me. I opened my eyes.

A silver light tinted my vision, lit by the fog of my expanding halo. Everything was now bathed in an eerie quicksilver glow, including Lon, whose eyes followed the chain of sensations I’d experienced only a few times: a strange coolness spreading across my skin, the pressure of horns springing from my head, and the disconcerting slither of a long reptilian tail as it tickled the back of my legs.

“Don’t panic,” Lon said. His voice sounded muffled and distant. “And don’t try to will any magick into action.”

“Oh . . . God,” I whispered, suddenly feeling as if I wouldn’t be able to stop myself.

“You’re safe. I’m here. Just breathe. Long breaths in through your nose, slow exhalations through your mouth.”

It was easier to be calm when he was. And before I knew it, I was following his advice. Long breaths in, slow breaths out. His camera hid his face as he started snapping photos. And once I felt I had a handle on myself, I glanced down.

My skin was covered in iridescent scales. Dark ones. The first time I’d seen them in the mirror, I decided they looked black, but it was hard to tell with the quicksilver tint covering everything. A striking white-and-gray reticulated pattern broke up the black scales over my neck and shoulders.

“Breathe.”

Yes. I’d forgotten.

I lifted a hand to my head, to feel what I couldn’t see. Ridges came to a point on my forehead, like a widow’s peak, just above my eyes. The ridges flared to make a V shape, and above my hairline, they changed to horns, gently curving backward like crests on a dragon: one, two, three horns lined up in a neat row on either side of my head.

So different from Lon’s spiraling ram’s horns. His were textured like a fingernail; mine were glossy and smooth.

He snapped a million pictures, circling me. I looked over my shoulder as he did, seeing what the camera’s eye captured: black and white stripes lining my back. Flowing into my tail.

It jutted out from my lower back and was a couple of inches in diameter and the same length as my legs. Black and white rings, all the way to the tip. Sort of attractive, in a strange way. I tested it, willing it to move. It swished around my ankles. I could feel my ankles with my tail. It was just another appendage, swaying back and forth like a pendulum over my ass cheeks.

Lon was taking an awful lot of pictures. Then again, my backside was my best side. While he circled me, I ran my fingers over the scales between my breasts. They were so smooth. Tougher than human skin but still soft and flexible. The camera stopped clicking. Warm fingers joined mine. I tried not to flinch, and I didn’t pull my hand away. He was inside the ward now, only a couple of feet away. And the tips of his fingers moved between mine, touching the scales that I touched. Marveling with me.

My heart fluttered. Chills ran down my arms as a familiar heat spread between my legs. Wow. A couple of seconds of innocent touching, and my body was eager to climb his. My overenthusiastic reaction wasn’t as much of a surprise as what I saw when I glanced between us. No mistaking the tented fly of his jeans.

I mean, good God.

His fingers stilled on my scales.

He knew that I knew, which freaked me out. My conscience—surprise, I had one—backhanded my sex-starved body, and I lost my grip on the transmutation. The silver light faded. Sound returned to normal. And everything seemed to just draw up inside me. Horns, scales, tail—all of it receded, then disappeared. It was almost painful and very uncomfortable.