Pandy spent several minutes explaining as much as she could to Thaniel and Isidor. Thaniel actually seemed happy to hear that Pandy would be effectively restricted to rabbit form for a while, but then insisted on a hug and a lullaby, which Pandy was glad to provide, though she did feel a little odd singing in front of Isidor. The older boy only watched, stony-faced, and rolled away to face the wall before the song ended.

By the time Thaniel fell asleep and Pandy was able to slip out of the room, she only had sixty-five minutes remaining as a human. She switched back to bunny-form, hopped downstairs, and made her way outside. There was only one thing she really wanted to do before losing her voice for most of a week, but since Augustus was probably asleep, she went to the grotto instead.

Once, in Pandy's first life, she had gone to the grand opening of a new spa, where they were giving people the opportunity to try a pool full of fish that were supposed to eat the dead skin from their feet. They assured Pandy they had no idea how chin-chin fish got mixed in with the garra, and fortunately, hardly any of the bites scarred. But for a brief moment, before things went wrong, she had really enjoyed the feeling of the moving water on her feet, and ever since her visit to the grotto that afternoon, she had had the urge to try again. Perhaps the fact that there were no fish in the pool made it more attractive.

The moon was high in the sky, and it was a beautiful night. There had been at least some rain almost every evening for the past week, but today there wasn't a cloud in the sky, so the stars were brilliant in the blackness overhead. Pandy remained in rabbit shape until she reached the pool, wanting to maximize the time she got to spend in the water.

As she cast Shifting Faces for the last time that day, Pandy briefly considered the idea of going for a swim. Not that she was a good swimmer, since the doggy-paddle was the most advanced stroke she'd ever mastered, thanks to the fact that her luck and full-body immersion weren't a good combination. She even avoided taking baths, after that unfortunate incident with the bubble bath that stained her and her entire bathroom bright pink. At least the paramedics hadn't actually laughed at her while they were removing the rubber duck.

In the end, she didn't have the nerve to go skinny-dipping, and besides, with her luck, Augustus – or anyone, really – would just happen to choose tonight for a midnight perambulation. Instead, she slipped off her adorable boots, then realized that her stockings would require a great deal of undressing to take off, and simply ripped them apart at the knee. They would reappear, perfectly intact, the next time she used Shifting Faces, so it didn't really matter if she damaged them.

That reminded her how Professor Beeswick so callously cut her hair, so she felt the back of her head. Thankfully, her long hair was once again intact and pinned up in the haphazard style she called a messy bun, which was good to know. Not that she planned to chop her hair off on a regular basis, but, let's face it, the odds were good that she'd end up at least partially bald at some point.

Once her feet were bare and her skirts hiked up to her knees, Pandy waded into the pool from the waterfall end, which was shallow enough that even she didn't feel like she might drown if she happened to slip and hit her head. Not that she could drown, but it was the principle of the thing.

For a few minutes, she stood there silently, wiggling her toes as the current from the waterfall swirled gently around her legs. Then, greatly daring, she kicked a spray of water up into the air, where it glittered as it broke into smaller and smaller droplets, forming a faint moonbow before pattering back into the pool.

This led to a great deal more splashing, during which she dropped her skirts, which turned into a sodden weight that pulled her down into the water. There she lay, on her back, arms and legs splayed, buoyed up by the air trapped in her clothes as tiny bubbles slowly rose around her. Only when her face finally started to sink below the surface did she stand back up, wading back over to the side of the pool, where she sat down, flopping her sodden skirts around her, but leaving her feet in the water.

After a moment, she laid back again, just as she had in the pool, arms extended, staring up at the twinkling stars, and a moon whose shadowy craters formed a sleepy smile. She had disturbed the creatures who thrived in the darkness with her antics, but once she fell silent, they dared to fill that silence with sound. She didn't know the difference between the chirping of crickets and the songs of frisky frogs, but she soon found herself softly humming along with them, her eyes closed as her time ticked away in the most peaceful way possible.

It was the sneezing that gave her attacker away. Pandy dismissed the soft rustling sounds as cute nighttime critters moving around – perhaps even a rabbit, the idea of which made her pause in her singing to smile. But there was no way that the short, sharp bark of sound was anything except a suppressed sneeze, and the soggy, miserable nature of it even gave away exactly who'd produced it.

Pandy lurched up as a knife swung down, burying itself to the hilt in her chest. It didn't quite hit where her heart might or might not lurk, but honestly, several inches of metal being thrust forcefully into the chest of someone living probably would have been enough to unalive them, with or without a precision strike. Pandy cried out, as much from surprise as pain, and fell backwards. The scent of bruised grass rose around her as she gasped against the sheer surprise of it all.

-52 LF

You have been Poisoned. Poison is ineffective. You take no damage.

You know, this would probably hurt less if you had a few more levels in Pain Tolerance.

Pandy ignored the final sentence, staring up at the pale, sweating face of Mr. Benjamin, who looked almost as shocked as she felt. He was holding out his hands, looking at them as if he had no idea how they came to be attached to the ends of his arms. He swallowed hard, then sneezed, staggering backwards before scuttling forward again, one hand extended in a pinching motion, while the other covered his eyes, fingers spread just enough to allow him to see through.

"Oh, Ismara, what have I done?" he whimpered, fingers grasping, then slipping from the hilt of the knife still lodged in Pandy's chest. The motion caused another few points of Life Force to drift away into the cool night air, and Pandy finally pulled herself together enough to respond.

"You tried to kill me," she said, incredulous, and the round little man gave a hoarse shout that transformed halfway through into another explosive sneeze. This time he plopped down in the grass beside her, eyes showing white all the way around the dark irises.

"You're dead!" he spluttered, pointing at the knife as Pandy sat up. "You have to be… Even if you're… They told me to kill you, or they'd expose me!"

Grimacing, Pandy pulled the weapon from her chest, almost retching at the scraping sound that came from inside her body as she did so. She wasn't even capable of throwing up, but her mind knew that projectile vomiting was the only correct response to this situation. <Minor Heal, Pandora, four times,> Pandy thought.

Casting of Minor Heal successful.

Casting of Minor Heal successful.

Casting of Minor Heal successful.

Casting of Minor Heal successful.

Three hundred ninety-three uses remain before next level.

Holding up the knife in one hand, Pandy brushed at the hole in her bodice with the other. "You're lucky you didn't actually ruin my dress, or I'd be really upset," she told the shivering, sneezing man. It must have sounded more threatening than she meant it to, because he hunkered down, arms covering his head protectively.

"I didn't want to," he mumbled, barely able to look at her. "I didn't want to, but I took the money. I took the money, and then they had me. That's all it took. Just once. Just once, and I was done." His round rear end rocked in place, crushing the pretty plants that grew all around the pool. Pandy had made certain to lay down in the grass, but he had just fallen where he was, and it didn't really matter that he was damaging the plants, but somehow that was what bothered her most in that moment.

Slowly, she climbed to her feet, then pointed the tip of the knife at him. It glistened with her blood, but it was definitely one of the Shadow Exchange's black daggers, so she had no doubt that it still had more than enough poison on it to kill the pathetic man in front of her. Still, she wanted to hear him say the words.

"Who told you to kill me?" she asked, each syllable cold and crisp, as if the original Ms. Wellington now spoke through Pandy's mouth, rendering her voice as capable of cutting as the weapon in her hand.

But Mr. Benjamin just shook his head. "Can't tell. Can't tell, or they'll kill me." He gulped, throat bobbing, and Pandy could see sweat darkening the formerly crisp white collar of his shirt. "I can bear going to prison, but death… I don't want to die."

Pandy was fairly certain that she should also threaten to kill him at this point, but she just couldn't. It was one thing to hurt someone when they were actively trying to injure her or someone she cared about, but this shivering wreck of a man was harmless, and she simply couldn't bring herself to do it.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

Raising her voice, she said, "Zephra? Cieris? I could use some help." No teasing wind tugged at her hair, nothing happened to indicate that either elemental was present and had heard her. What did happen was that Mr. Benjamin raised his head, eyes becoming impossibly wider.

"Elementals," he muttered. "What did they say? Blood calls, they said. Yes. Blood calls." His wild gaze caught on the blood dripping down the knife. In the moonlight, it was almost as black as the blade itself, but the way the light reflected off of the two things, liquid and solid, made it clear which was which.

The teacher's feet gathered beneath him, pushing him up, out of the bruised vegetation. He almost fell over again as his heel caught on one of the stones that circled the edge of the pool, but he caught his balance again with the grace of the dancer he must be, beneath his round frame and obvious terror. Lifting his chin, he shouted to the sky, "Here she is! Come and get her!" and something huge and dark ate the stars.

It only took Pandy a moment to realize it was just something opaque coming between her and the sky, but that was almost too long. Two Apparitions uncoiled around her, like phantasms made of paper, rolled into children's toy telescopes. The air around her was suddenly frigid, and Mr. Benjamin went stumbling backward again, sneezing viciously, his breath pluming into expanding clouds of vapor.

Pandy looked down at the knife in her hand even as she dodged the swing of an arm that barely qualified as three-dimensional. Her soaked skirts tangled in her legs, and she used Hop, jumping high above the Apparitions, grabbing a handful of material as she fell down. With a slice, she cut away the fabric, leaving wads of yellow cloth behind as she bounded around, barely remaining out of reach of the murderous elementals.

She had no doubt that she could escape. It would be easy enough to jump straight upwards, use Wings of Glory at the height of her jump, then fly away. But that would leave two Apparitions right outside the bedroom windows of dozens of children. Would the elementals attack the school? Could they break through the wards around it? The answers might well be no and no, but she couldn't take that chance.

Silver and magic were the only two things that worked against Apparitions. The Shadow knife didn't look particularly silver, but what did Pandy know? The next time a blade-like limb swung toward her, she sliced the knife through it. It did seem to jerk away, just a bit, but not the way the one on the third floor had when she stabbed it with the silver butterknife.

Pandy glared at the useless knife, but she wasn't quite willing to drop it. Mr. Benjamin was still watching, his pale face glistening in the moonlight as he attempted to muffle his sneezing in his elbow. He didn't seem to have another weapon, and though he almost certainly had elementals of his own, he also didn't seem to want to get them involved. Pandy didn't want to give him any ideas, and if the weapon re-entered play, he might decide he needed to go for it, or remember he had other options.

That left magic, and just bouncing around wasn't going to cut it. Pandy almost giggled at her own internal joke, but a sharp arm sliced into the tip of one of her toes, and Pandy forced herself to focus. Still, worst case scenario, she got cut into tiny bunny-bits, and it took time and resources to restore herself. This just wasn't that serious, so long as no one else got involved.

That thought allowed her to relax, and her racing mind finally presented her with a solution. She only had one spell that was really meant for attack, so she thrust out her hand toward the closest Apparition and thought, <Air of Superiority!>

Air of Superiority successful.

One more use remaining before level 2.

If the elemental had actually been the creepy paper doll it appeared to be, it should have been blown far over the roof of the school, vanishing into the sky like a recurring villain at the end of an anime episode. Instead, the wind didn't even seem to affect it, though the bushes behind it bent almost flat against the ground, and a few branches of a nearby tree snapped off and flew away.

Pandy leaped up and backward again as both Apparitions closed in on the spot where she'd been standing. "That won't work," she muttered, poking the knife at an arm that got a little too close for comfort. It jerked just enough that she was able to avoid it, and Pandy figured she was probably doing the equivalent of prodding the elemental with a sharp stick.

The next time one of those pinwheel arms spun toward her, she thought, <Spark!> and a flame burst into existence inside the inky darkness. This time the Apparition gave a moan, its limb dissolving slightly around the flame. It reformed a moment later, but the elemental avoided the hovering flame as it glided toward Pandy again.

All right, that worked, but it had two problems. First, it didn't do much damage, which wasn't a huge problem, since Pandy could summon a lot of Sparks. Second, however, Pandy had no idea how to put out a Spark. They just… went out when they were done. When she was leveling the spell, she often ended up with a large number of Sparks inside the metal trashcan she used to hide the light. Fortunately, they didn't seem to stack, producing more light or heat as she layered them on top of each other, but now she wished they did, since she could have ended up with a DIY fireball.

In any case, Pandy couldn't just keep starting fires and then leaving them there to slowly go out. Even if she didn't run into them herself, there was no way a random leaf wasn't going to blow into one and start a grass fire that burned down the entire school. Which meant she needed a new tool in her toolbox. Reluctantly, Pandy thought, <Cast Scorching Sonata. Use Corruption Points.>

ﻜꭃrcⱧ│₦ḡ Sᴼnaƫɐ successful.

Scorching Sonata is now level 1.

A jangling chord of sound echoed in Pandy's mind, and something like a very wobbly musical note erupted from her fingers. Through no fault of her own, one of the Apparitions happened to be directly in front of her at the time, and when the note burst into flames, the Apparition howled – an echoing, hollow sound like a plaintive wind blowing through a field of stones.

Unlike Spark, as soon as Scorching Sonata struck something, it was snuffed out, leaving not a single flicker behind to show that it had ever been there at all. It left behind a gaping hole in the stuff the Apparition was made of, however, and when the elemental reformed its body, it was noticeably smaller.

After that, it was simply a matter of whittling the Apparitions down. Pandy leaped around, casting Scorching Sonata over and over, punching holes in their insubstantial bodies until they produced the flickering tentacles that meant they were down to half their original health. At that point, the two near-mindless things turned on each other as much as Pandy, and she found that all she had to do was lure one of them until its shadow-stuff began to merge with the darkness of the other, at which point they would each slice pieces of their own ally away.

At last, with a final whimper, one of the shrunken Apparitions curled in on itself, a roll-up blind that had seen better days. It flapped, then vanished, its essence nothing more than a cold breeze and a lingering shadow.

That left only one, but as Pandy gathered herself to launch another Scorching Sonata towards it, it curled abruptly backwards, attempting to flip inside out around a long silver blade that pierced the central column of its elongated form. The blade withdrew, before swinging back again with a grace Pandy very definitely envied, separating the single remaining tentacle from the main body, then cutting the whole elemental in half. It, too, wailed its last, and collapsed into frost on a small patch of grass.

A man stood there, revealed by the fallen Apparition as dramatically as if a curtain had been dropped. He wore a white shirt that hung loose, untucked from the pair of black trousers below. Neither shoes nor socks covered Augustus's feet, and somehow the sight of his pale toes curling into the damp grass was the most adorable sight Pandy had ever seen.

"You came," she managed to say, wincing as she realized how much she sounded like a character from a romance novel… or perhaps an otome game.

He chuckled, lowering his sword. "I would have been here sooner if you'd remembered to send me an invitation. I only knew to come because one of the Apparitions brushed against the school's wards." His eyes roved over her, taking in the rags of her clothes, and lingering on the bloody hole in the front of her dress. His smile faded, eyes narrowing. "Are you all right? What happened?"

Blushing, Pandy clutched the hole closed, all too aware it was too little, too late. Again, she reminded herself that this wasn't really her body, but, as always, it didn't really help. "He stabbed me!" she said, her voice rising with outrage as much as anger.

"Who?" Augustus asked, coming toward her, the sword rising protectively.

"Him, I believe," came Professor Beeswick's voice, and they both turned, to see the librarian perched atop the school, his outstretched wings folding inward as he dangled a clearly unconscious man from one hand. The dragon stood only a few inches taller than five feet, while the music teacher was about five and a half feet tall, and looked significantly heavier, but Professor Beeswick showed not an ounce of strain as he supported the other man's entire weight. His wings glittered like a little girl's birthday card as he leaned forward, peering into the teacher's face.

"Mr. Benjamin, isn't it?" he asked. "He doesn't come to the library often, but every now and then he borrows a book on music or dance."

Pandy nodded. "I was just lying there, minding my own business, and he stabbed me!" She held up the Shadow knife, which she had almost forgotten she still held, as proof.

Augustus let out a slow breath, his eyes closing. For the first time, Pandy realized that he wasn't wearing his glasses, and his hair was disheveled, as if he'd just rolled out of bed and run down here, which was quite likely exactly what had happened.

"Well, I guess we've found at least one of our spies," he said quietly. "I liked him, too."

Pandy looked up at the suspended body, remembering the friendly and apparently genuinely pleased man who had greeted Lian and Thaniel when they arrived at Falconet. She'd only seen him from a distance since then, thanks to his allergies, but she'd liked him, too. "If it helps, I don't think he wanted to hurt anyone. He said he took some money once, and then I think they blackmailed him into continuing," she said.

Augustus nodded grimly. "That's how it works. You slip once, in some small way. Then they threaten you with exposure, and you think, ah, just a little more. Then a little more turns into a dagger in someone's chest, and you wonder how you got to where you are."

Pandy shivered at the lack of emotion in his voice, but rather than retreating, she stepped forward, laying a hand on his arm. It was only when she felt the taut muscles beneath his sleeve that she realized he was absolutely, utterly furious. At whom? She didn't think all of that anger was for the pathetic music teacher, who had now lost his career and his freedom in exchange for however much he'd been paid that very first time.

"It's over," she said softly. "Augustus. It's all right."

His icy gaze snapped to her, and for a moment, she thought he might reject her and her words, but then he relaxed, lowering the sword again. "So it is," he said, though she thought he didn't even believe himself. "I'll call the proper authorities, and-"

Shifting Faces expired.

Pandy's field of view expanded even as she dropped downward, but somehow Augustus managed to catch her, pulling her into his arms as she changed back into her rabbit form. Raising her up, he stared into her eyes, then buried his nose in her fur, drawing in a breath, just as Thaniel sometimes did.

"And I'll take you back to your room," he said softly, tucking her into the crook of his arm before turning back to Professor Beeswick, while Pandy tried desperately not to show any sign of the glittering bunny band tooting trumpets and shooting off fireworks in her mind.

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