It was a day later, and I couldn't shake what she'd done.

My body buzzed and I couldn't sit still. Lindsey had gone home with me the night before, just to make sure I was okay. She could tell that something was off, even when I promised her I was fine. Just a little rattled. She gave me space.

The moment she was gone, I went to the Magisorcerers' Guild. The squat building, made of black glass and steel, always seemed imposing before — looming like some obsidian obelisk out of the asphalt. I never wanted to train here if I could help it.

Today, though, I didn't care. I needed to know.

Inside was one of the most detailed libraries on the subject of monsters: everything from where they came from, to what species, to weaknesses and vulnerabilities. I'd let my guard slip. I'd let myself...

Revulsion at what almost happened to me ate at my soul. I needed to know how she'd done it.

It must've been a trick. I refused to believe that she wasn't controlling me. It hadn't been my hand that slipped between my legs when I took a shower last night. I hadn't touched myself to the memory under my own power.

It was her. And I needed a cure. This library held the answer.

I arrived at 8AM. When I finally found a description of a 'Skvan'Volu', it was 6 PM. Ten hours searching through tomes and compendiums and codex after codex after motherfucking codex to find it: a picture of a mostly human-looking woman with a long, wicked tail.

Kamilliajora was a Skvan'Volu.

"The influence of a Skvan'Volu's Decay — injected into victims through their tail — has been said to be toxic, lethal, and able to corrupt women into indecency." An obscene shudder ran through me as I read the words again. And again. And again.

I'd been infected. Corrupted. This was the answer.

I kept reading. There wasn't much on how Decay worked: none of the documented cases involved women surviving the process, according to the records. All of them became monsters, in the end. Decay worked to rewrite a person's soul, it said.

It warped humanity into something monstrous.

I didn't pretend, then, that I wasn't startlingly aroused at the very prospect of it happening to me. I just kept reading. When I finished one book, I found another. I read on and on. I learned about Kamilliajora's home world — what little was known or could be guessed, anyway.

I wanted to know it all. I needed to understand. If I armed myself with knowledge, and fortified myself with everything about monsters like her, then I could stop this from happening to other girls.

Other girls. That thought, too, sent a frisson of dark, deviant glee cascading through my nerves.

Still, I powered onward. I wouldn't let something as simple as this defeat me. I was Magisorcerer Tiana. I'd fought worse. I'd overcome horrifying creatures that had leveled city blocks. Desdemona wasn't even the first rogue summoner. I'd put away her two colleagues already.

So why?

Why did my... parts clench as I read about how there was evidence that within a Skvan'Volu's tail was a pocket dimension, meant to hold captives?

Why did I shove my hand between my legs, and thank that at this hour nobody went into the library?

Why did I keep reading and touching?

When I exhausted every scrap of paper — frustratingly little, all told — I went to the mystic healers on-site. They were there at all times. I asked for Essa. She knew me. I could trust her to be discreet when it came to this.

"Hello, Tiana," came her calm voice.

"I fought a Skvan'Volu," I said.

Essa's brow wrinkled, a crease etching itself into the middle. "What's that?"

"They're, um..." I filled her in on the details, but spared the more lurid elements. Essa didn't need to know.

She listened, then she nodded her head. "Alright, well hop up. I'll see if anything's wrong, okay?"

Waves of calming arcana flowed through my body as she cast the ritual. I felt the way it scoured my body. She'd find something wrong. They'd fix what Kamilliajora had done to me.

They'd make me right again. I wouldn't succumb to... that, again.

"I have good news," Essa said. "You're clean."

I felt numb. Horrible and wretched. I wanted to ask Essa to try it again. It must be wrong. Instead, I faked a bright smile, and acted like I hadn't been given a different death sentence.

When I left, it was 10 PM. All I wanted was another shower. My body felt wrong.

It felt too unconstrained.

Amal was waiting when I got back home. Lindsey had contacted her, she explained. Emotion choked her voice as she talked, something so rare I don't know if I'd ever seen it happen before.

"I'm sorry, but... she got away," Amal said. "I don't understand it. She cast a spell and just... went."

I broke down crying, then.

"We'll get her next time, okay? And there will be a next time," Amal assured me.

I nodded. I couldn't tell Amal that it was relief. I didn't understand it, but... I was relieved. Thankful, even, that Kamilliajora hadn't left this world.

Because I wanted it again.

I was sick in a way that I couldn't cure. I needed her in a way that put me at odds with everything the hollow, fake shell of the person that was Tiana Mackey professed to believe.

I wanted to be unmade. I wanted to be corrupted. My twisted little heart sung every time I even considered it.

And so I buried myself. I killed the girl I was, and buried her in the ground so that I wouldn't hurt anymore. People whispered after that about how I'd become "Magisorcerer Ice Queen Tiana".

It made me more popular than ever. More contracts, more success.

A cushy, six-figure job at a law firm.

People liked me more when I was broken. They loved and adored me. Untouchable, perfect blonde Magisorcerer Tiana. The Guild loved it, too.

Our marketing department was next to none. Fortune 500's poached from them all the time. The next GirlCon, I was the lead.

I was the star.

"—asking you to see this. To see me. To hear when I say that Desdemona should not be free.

Thank you." Kam finishes her speech and somewhere my past self feels healed. Even though she's not said a single word to me, just hearing her melts me.

And then she leaves, with Draxus chasing after.

The board adjourns afterward. I decline to add anything. I can't compete with that.

I didn't anticipate this outcome, but I'm happy with it. This, too, I can work to my advantage.

Normally, I teleport myself. For a small object, like an SD card, though? Easy enough to blink it toward me.

It's gone for ten minutes. Within the hour, I've leaked it to a dozen sites.

Once it gets the smallest amount of traction, I take to social media and deplore people leaking things like this. My outrage gets re-shared.

The popularity of Kam's speech explodes. I make her a star. A darling.

Then I dare to do something I shouldn't. It's probably enough that people are discovering her. If she plays this right, she'll make a fortune.

She'll be famous.

She'll understand how miserable it is.

But she's good. Frustratingly good, and moral. So I open Signal, and type.

T: You've gone viral.