Probably not what she did. That was a surprise even to her.

She slid one foot along the bathroom tiles. Blood stuck where it had seeped from Bryant’s torso. She didn’t look there; she looked to her shin, where yesterday morning’s translucent carapace had now hardened into ugly gray armor that would’ve been the envy of those cops at the door. As if her body needed armor.

“Adaptation,” she whispered, echoing Doc.

Doc could’ve made logical ties between experiences and changes, cause and effect. The shin carapace felt obvious. Yaya couldn’t explain her latest teeth.

She wondered if Magenta had developed a taste for blood as some biological coping mechanism for Yaya’s depression, a way to keep it from slowing them down.

How far would adaptation go? If she climbed onto Bryant’s roof and jumped off, would Magenta shoot wings from Yaya’s shoulder blades and guide them unharmed to the ground? Unlikely the metamorphosis worked so fast; this seemed a gradual process. Quick, but not instant, and every bodily change accrued a cost. Sometimes peanut butter. Sometimes more. A fall would kill Yaya like anyone else. She was not immortal.

Her hand drifted through the tub water—steamy yet sublime. She shut off the faucet and let the tub cool a moment. Too fast, and her skin might thicken.

She would lose feeling then, and she’d spent too much of her life feeling too little. Better to feel everything she could, sink into it, enjoy it.

Immersed in the tub again, she watched the warm water pluck red scales from her leg. Yaya would have to hope neither of those cops suspected foul play, too embarrassed or lecherous to wonder about that red raindrop.

Her fingers stroked too high, crossing sensitive folds. She let them wander, one fingertip tracing the side of her crocodilian teeth, and a powerful shudder rocked her spine. She tried again, fingertips beginning at the base of her cleft and stroking toward her chest.

If only Doc were here.

She was charming in a nonsensically determined way. Responsibility still

mattered to her. Yaya supposed that meant she should care, too. She and Magenta both had a fondness for Doc, and what she cared about warranted at least some consideration. Yaya had always made her intimacy and pleasure someone else’s responsibility. Her Friday Night Alternatives vibrator was more a distraction from glum evenings than a relationship between herself and her body. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d truly indulged.

Then again, her body hadn’t seemed to care in return. Now she had Magenta, changing her, no choice in that. Yaya would have balked at that once, but there was a freedom in having no choice. No guilt, no crushing stones on her mind. Magenta was the gateway. Maybe there was a lesson here, that the freedom was inside her all along, or the vagina monster was the friend she’d made along the way. Something silly like that.

Silliness made her smile wider and reach deeper. Every muscle in her body went taut and then shuddered, splashing bathwater over the rim of the tub. She was loud again, but she hoped that if any of Bryant’s neighbors wandered outside now, they would feel too embarrassed to call the cops over this kind of scream.