I woke up with a mouth as dry as the Sahara, an ache in my gut, a burning in my head, and a silver dollar sized amulet in my hand.

"You had better be worth it," I told the amulet.

And it irised opened, revealing a golden glowing eye that looked back at me without blinking.

"Okay. Maybe it was a fair price."

The air stank of dried blood, but there was none to be seen anywhere.

The Lady had been particularly ravenous.

I sat the amulet down and stumbled over to my clothing and slipped it on … only to discover that my pants were much too big now.

The Lady hadn't just wanted blood this time—she had taken meat.

I stumbled into the bathroom and looked at myself in the mirror.

"Well, it'll never beat Jenny Craig, but I can't argue about the results."

I was at least 50 pounds thinner—my face was gaunt, but defined. My green eyes seemed even greener than before. The marks of the Lady's teeth on my torso seemed to shine faintly in the mirror but were not visible on my flesh when I looked at it directly.

"I hope I don't have to do that again anytime soon."

I shucked my clothing off and crawled into the shower and stayed there until I felt halfway human again. Once I was done, I put my clothing back on, cinching my belt until my pants wouldn't fall down. I placed the silver amulet on my shirt directly under my chin. It stayed there as though glued to my shirt.

The wards expired when I opened the door.

Rogue was standing in front of me. "Hello, sugah. Thought Ah invite you to breakfast … Kyle! What happened to you?"

"What's the matter? Don't like the new look?" I flashed her a smile.

"It's different, sugah. Are you okay?"

"I'm fine. I've got something here to help us find your playmates from last night. We'll need to go back to where we last saw them." I shrugged. "Or at least I do. I suppose you might have other plans with Tall, Dark, and Cajuny."

For a moment, those beautiful eyes—green, but a lighter, cleaner green than mine—looked sad. "Not today, sugah. He said something about needing to take care of something."

"Well his loss could be my gain—if you're free."

"Ah'm free. Got nothing else to do today." She slipped her arm through mine. "Ah'm all yours today, sugah."

"Ah, if only I were that lucky." I sighed dramatically.

She rolled her eyes. "Don't go overboard, sugah."

"The word 'self-restraint' is foreign to me."

"Ah can believe that. So how do we do this?"

"Well, we head back to where Wolverine tried to turn me into a pincushion—"

"He didn't try to turn you into a pincushion. He only threatened to turn you into a pincushion."

"That makes me feel so much better."

"Trust me, sugah. If Wolvie had wanted you dead, we wouldn't be talkin' right now."

"Wonderful. So you're telling I can trust him because he didn't kill me when he was just annoyed at me?"

"You think that you might do something later to make him want to kill you, sugah?"

I couldn't meet her eyes. "You never know. I don't plan on it, but the world's a funny place sometimes."

"Kyle …"

I didn't want to look at her when she said my name like that. It was dangerous—dangerous to me, dangerous to her. "Rogue, let's just concentrate on business."

She was quiet for a moment. "All right. C'mon. Ah could fly us there but we should probably try to do this low-key. We'll get a car out of the garage."

"Sounds good to me. Can we stop for breakfast? I'm starved."

"Ah can believe it. Are you goin' to tell me just how you managed to lose all that weight?"

"Would you believe a tapeworm? A really BIG tapeworm?"

"Ah'm gonna pretend you didn't say that 'cause that'd be awfully disgusting—and more than a little creepy."

"Smart girl."

We stopped at a drive-thru on the way back to the shop. I didn't eat as much as I normally would have—for one thing, I was sitting next to a pretty girl I was trying awfully hard to impress—for another my gut did had been through about three kinds of hell last night and let me know in no uncertain terms that it wasn't going to tolerate much trouble from me today.

"When we're done here, we should take you shopping, Kyle. You could use a new wardrobe to show off that fine new body of yours."

I shrugged. "Probably not worth it. Not like anyone's going to be looking anyway." She started to give me a look. "Eyes on the road, baby doll."

"Ah'm not a baby. Ah'm a real live girl."

"Oh hell yeah. I fully support that statement."

She giggled. "Charmer."

"I have my moments." I paused for a moment. "Emma told me. About your powers, I mean."

"So you know Ah'm a look but don't touch kinda girl, huh?"

"So I've heard. That bites."

"You could say that."

And for the rest of the drive, neither one of us said a word.