"I'll be there!" I promised.

And then, still nude and feminine,

I stretched out on the bed and proceeded to sleep more comfortably than I

had for months. Tomorrow, I was returning to Malehood!

First, though, there was something I wanted to take care of. I had promised Eric that I would show up that morning to help him finish his last shot of the day, and I meant to keep that promise. After all, I told myself, he was basically kind of a nice guy who needed help, and I guess in a way, you could say he was responsible for getting me out of the mess that I was in before Janna hired me.

So that morning, I dressed once more in my feminine finery, tucked the Twenty Thousand from Janna carefully in my purse, and took a cab to the Treloar Building, where Eric, Miko and Ushi were waiting for me.

"Good job!" Eric said when I arrived, "Can you believe these two were waiting here for me? Want some coffee before we start?"

I looked at the simmering pot of what was obviously yesterday's coffee reheated for today and wondered how anyone could drink the bitter stuff. But ERic gulped down a cup and we got started.

Today's set up was for January, and Eric had arranged a striking

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New Year's tableau. Miko and Ushi were back in their Christmas Elf costumes, standing behind a big mockup of a Baby Crib. Only where most cribs have bars of cheap, flimsy wood, the bars on this one were of heavy bamboo, screwed firmly into place. And it had a matching lid, complete with a big shiney padlock! It was into this crib that I was locked... once I'd been suitably costumed!

"Suitably Costumed" in this case meant that I was stripped completely naked and covered with Baby Oil. Then I was fixed up with an oversized diaper made of soft silk lace, folded into a triangle and pinned together with a big safety pin used for horse blankets. Next came pink satin booties and gloves. Only these were actually little bags, fixed with drawstrings to lace them tightly over my hands and feet. The bags looked delicate and baby-like, but once they were tied into place, I found that they were surprisingly strong and heavy, cramping my hands up into useless half-fists and forcing me to arch my feet and curl my toes. And when they had been laced securely onto my wrists and ankles, Eric tied the drawstrings together with only about a foot of slack between them, forcing me to stay down on my hands and knees! A big pink baby bonnet and a pacifier came next, the pacifier

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