The campus was dead quiet this early. Good. The fewer people who saw me shuffling along in Rose's borrowed sneakers, the better.

Walking on talons was less of a disaster and more of a dumb chore now. Rose's shoes had enough room that my front toes could spread out, and my back toe just hooked along the side of my ankle. Every step still felt like walking in high heels made out of weird. Fine. I was getting used to weird.

I'd texted Gibson back the second I got her message. One word: "coming." She'd replied with the lab number and a key emoji, which was weirdly cheerful for a woman who was turning into a rooster. I wanted to believe in the lead. I needed to.

The science building was empty. Fluorescent lights hummed overhead, and my footsteps echoed down the hall. I tried the lab door. Locked, just like last time. I dug out the key and let myself in.

The smell hit me before the door clicked shut. Chicken shit. Heavy and hot, white smears crusting the floor, fresh droppings near the corner. The place smelled like the coop on a bad day. I'd expected it, but my nose still wrinkled.

"Professor Gibson?"

No answer.

I moved deeper, stepping around the mess. The lab bench was cleared off, and the incubator blinked like it had something alive inside. But no Gibson.

Then I heard it. A sound from the storage room. Muffled and rhythmic, like something sliding against a hard surface. Underneath it, a low, breathy noise that could have been a moan or a cluck.

I knew I shouldn't open that door. I opened it anyway.

The storage room was a cramped little space full of boxes and old equipment. Crouched in the middle of it was Professor Gibson — buck naked. Completely, gloriously, horribly naked. No lab coat, no scrap of fabric, nothing. Her shoulders were tight and slick with sweat, her back arched as she rocked forward against a pillow wedged under her, grinding her cloaca into the fabric in slow, hungry circles. The sounds she was making were half-moan, half-cluck.

And the tail. Oh, the tail.

I'd seen it last night in my dorm, when she dropped her jeans. That had been full and iridescent, gorgeous in a way that made me want to scream. This was bigger. Greener, bluer, gold at the …