After my ten minutes in magical-girl mode I switched back to my non-magical girl body, then went upstairs and got changed again. Instead of the dress I went with the leggings and a t-shirt, and I pulled on my hoodie as well. The leggings and shirt were Ellie's suggestion, she figured they were most likely to survive an unexpected shift back into my guy shape. Although I really hoped that wouldn't happen.

  I understood what she said about uncharted territory and stuff, but if the early transformation didn't mess up the exponential increase thing then ten minutes in the pink form should turn into between five and six hours as a normal girl. Or longer, depending on if the clock reset when I used the ring, or if it added the new time to whatever was left on the countdown before.

  Either way Harper set the stopwatch on his phone, so when I did finally shift back to my guy body he'd log it and Ellie could use that data to adjust her theory again.

  All that was behind us now anyways, since the five of us were squeezed into my mom's car for the trip to Owen Sound. Mom was driving and Harper was next to her in the passenger seat, because he needed the extra head and leg room. And I ended up in the middle of the back seat for the forty-five minute drive, with Ellie on my left and Amelia to my right.

  It was right around nine o'clock as we set out, and as soon as we turned north onto the main road my sister spoke up.

  "So mom?" she asked, "Are you ready to answer our questions now like you said?"

  Mom sighed, "Yes hon, I am. First though I'm going to ask you to promise me you'll never tell anyone what I'm about to tell you. All right?"

  "Fine," Amelia replied as she rolled her eyes.

  "I need you to promise it," mom stated.

  My sister frowned, "Fine, I promise I won't tell anyone about this stuff."

  "Bke?" mom asked, "You too please."

  I already expected that, and I figured she'd get my friends to swear it too. So I nodded, "Yes mom, I promise I won't share this stuff with anyone."

  "Same," Ellie said, not even waiting to be asked. "I swear I won't share this information with anyone."

  Harper went st, "Me too, I promise not to share any of your secrets with anyone."

  "Thank you all," mom said. "One more thing before I start, ok? I don't want any interruptions. If you have questions save them until I'm finished. Same with any reactions or comments."

  I smirked as I gently elbowed my best friend, "That means you Ellie. No blurting out questions or conspiracy theories."

  She blushed and mumbled, "Yeah I get it."

  Mom took a deep breath, then let it out in a long sigh before she started talking.

  "Bke, Amelia," she addressed us, "Like I said earlier, there's some things I've kept from you two for your own safety. To be blunt, I've lied about certain details. The biggest of which is regarding my family. I'm not an only child, and my mother is still alive."

  Hearing that sent a shock through me, and I could tell from the look on my sister's face she was just as surprised.

  Meanwhile mom continued, "I have a sister, her name is Leslie. She's the one who dropped the ring off in our mailbox on Friday, she's the person I yelled at on the phone on Sunday. And I spoke with her again st night, after you told me about your attack yesterday Bke."

  With another sigh mom stated, "Leslie and I have a difficult retionship, but we are still on speaking terms. The reason she and I aren't any closer is that she is also on speaking terms with our mother. My mother is not a good or nice person, she is not the kindly doting grandma you might be picturing. She's a difficult and driven woman, and she is dangerous."

  "Those men who attacked you Bke were working for my mother," she stated. "That's the kind of person she is. She'd send brutal violent men to assault her own grandchild. They were probably ordered not to kill you, and that would have been her idea of showing her grandchild mercy."

  By that point I was starting to feel nauseous again, and I almost wished mom didn't tell us anything after all. Amelia looked kind of pale too, for that matter so did Ellie. On the other hand I had even more questions than before, and I was sure everyone else did too. My best friend especially looked like she was doing her best to hold back until mom finished.

  Mom took a brief pause to collect her thoughts, then she started talking again. "Leslie brought me the ring so I could study it. It's been in our family's possession since nineteen seventy-nine, we've been trying to extract its secrets for the st forty-five years. My grandfather didn't have any success with it, then after he died my mother took over. She gave it to Leslie st year and asked her to see if she could get anywhere with it. And my sister decided to give it to me. Not that she thought I'd have any better luck understanding how it works, but I think she wanted me to have it just to keep it out of mother's clutches."

  "Unfortunately that backfired, and now my mother knows where it is and who's wearing it," she added with another sigh.

  Mom paused again there, and from the look on her face I figured she was trying to decide whether or not to tell us anything else. It was probably a full minute before she spoke up again.

  "I'm not ready yet to talk about why my family have been studying the ring," she stated. "Nor do I want to discuss what else my family has been up to. Suffice to say, as bad as my mother is, my grandfather and great-grandfather were worse. I don't know all the details, but I do know that my grandfather got his hands on that ring by killing its former owner. And I believe my mother helped him do it."

  Then she admitted with a sigh, "That's why I asked you to take off the ring when you first revealed it to me Bke. It was for your own safety, because I know what my mother is capable of when something stands in her way."

  That sent another shock through me, and my eyes drifted down towards the ring again. In fact it was a double-shock. First there was the knowledge that my great-grandfather murdered a magical girl. And second, the realization that the ring wouldn't make me invulnerable. If its former owner was killed, that meant I could be killed too.

  Then I realized, it wouldn't have been that hard if the former owner wasn't in her magical-girl mode at the time. In fact the more I thought about it the more likely that seemed, based on my own experience at Crawford's yesterday. It still left me feeling uncomfortable though, knowing all someone had to do was get to me while I was in my non-magical form.

  Meanwhile mom continued, "Finally, my mother hopes to complete something my great-grandfather started and my grandfather continued. Neither Leslie or I want anything to do with it though. I walked out and turned my back on the whole affair, but like I said earlier Leslie is still on speaking terms with mother. And I suspect our mother believes she'll convince Leslie to come back. Maybe that's why she sent my sister the ring in the first pce."

  After that mom finally went quiet. Then a minute or so ter we ended up stopped at a red light, and she gnced over her shoulder at me and Amelia before looking towards the road again.

  "All right," she sighed once more. "I'm sure you all have endless questions, but let's do this one at a time please. Amelia?"

  My sister seemed overwhelmed, same as me. But she did manage to blurt out something like a question.

  "Mom what the hell?!" she demanded.

  Needless to say mom didn't have an answer to that so she moved on to me, "Bke?"

  There was a lot of stuff I wanted to know, but there was one question that really stuck out. "If your family's had the ring for so long, how come nobody ever tried wearing it?"

  "They did try," mom replied. "I don't know about my grandfather, but my mother wore it and tried to activate it several times. Fortunately it never worked for her. And needless to say, she never had any trouble taking it off again afterwards. It was the same for my sister, she never got anywhere with it either."

  That left me wondering why it worked for me, when I had no idea what it even was. Mom obviously didn't know the answer to that, since she already said she didn't think it'd work for someone who was born a guy.

  Meanwhile she asked, "Harper? Do you have any questions?"

  The tall handsome jock shook his head, "The only questions I can think of are the ones you said you don't want to talk about."

  Ellie was practically vibrating in her seat by that point, so when mom addressed her my best friend was almost bursting at the seams. She asked, "I know you said you didn't want to discuss why your family's studying the ring, but I'd like to know how they're studying it? What does that even mean, how do you study a magic ring?"

  Mom was quiet for a couple more seconds before answering, "My family have always excelled in academia. I'd have followed that path as well, but needless to say my mother cut off the money for my tuition when we had our falling out. My mother has a PhD, she teaches high-energy physics at a university I'm not going to name. I'm pretty sure she only bothers with teaching because it gets her access to research grants and a lot of very specialized equipment."

  "My sister is also a university prof," mom added. "She teaches at Lakehead over in Orillia."

  Ellie sounded shocked as she commented, "Oh wow. I actually thought about going to Lakehead, before me and Bke settled on Georgian..."

  Meanwhile my mom continued, "In addition to their formal education, both my mother and sister, and myself too for that matter, have also been trained in certain 'arcane' knowledge and skills. Things you won't learn from any science course, or at any college or university."

  "So you really do know magic after all?!" Amelia excimed. "What sort of stuff can you do? Can you show us some spells? Is it cool? And can you teach it to me?"

  Once again it took mom a few seconds to respond, like she was probably considering her answer again. She finally sighed, "What we do is best described as ritual magic. It's not the sort of thing you do in the spur of the moment, and it is most definitely not something you'd do in a moving vehicle to show off because it's 'cool'."

  "When you say ritual magic," Ellie asked, "Do you mean like ceremonial magic? With circles and candles and altars and all that stuff? Like modern Wicca, or Golden Dawn?"

  I found myself looking at my best friend in surprise, I had no idea she knew about any occult stuff. Then again maybe I shouldn't have been that shocked, since she was definitely into a lot of weird things.

  Mom shook her head, then grimaced. "Yes and no? No, we're not talking about Wicca or Golden Dawn or Thelema or anything else you'll find in popur culture, or even in obscure book stores. But yes in that we are talking about circles and altars. I suppose if you're familiar with something like a Wiccan magic circle, you'd recognize some general aspects of that in the sorts of things my family does. But the details would be very different."

  "So can we see some of this when we get back home?" Amelia asked. "And what kind of stuff do you do with it anyways?"

  "I don't," mom stated. "I haven't used that magic in years, and I have no intention of taking it up again. I'm sorry hon, but it's not good and I don't want to see either you or Bke corrupted by it."

  My sister looked disappointed, but she seemed to get the message and stopped asking.

  Then Ellie spoke up again, "So um, I'm sorry if this is a silly question but I have to ask. Do you know if any of that magical girl stuff dates back to the nineteen fifties? Do you know if any of this stuff took pce in the Marshall Isnds around that time?"

  Mom took another deep breath then let it out in one more long sigh. Then she nodded, "Yes Ellie, but I don't want to go into any further details right now."

  "In fact if you kids don't mind," mom added, "I'd like to leave the whole conversation behind us. Maybe we can talk more about this ter, but for now let's try and focus on something a little nicer. Ok?"

  I nodded, "All right mom. Thanks for expining some of it anyways."

  Unfortunately nobody had anything else they really wanted to talk about, so we all just rode in silence for a while. We'd already passed Holnd Centre and were approaching Chatsworth which meant we were more than half-way to our destination, but there was still about fifteen minutes before we got into town.

  Amelia pulled out her phone and started pying a game or something, but Ellie and Harper and I just looked out the windows and watched the countryside go by. It wasn't much to look at though, mostly just rolling hills and a patchwork of farmnd, with the occasional trees and small river or stream.

  Then a few minutes ter my best friend suddenly spoke up as we drove past a sign to Inglis Falls. She sounded a bit uneasy as she commented, "Mrs. Palmer I think someone might be following us? Maybe I'm just being paranoid, but there's a bck pick-up truck that seems to be pacing us about a hundred meters back?"

  "I know," mom replied calmly. "I first spotted them when we were stuck at the lights in Markdale."

  She added, "There's also a motorcycle that seems to be tailing us as well, although that one's doing a better job of staying out of sight."

  Hearing that left me feeling anxious again. And while I knew it definitely wasn't the same biker from yesterday, I couldn't help worrying it was maybe one of his friends. And that both the biker and whoever was driving the pick-up were going to attack me and my family and friends, to try and get at the magic ring.

  It wasn't just me either, both Ellie and Harper seemed worried too. Even Amelia looked up from her game with an uneasy expression on her face.

  "So what do we do?" I asked. "We can't just ignore them, right?"

  Mom remained calm as she replied, "We stick together, and we stay in public locations. Whoever they are, I'm certain they won't try anything if they'll be seen by other people."

  She sounded confident, but I remained anxious as we finally reached town. Mom turned left and followed what little traffic there was past some residential areas and into the downtown. Then we turned south onto one of the main streets, and pulled into a parking spot in a public lot.

  "And here we are," mom announced.

  PurpleCatGirl