Heda laughed, then kissed Madison again.

"C'mon, let's go party. You don't have to get back to the station do you?"

"No, I finished up early today. I think I might be able to tie in from here if I can get the station's permission. I could actually do a show from here."

"You are the single coolest chick ever," Heda replied, hauling the girl up the stairs.

Madison could barely decide what to do with herself. She went from dancing with Joanna, Heda, Peter, and Sasha to talking music with Kevin while getting a friendly shoulder rub from Anthony. Carla was crashed on the couch with her head in Madison's lap, and Edgar and Billy were playing full contact Super Mario Kart. Apparently smacking your opponent on the back of the head to make them turn their animated little go-cart off the edge of a cliff was perfectly acceptable game etiquette.

Shifters were often a touchy-feely lot. Animals often used touch as a form of communication, and shifters kept that part of their animal selves. Madison had never had this. Sasha was human and Billy well, Billy was a turtle. His totem animal tended to sit in a river and mind its own damn business. Madison was glad that the lights were dim, because she was so happy that she was on the verge of tears.

"Hey Madison," Kevin said, "wanna participate in an experiment?"

Madison scanned the room and saw that Kevin was holding up a rolled object about the size of a cigarette.

"Kevin!" Heda said, "you do NOT need to get her involved in that shit."

Madison scrunched her face.

“Hey, YOU did it. Why can't I try?"

Heda was about to object, but the girl was right.

"Are you sure?"

Kevin raised his right hand as if making a pledge.

"I specially engineered this stuff to be mild and non-addictive. I would never give a newbie anything more serious."

Heda looked at Madison and shrugged.

“It's up to you."

Madison gingerly took the “special” joint. Experimentation WAS part of the college experience.

An hour later, even Heda had to admit that a stoned Madison was pretty damn funny. The bat shifter coughed a lot at first, then was absolutely convinced that there was nothing going on. Then she got giggly.

"Watching" Billy and Peter play their video game was the absolute funniest thing that she'd ever seen. She commented several times that Joanna had the nicest boobs she'd ever scanned, then apparently needed to confess to Sasha that she thought the whole naughty librarian thing was the best idea that Billy had ever had.

This had lead to Sasha chasing Billy all over the house in faux rage while everyone EXCEPT Madison laughed. Madison was confused why Sasha was annoyed. Then the bat shifter got hungry, and wound up being driven by Heda to one of the twenty-four hour grocery stores so that she could load up on Gummi-Worms. When they got back to the house, she wanted to shift into a bat and hunt the ferocious edible annelids, but Heda managed to talk her out of it. Kevin was simply amazed that her ability to create high-definition three-dimensional sonar images was apparently unaffected, though her interpretation of those images was more . . . colorful.

"Okay, time for Madison to go to bed," Heda said at last.

"It's WAY past your bedtime.

"]]

"I'm a creature of the night," Madison said haughtily, pushing at Heda's shoulders, “so you can't tell me. . you have nice shoulders," she continued, her train of thought deraiting as she ran her hands over those very shoulders. She turned to where Joanna had been.