(Subplot) So Near, So Far..

Maggie hummed happily to herself as the jets of water from the top of the range shower in her en suite bathroom flowed powerfully onto her body. Nobody knew it yet, but she'd had a very productive day. Maggie hadn't talked to anyone about just how far her digital efforts had progressed in case Rebecca happened to be listening. Sophie's disappearance had come after she had commented out loud about how close she was getting to exposing the witch and how determined she was to do it, after all. So if anyone did ask about her attempts to crack the code she had been chipping away at for the past few days, Maggie either gave a vague answer or played down her success so far.

In fact, she knew now she was now very close to hacking the Melanie Does Anything app. That didn't mean she could free her friend from it. There was clearly a very heavy magical element to the app that technology could do nothing to counteract. But there were other things she and the glitches would be able to do once they were in the system. They could delete requests, monitor exactly where Mel was and see the details of who had hired her at any given time and, potentially, hire her for themselves and keep her at the mansion indefinitely.

The best part of it all was that Maggie had trained AI to carry on her good work if anything did happen to her. She just needed to let someone, like Cassie perhaps, know about that when she felt confident neither of them would be seen and also slip her password to her. She decided she would do that tomorrow morning. For this evening, with just about everyone else in their rooms for the night, she had decided to treat herself to a mammoth celebratory self-pleasure session followed by a shower.

As she stepped dripping from the bathroom, Maggie couldn't help but feel a strange sense that she was being watched. It was hard to explain, probably just the intense paranoia that having Rebecca looming in the background at all times tended to sow. She shook it off and sat on the bed, waiting until she was dry enough to attempt to get some rest. The temperatures here compared to Nevada made that a longer process, but she was probably buzzing too much to sleep yet anyway. Instead she grabbed her water bottle and took a deep, satisfying swig. It tasted very slightly off, not in a bad way. Just a little sweeter than plain bottled water ought to.

Then suddenly everything felt very strange. The room was huge, the water bottle bigger than she was. A horrible, mortifying realisation hit her. Rebecca had struck! Looking down at her green webbed hands, Maggie's mind went into a blind panic. She had been turned into a frog, just like Lexie! She had known there was a possibility something like this could happen, but the thought and reality of this situation were two extremely different things. How long was this going to last? What was she supposed to do while she was like this? It was an extremely scary sensation.

Maggie's instant explanation was that Rebecca must have known how close she was getting to hacking MDA. But how? Was she a mind reader? Could she understand complex AI coding? And why did this spell feel so un-Rebecca like? The witch had performed all of her spells on glitches up until now in front of others as a warning. Transformations had been performed with a big theatrical flash-bang , not quietly and privately after dark. So far she had always used a different spell on each glitch she had cursed too, as if to keep them all speculating what their punishment might be if they stepped out of line. Now she was back to the classic frog spell witches used in fairy tales? Then again, who else did Maggie know of that could possibly do something like this to her?

What happened next was even harder to explain though, as she suddenly felt herself being grabbed by invisible hands and carried through the air, out of her room and into the hallway, until she was set down outside Cassie and Barbie's door. She needed to get their attention immediately.

"RIIIIIBIT! RIIIIBIT!"

Sure enough Barbie came to the door, but she was smiling as if this was a pleasing development.

"Well, hello my little froggie princess! Did you go off exploring?"

Wait, no! She wasn't Lexie! And where was Lexie if not with Barbie? No amount of croaking could communicate anything Maggie needed to say or ask right now though as Barbie wedged her between her giant - even at human but certainly at frog size - boobs and carried her into the bedroom where Cassie was sat on the bed.

"Ribbit! Ribbit!"

"Oh hey Lex, we were starting to think you'd got bored of us" Cassie joked.

Shit! Maggie was literally going to explain the AI situation to Cass and give her the password to her laptop tomorrow morning. How was she supposed to convey any of that information now? And how long before they even realised that she wasn't Lexie?