Miss Trickett returns!

"What," said Trickett, "is the meaning of this?"

She stood in the doorway, arms folded under her full breasts, face like thunder as she surveyed the chaos before her. The audience turned to stare as she strode up the aisle towards the stage. It was probably the only thing that could have convinced them to take their eyes off the pair of trembling topless girls, currently exactly one second away from having their panties pulled down around their ankles, with Anne kneeling in between them.

"Uh," said Anne, letting go of the panties. Bonnie and Susie sighed with relief as she scrambled to her feet, dusting off her cheerleader outfit as Miss Trickett marched towards her, cold black eyes regarding her with a freezing stare that seemed to lock the homecoming queen in place. "I can explain." She glanced guiltily at the girls, and took a step back, trying to make it look like she had nothing to do with them.

"Please," said Miss Trickett, in a wintry voice, as she somehow managed to get up on stage without straining the fabric of her cheongsam in the slightest, despite the complete absence of any kind of ladder or staircase, "do."

"Well. Um. When you left, they were still hypnotised. So I thought. Uh."

"You thought what, exactly?"

"Well. I was. Uh. Curious."

"Really," said Trickett, sounding like she didn't believe a word of it. "And why, pray tell, are they in their undergarments?"

At the back of the tent, a cheerleader was edging slowly towards the door. "Stop," said Trickett, and the cheerleader, a petite brunette named Monique who happened to be an exchange student from France, hastily regained her seat. "Well? I'm waiting, Anne."

"I might have. Uh. Made them. Take their clothes off?"

"Why," said Trickett, ice in her tone, "did you do that?"

"I thought it would be funny," said Anne, wretchedly. It was beginning to occur to her that she might, in some lights, be considered to have done something wrong. "But I can see why that was wrong now. So I'll just. Uh."

"Hypnosis," said Trickett, "is not a joke. It's not a game. It's an exploration of the deepest secrets of the human consciousness, a voyage to the inside of Mind itself. One does not **** the inner mysteries of the spirit merely to embarrass one's friends."

"I can see that now. Yes. It's just," said Anne, and swallowed. "It turns out I really, really like hypnosis."

"So?"

"So I was going to ask you. Um. Do you think. You could teach me?"

Trickett's eyes narrowed.

"Everyone out," she said. "Now. Except the cheerleaders. Bonnie, Susie, I'm so sorry about all this. I'm going to ask some of your friends to look after you until the suggestible state wears off and the two of you are yourselves again. I'm afraid it might take an hour, or two, or possibly more. Those two young men down the front look trustworthy."

"We'll look after them," said Ben, as Susie said, "Wait."

"It's terrible what Anne did," said Hank, as Bonnie said, "Hold on."

"We were trying to stop them," he added, climbing up on stage with Ben, putting a comforting arm around Bonnie's shoulders and gently ushering her towards the backstage exit. He held her tightly, although in no way actually covering her body, turning her away from Trickett so she didn't see him clap a hand over her protesting mouth. "But it was just impossible. She hypnotised us too, actually. I was going to call you but she took away my cell phone, and then..."

Ben nudged him to shut up. He had Susie trotting along behind him, mouth unmuzzled, having already whispered "Come quietly," in her ear. Moving quickly, before anyone could stop them absconding with their suggestible prizes, the two boys snuck out the back of the tent. The chairs had rapidly emptied as the crowd fled out the door, leaving only a dozen or so **** but immobile cheerleaders sitting in a row up the back.

Trickett crooked a finger, beckoning them up on stage.

"Now, girls," she said, as they stood before her, a row of gorgeous young women, trembling in their red and yellow costumes, each a world-class beauty in her own special and unique way. With a gesture, she told Anne to join the line. "Let's have a little conversation about embarrassment."

And the jade pendulum emerged from a hidden pocket in her cheongsam.