By a Silver Thread (DFZ Changeling Book 1), page 16
Just the memory was enough to make her twitch, causing the humans to tighten their fingers on their guns. She’d had breakdowns before but never anything close to that fast, or that big. Her memories of the incident were chaotic, but Lola was sure her monster must have been twenty feet tall by the end, which was crazy. Even with all her gossamer intact, she’d never been able to take a form that big. If that strange boy hadn’t appeared with her pill, who knew how bad things might have gotten?
Happy as she was for the assist, though, the boy represented a whole other bag of problems. Given her reaction to his voice, Lola was certain he was a fairy, but why would a random fairy help her like that? She hadn’t gotten a taste of his gossamer, but she was pretty sure she’d never met him before. He hadn’t looked shocked at the sight of her monster, though, and he’d known exactly how to use her pills. Those were supposed to be a secret to everyone except Victor’s closest people and a few special exceptions like Tristan, so how had this random fairy known to grab a pill off the ground and shove it into her mouth?
She fretted over it for the whole drive, which turned out to be a long one. Lola couldn’t see where they were going from the back of the SWAT truck, but they had to be well outside the DFZ by this point. Where outside the city, though, she couldn’t begin to guess. The brightly lit warehouse they dragged her into when they finally stopped could have been anywhere.
At least the guards let her walk on her own this time. The SWAT team formed a circle around her, marching Lola through a pair of security doors and down a long hall that was clearly part of a prison facility. The cell they stopped at was a windowless cement box with spellwork-covered walls clearly designed to hold mages.
Not actually being a mage, Lola didn’t care about that. She was far more upset about the inch-thick wall of bulletproof glass. Steel bars she could have shifted through no problem, but those tiny air holes would have been a challenge even at her best, which she most definitely was not. Add in the cameras bolted to every wall, and Lola’s hopes for wiggling out of this trap were sinking lower by the second.
At least the SWAT team didn’t stick around. The second she was in the cell, the cops started marching down the hall so fast, they were practically running. Lola didn’t blame them. She might not actually be the blood mage they thought she was, but if she’d seen the thing she’d turned into back in the parking lot, she’d have run away too.
Once they were out of sight, Lola shrank her wrists a fraction to give herself some room inside the tight handcuffs and walked over to test the glass. Sure enough, it was thick as a brick. The air holes were way up high too. She’d have to drastically stretch her shape to reach them, which was a no-go due to the cameras. If her gossamer hadn’t been in such sorry shape, she might have risked it, but now that Lola no longer had six cops browbeating her with their belief that she was an evil—but human!—blood mage, her magic was jerking all over the place.
Pulling her magic in tight in a vain effort to keep herself together, Lola slid down the glass and closed her eyes to focus on the car she’d left in the parking lot. Leaving so much of her gossamer behind had been a calculated risk. The missing chunk made her weaker, but unlike this body, her car was still in the DFZ. If she could just switch her consciousness over, she could cut this form free and flit right back to where the Paladin had dropped her pills.
There was no reason it shouldn’t have worked. All of her was made from the same gossamer, which meant any body she took was just a conceit. A real fairy could have done it, but Lola wasn’t one of those. She wasn’t even a properly functioning changeling anymore. Even with the taste of Victor’s pill still coating her tongue, Lola could already feel the monster lurking just under her skin. If she stretched her magic too far, the control Victor’s blood had given her would snap, and she’d be lost again.
She had to do something, though, so Lola gave it a try, clenching her fists as she struggled to imagine the car as her body and this body as dust. She could still feel the coupe clearly somewhere to the north, but the moment she tried to reach out, she knew it wouldn’t work. She was just too fragile. Her gossamer was already as soft as paraffin wax, and her mind wasn’t doing much better. Every time she went to push, she saw the monster waiting to eat her, and her magic fell apart.
Lola slammed her fists down on the white-painted cement floor. On her wrist beneath the handcuffs, her sister’s silver thread began to lash in reply, jerking so hard that it cut through her softening gossamer. Lola clutched her bound hands to her chest at once, looking nervously at the camera despite the fact that no human but Victor had ever been able to see it.
“Shh,” she whispered, bending down to kiss the jerking thread as she smoothed her gossamer back over it. “It’s all right. I’ll get us out of here somehow.”
As ever, she had no idea if her sister could hear her, but Lola said the words with as much confidence as she could muster, because she needed to hear them, too. No matter how tired and weak she felt right now, if it was for her sister, she could endure. Lola had already survived more for her sister’s sake than she ever could have managed on her own. This was no different. She could do it. She just had to—
“If you’re going to lie to yourself, you should at least make it believable.”
Lola jumped so high, she lost her balance and crashed onto the cold cement floor. She scrambled back to her knees a second later, whipping around to see a small figure standing on the other side of the glass wall.
It was the boy from before, the fairy. He still looked golden and perfect in the harsh prison lights, and his voice was still the loveliest thing she’d ever heard. But there was something unsettling about the way he was grinning down at her, like a cat playing with a mouse.
“Who are you?” Lola demanded, folding the wrist with her sister’s thread against her chest. “Why are you following me?”
“Me? Follow you?” He laughed, a beautiful, cruel sound. “Don’t be ridiculous. I wouldn’t lift a finger for a changeling. I’m only here because of her.”
He pointed at the wrist Lola was jealously guarding, and the silver thread gave its strongest jerk yet, ripping through the protective layer of gossamer Lola had just pressed over it to shine like a flame in the harsh fluorescents.
“There’s my lovely!” the fairy said, his face splitting into a dazzling smile before turning to a scowl as his golden eyes went back to Lola. “You upset my treasure. She doesn’t like it when you panic.”
Lola felt as if the floor had fallen out from under her. She didn’t even feel her jumping gossamer anymore. The whole world had shrunk to the smiling boy standing on the other side of the glass.
“You’re the fairy who stole my sister.”
The boy looked insulted. “There are fairies and there are fairies,” he said, turning up his nose. “As for your ‘sister,’ what a curious notion. You, related to a human?” The fairy scoffed. “I’m closer to you than she is, considering I made you.”
“Give her back!” Lola cried, banging her bound fists against the glass. There was a whirr as the security cameras in the hallway turned toward the noise, but Lola didn’t care. She had her purpose, clean and bold and right in front of her, and she threw herself at it with everything she had left.
“Give me back my sister!”
“No,” the fairy said, the little bells on his turned-up shoes jingling gracefully as he began to pace in front of her prison cell. “Firstly, you never had her to begin with, so how could I give her back? Second, even if I did agree to your ridiculous demand, what would you do with her? You can’t possibly think you could make her happier than I do. I’m a being of enormous power. You’re a changeling who can’t even keep herself out of a human jail.”
“This isn’t my fault!” Lola cried. “Victor’s the one that everybody hates! I’d be fine if he hadn’t decided to screw everyone over and vanish with my pills!”
The fairy wagged a finger at her. “Uh-uh-uh, there you go, lying again. You could have avoided all of this by staying safely at home like a good little monster, but no. You had to go mucking about with things you shouldn’t, and now I have to clean up the mess.”
He smirked at her as he finished, but Lola just stared. “How do you know all this?”
“That’s a very rude question to ask the benevolent soul who’s come all this way to get you out of that cell.”
Lola blinked at him. That couldn’t be true, but fairies couldn’t lie.
“You don’t have to look so surprised,” he huffed, crossing his slender arms over his chest. “Do you think I put you back into that form just so the humans would have an easier time locking you away? And here Victor said you were smart.”
Hope soared inside her. “You know Victor?”
“How could I not?” the fairy said, reaching straight through the glass to tweak her nose. “He’s been dumping his blood into you for years.”
His brief touch burned like a cinder, but Lola ignored it. “Do you know where he is?”
“He’s where he always is,” the fairy said, giving her a sharp-toothed smile. “Exactly where he wants to be. You’re the one who’s out of place, but I’m here to fix that. For a price, of course.”
Of course. Fairies never did anything without payment, but Lola wasn’t convinced. “How are you going to do it? This is a prison. There are cameras everywhere.”
“I can do anything I want when it comes to you,” the fairy replied smugly. “You’re my changeling, never forget. All I have to do is—”
He snapped his fingers, and Lola suddenly found herself on the other side of the glass. It happened so quickly, she barely had time to feel the floor under her feet before he snapped again and sent her back.
“See?” he told her with a grin. “Easy-peasy.”
Lola stumbled against the glass wall, clenching her gossamer out of habit, but there was no need. Despite being jerked like a fish on a line, her magic felt no better or worse than when they’d thrown her in here. She didn’t even feel any nudges from the humans that had to be watching her through the cameras. No guards came through the doors, either, even though the boy was standing right outside her cell, which meant they still must not be able to see him. Had he made her invisible too? If so, then maybe he really could get her out.
“Okay,” Lola whispered, straightening back up with a steadying breath. “What’s your price? And don’t say my sister. I’ll die in this cell before I let her go.”
“As if I’d waste my breath asking for something that’s not even yours to give,” the fairy said. Then his face curled back into that mocking smile. “But I’m nothing if not open to suggestion. Tell me, little changeling, what are you willing to trade for your freedom?”
That was a good question. Lola didn’t exactly have much to work with at the moment, but she did have one card left.
“A dream,” she offered, pressing her face against the glass. “I’ll feed you a dream.”
That was normally enough to make fairies salivate, but the boy just rolled his golden eyes. “What would I do with a changeling dream? Haven’t you been paying attention? You’re a copy, and a far degraded one at that. I have the original: my own beautiful girl who gives me all the dreams I want. You’re insulting both of us if you think you can match her. Try again.”
Lola hit the glass with a snarl. How dare he talk about her sister like she was nothing but a trough for him to feed off? She was tempted to tell him to shove his offer, but her anger had brought the monster near the surface again, reminding Lola that this was no time to pick fights she couldn’t win. If she didn’t get out of here and back to her pills, this arrogant brat would keep her sister forever. There was nothing Lola wouldn’t give to prevent that. No pride she wouldn’t swallow as she bowed her head.
“What do you want from me?”
The fairy tapped his pointed chin, making a great deal of thinking it over. “A promise,” he said at last. “I’ll get you out of this cage, but in return, you must promise that the next time you see me, you will claim me as your guest.”
Lola gave him a suspicious look. “That’s it?”
“You want me to add more?”
“No,” she said quickly, but her mind was racing. This had to be a trap, but what kind and to what purpose, Lola had no idea. She couldn’t stay locked up in here, though. It hadn’t even been two hours, but her jumpy gossamer was already itching like crazy. If she didn’t get her pills back soon, she might as well have just stayed the monster.
“All right,” she said with a sinking feeling. “I promise.”
The fairy smiled and snapped his fingers. The sound of it was still echoing in her ears when Lola found herself standing next to him on the other side of the glass. Just as before, there’d been no sense of movement. She’d simply been one place, then another.
“Don’t even think about going back on your word,” he warned, looking up at her. “Unlike lying humans, you’re made of gossamer. You break that promise, your own magic—which is to say my magic—will make you regret it.”
“I know how my gossamer works,” she snapped, stepping away from him.
“At least you weren’t stupid enough to thank me,” the fairy said, giving her a wink. “See you soon.”
He was already starting to disappear when Lola cried, “Wait!”
The fairy reemerged with a scowl, and Lola fell to her knees. “Please,” she said, swallowing her anger in the name of something much dearer. “Before you go, can you at least tell me my sister’s name?”
The fairy turned up his nose. “The changeling presumes she is worthy of such a gift?”
“You’re the one who made me like this,” Lola reminded him. “You took my sister. You made me a monster. The least you can do is tell me her name!”
She was yelling by the end. She’d intended to flatter and beg since she’d yet to meet the fairy who didn’t love a good suck-up, but twenty years of suppressed anger was boiling up inside her. She would have killed him in that moment if she could have, but the fairy just smiled and grabbed her face.
“You forget yourself,” he whispered, his touch burning like hot iron. “It was the blood mage who made you a monster at your invitation. I made you beautiful.”
The “beautiful” was still echoing in her ears when the fairy vanished. There was no puff of smoke, no dissolving gossamer. He simply was no longer there, leaving Lola gasping on the floor of the prison hallway as the alarms began to blare.
She forced herself to her feet at the sound, cursing the fairy as she charged down the hall. She stopped directly beneath the first camera she saw, taking advantage of the blind spot to ditch the spellworked handcuffs. She shed her yogurt-lady body as well, puffing up her misbehaving gossamer until she’d taken the form of the largest of the SWAT team members.
It wasn’t a perfect copy since they’d kept their helmets on in her presence, but the nice thing about uniforms was that they still worked even when you only got them mostly right. She didn’t feel any whacks of disbelief when she ran under the cameras, so it must have been good enough, but something still felt off. Every light in the prison was flashing angry red now, the alarms blaring like banshees, but Lola didn’t see anyone running toward her cell.
That made no sense. The prison they’d walked her in through hadn’t been that big. She should definitely have seen a guard by now, but the hall in front of her was empty.
Maybe they were afraid of sending people in because they still thought she was a blood mage. That didn’t seem right, but Lola was too desperate to look her good fortune in the mouth. She marched her stolen SWAT body straight down the hall like a man on a mission, grateful the emergency gave her an excuse to keep her helmet on as she approached the checkpoint at the end of the hall.
The steel door was locked when she reached it, but the pair of guards who’d been sitting in chairs on the other side when she’d been brought in were gone. She didn’t see anyone sitting in the security office on the other side of the bulletproof windows, either. It was impossible to get a full view from out in the hall, but the desks that watched the cameras all appeared to be unmanned.
Lola had no idea what miracle had sucked the guards away, but she thanked her lucky stars for it. Firming up her guard costume, Lola took the keycard off his belt and tapped it confidently against the sensor panel beside the door.
Having only seen the card in glimpses in a dark truck while her face was pressed into the ground, Lola’s copy was less than perfect. But while even the most basic security systems could handle human mages these days, she’d yet to find one that could deal with a changeling. It didn’t matter that the keycard was just a figment of her imagination. All she had to do was believe it would work and her gossamer took care of the rest, turning the red light to green as the heavy security door opened with a click.
She ran through in a rush, hoping to fool anyone watching on the other side into believing she was just another panicked officer responding to the alarm, but it was a wasted display. The guard office really was empty, as was the hallway on the other side that led to the parking garage where she’d been brought in. That struck Lola as very suspicious, so she slowed her pace, creeping down the hallway with her back pressed against the cinder block wall.
She heard the ruckus long before she saw it. Directly ahead of her, past the big steel doors that led to the warehouse where the SWAT trucks were parked, dozens of people were shouting at the top of their lungs. There were crashes, too, as if someone was driving a truck into a wall repeatedly.
