By a Silver Thread (DFZ Changeling Book 1), page 18
The Rider shrugged, and Lola frowned. Had he decided to stop talking again?
“Any sign of the Paladins?” she asked when the silence had gone on too long.
The chair creaked as the Rider shook his head. “No. We’ve been here long enough for an ambush, but I haven’t seen a thing. My guess is the DFZ didn’t like them bringing a bunch of heavily armed American cops into her Free Zone and revoked their access.”
Lola closed her eyes. There it was again, that supernaturally rich, deep voice. She could almost taste the magic in it, but it didn’t feel menacing. Lola leaned closer, watching her reflection in the rider’s glossy helmet. What are you? she wanted to ask. Why didn’t you talk before?
If he’d spoken to her in that voice from the beginning, she probably wouldn’t have run. In fact, if he hadn’t been acting just like he always did, Lola would have suspected this talking man wasn’t the Rider at all. The warm, alluring voice was just too disconnected from the big, scary monster who killed with a flick of his hands.
“How are you here?” she asked. “I saw you turn to ash.”
The Rider shrugged again, and Lola sighed. Clearly, this new chattiness didn’t apply to conversations about himself. As curious as she was, though, Lola didn’t push.
She owed the Rider big-time now, and not because of the prison break. Anyone who could face her monster—touch her monster—and not run screaming deserved his secrets. Unfortunately, she was going to have to ask his help again. She’d pulled it back this time thanks to her reserve pill stash, but those were gone now. All the pills she had left were scattered across a parking lot under the Financial District, and Lola didn’t have the gossamer to change her body right now, much less to make a car.
“We need to keep looking for Victor,” she said, pushing up from the couch to carry her bowl back to the kitchen. “I have a lead on a fairy who might know where he is.”
And a taste of his gossamer, she thought, remembering the burning bite of the fairy’s magic. If she got that to Tristan, he should be able to tell her the fairy’s name, maybe even take her straight to him. Unfortunately, the card he’d given her with his number had been lost with her phone and everything else. She’d just have to go to his barrow and hope he was there, after she got her pills.
“We have to go back to that parking lot,” she said as she put her bowl in the sink. “Once I get my pills and collect the gossamer I left in my car, I’ll go to Tristan and get an ID on the fairy. If we can find him, I’m sure we’ll find Victor. Does that sound good to you?”
The Rider nodded and stood up. He walked over to her ruined door and stopped, visor turned toward her expectantly.
Lola got the hint. “Let me feed Buster,” she said, opening the cabinet where she kept the cat food.
Normally, the sound of the can opener would have brought her big chonk running, but he didn’t come today. Lola didn’t know if that was because the Rider was here or if he was still traumatized from seeing her monster. She really hoped it was the Rider, because the thought of her kitty being afraid of her almost sent Lola back over the edge. She caught herself before it went too far, but the fact that she was still so unstable was terrifying.
She didn’t have much longer, Lola realized. Even if she got her pills back, it was obvious that her gossamer was falling apart. Her sister’s thread was jerking on her arm all the time now, reminding her of what was at stake. She had to focus on getting as much done in the next twenty-four hours as possible, because that might be all she had left.
Setting the cat bowl down with shaking hands, Lola made a mental note to ask Simon to look after Buster. He was allergic himself, but he’d make sure her cat found a good home with someone who wouldn’t terrify him. That thought threatened to dissolve her again, so Lola forced it out of her head as she followed the Rider down the stairs into her garage.
His bike was ready and waiting by the time they reached the bottom of the stairs. The Rider hopped on, motioning for her to follow. Lola did so slowly, concentrating hard until she’d formed her misbehaving gossamer into a black helmet of her own.
Technically, it wouldn’t keep her any safer than her bare head since gossamer was gossamer, but she’d learned from the Rider the value of hiding one’s face. She definitely didn’t want Victor’s redhead showing up on any of the Black Rider’s urban legend fan sites, so she slipped the helmet onto her head. When she was completely covered, she sat down on the bike and spun herself a garage door remote to let them out.
The garage door had a hard time going up with the gap her monster had bent in the bottom, but it rose enough for the Rider to slip under. Lola closed it behind them with a click before dissolving the remote. The Rider was kind enough to hop off and bend the metal door back into shape so Buster couldn’t just run out. Lola thanked him in a whisper as he got back on his bike, hands shaking nervously as she wrapped them around his chest.
Even though she knew there was nothing inside his leather suit, Lola hadn’t exactly touched a lot of people in her life. Not in a good way, at least. So far, though, every time the Rider had touched her, something good had happened, like when he’d petted away her panic or when he’d shoved her out of the way of the Paladin’s fireball. That should have made her comfortable, but weirdly, Lola felt more nervous than ever, especially when she realized she still didn’t know his name.
“Um,” she said as he started down the alley. “Is there anything you’d like me to call you? Something besides Black Rider?”
He accelerated down the street as she spoke, covering her words in a rush of wind. Lola didn’t even know if the Rider had heard her. She’d decided to just forget about the whole thing when he suddenly replied.
“Valente,” he said, his rich voice rumbling through his chest into hers. “My mother named me Valente.”
“Valente,” Lola repeated with a smile. “Nice to meet you.”
The Rider nodded, but he didn’t say anything else as they whipped down the road, shooting through the maze of the Underground toward the parking lot, where, hopefully, her pills would still be lying on the ground.
Chapter 9
5 pills
Despite the Rider’s perfectly good theory about the city revoking her deal with the Paladins, Lola kept a gossamer grenade ready to throw as they pulled into the parking lot where they’d been attacked last night. It was still empty this morning despite it being nearly nine a.m., probably because it looked like a war zone. The asphalt was scorched black, and there were hundreds of bullets lodged in the cement face of the support pillar that ran alongside it, but the real candle on the cake was Lola’s car.
The two-door coupe lay in the middle of the scorched parking lot like a defeated tank. Its electric-blue paint job was bubbled and blackened from the fire, and its windows were completely shot out. If it had been a real car, it would have been irrecoverable. Because it was gossamer, though, the only real damage was a bit of stiffness from being left out on its own for so many hours.
It was going to take some finessing to get all of that hardened magic back inside, so Lola let the car be for the moment and got straight to the more important work of locating her pills. She found the spot where she’d turned into the monster easily by the gouges her claws had left in the pavement, but when she vanished her helmet to get a better look at the ground, all she saw were spent bullet casings.
“No, no, no,” she whispered, rolling the shells frantically with her hands in the hopes of catching a glimpse of red. “They have to be here!”
She heard the crunch of the Rider’s boots as he came closer, but Lola waved at him to stop. Victor’s pills were delicate. She couldn’t risk him stepping on one. Even when she pressed her nose against the ashy pavement, she didn’t catch so much as a whiff of blood. But just as she was starting to panic in earnest, she heard a familiar voice speak above her.
“You know, the best way to find a needle is to burn the haystack.”
Lola jumped with a squawk, scrambling backward to see Tristan standing over her with an amused look on his handsome face. As usual, he was ridiculously dressed in a slim-cut white suit and pointed white-leather wingtip shoes. His hair was long and blowing in the wind, and for some reason, he was wearing a gold-caged rapier dangling from his belt. Lola didn’t know if the sword was real or just part of his outfit, but it didn’t bode well.
“What are you doing here?”
“Looking for you,” the fairy said, glancing at her car. “That’s not normally a problem since the dream you fed me acts as a pointer, but when I followed it this morning, I found the larger portion of your gossamer in ruins and you nowhere to be seen. What have you been doing?”
“Unless you’re here to help, that’s none of your business,” Lola replied, pressing her face against the pavement to search under her car.
“Looking for these?” Tristan asked, holding up a small plastic baggie with red pills glinting like drops of blood inside.
“You found them!” Lola cried, leaping for the bag. Tristan let her grab it, but Lola’s soaring elation came crashing back down once her trembling fingers counted the pills inside.
“Three?” she squeaked, suddenly frantic again. “There’s only three? That can’t be right! Where are the rest?”
“That was all I could find,” Tristan said apologetically, taking a seat on the hood of her destroyed car. “And you’re lucky I got those. The scavengers were all over this place by the time I arrived. If I hadn’t come looking for you when I did, they’d have junked your gossamer car for parts, and you’d be in even worse shape than you already are.”
Lola didn’t feel lucky. Three pills wouldn’t get her past tomorrow even at the usual rate. The way she’d been popping them since Victor had vanished, it might not be enough to see her until sundown.
“Don’t look so sad, Lola-cat,” Tristan said, giving her a smile. “We’re not beaten yet! Though I would feel better about our chances if you’d actually followed my advice.”
His sea-blue eyes slid to the Rider standing behind her, but Lola shook her head.
“It’s okay. He’s a friend.”
The fairy snorted. “I highly doubt that.”
Lola stood up with a glare. “He saved my life.”
“Is that so?” Tristan said, hopping off the hood of her car. “Would you excuse us a moment?”
Lola didn’t realize that last part was directed at the Rider until Tristan’s sea-salt gossamer washed over her. The next thing she knew, the trashed parking lot was gone. So were the Rider and his bike, leaving Lola standing next to her shiny, fully-repaired coupe on an empty stretch of highway by the sea. Stone cliffs rose like a wall at her back while the ocean stretched out to the horizon in front of her, sparkling and blue-black beneath the light of a full moon. The taste of the warm, salty air felt so real on her tongue, Lola had to remind herself several times that it was only gossamer as she turned to Tristan.
“Where is this?”
“Southern coast of California,” Tristan replied, leaning against the guardrail that separated them from the fall to the rocky shore below. “I cleaned your car.”
He smiled as if he expected a thank you, but Lola just crossed her arms.
“What are you doing?”
“I could ask you the same thing,” he said, tapping his fingers against the ornate handle of his sword. “I specifically recall telling you to keep away from the Rider, and yet here you are, riding double with him.”
“And I’m telling you it’s okay,” Lola insisted. “The Rider works for Victor too.”
“That’s a large part of why I warned you to stay away from him.”
Lola gaped at him. “You knew he was working for Victor the whole time?” Seriously, did everyone know except her? “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because I didn’t want you falling into his clutches,” Tristan said. “He’s not safe.”
“Why do you think I’m with him?” Lola snapped. “If the burned car didn’t tip you off, I need some danger on my side right now.”
Tristan shook his head. “The fact that you think he’s on your side is the most dangerous thing of all. He belongs to Victor.”
“So do I.”
“There are differences of degree in all things,” Tristan warned, giving her a hard look. “What will it take to convince you to stay away from him?”
“A lot,” Lola said. “He’s saved a whole pig’s worth of my bacon in the last twenty-four hours.”
“How chivalrous of him,” Tristan said, his scornful voice twisting the word into an insult. “But the thing you call the Black Rider belongs to Victor in ways you can’t imagine, and he’s especially dangerous to fairies. He was built to be a weapon, and whatever he might have done to make you think otherwise, a weapon’s all he can ever be.”
She gave him a baleful look, and the fairy sighed. “Haven’t you wondered why Victor worked so hard to keep the two of you separated for all these years?”
Lola rolled her eyes. She didn’t want to play this game, but Tristan didn’t normally talk about these things, and she was curious. “Okay, why?”
Tristan leaned closer. “It’s because your dear Rider eats dreams.”
“He’s a fairy?” Lola asked, surprised.
“I would never call him such. He shares a few of our characteristics but none of our control.” The fairy flashed her a knowing smile. “That’s why your master feared to let his Rider near you. Changeling dreams are very delicious, and Victor didn’t want his Rider developing a taste for what he couldn’t have.”
Lola looked away with a sigh. Of course Victor had done it because he didn’t want his weapon being compromised. Clearly, all this turning-into-a-monster business was making her insane, because for a second there, she’d almost thought Victor had ordered the Rider to stay away out of concern for her.
“Don’t give him your dreams, Lola,” Tristan warned.
“Why not?” she asked, genuinely curious. She’d never fed anyone except Tristan.
“Because he won’t be nearly as nice with them as I am,” he replied. “And because your dreams belong only to me.”
Any other time, Lola would have put that down to Tristan’s eternal flirting, but he didn’t look flirtatious now. His blue eyes were sharp and hungry, staring down at her like a hawk with a cornered mouse, and suddenly, Lola felt very, very small.
The feeling lasted only a second, and it was Tristan himself who broke the spell. As suddenly as he’d shifted, he popped back to his old smiling self. “We’ll have to pick this up later, Lola-lamb,” he said, glancing up at the sky. “Your friend is growing impatient.”
Before Lola could ask what he meant by that, the warm sea night began to warp around them. The moonlit sky caved in, the stars stretching out as if the whole thing was just a projection and someone was pushing on the back of the screen. It was nauseating to watch and more than a little terrifying, but Tristan just shook his head and moved his hand in a sweeping motion.
The lonely highway vanished as quickly as it had appeared. Tristan’s gossamer melted like sugar, leaving behind only a faint, sea-salt tang on Lola’s tongue as the wrecked parking lot burst back into view. As it faded, Tristan sat back down on the hood of her still-gleaming car, the only thing left of the illusion he’d woven. Now, though, instead of the sea, the Rider stood in front of them with his arms crossed over his chest and the ground at his feet covered in a thick layer of frost.
“Temper, temper, Herr Ritter,” Tristan scolded, moving his sword to rest across his knees. “Nothing wrong with a private chat between old friends.”
The Rider stepped forward, and Lola felt a pressure land on her shoulders. She gasped at the weight of it. The stuff felt almost like gossamer but thicker and numbingly cold.
But while she instantly started shivering, Tristan grew very still. He didn’t stiffen when the Rider’s power landed, didn’t flinch. He just… stopped. And then, in a voice that was even colder than the invisible weight lying against Lola’s skin, he said, “You will remove this filth from me, or I will remove it for you.”
As he spoke, something in Tristan changed. Lola couldn’t say what it was, exactly. Nothing looked different. He was still flamboyantly ridiculous with his snatched suit, gleaming sword, and perfectly tousled hair. But while all of the pieces were the same, the whole they formed was now completely different. This Tristan looked like a drawn blade. He hadn’t moved from his relaxed seat on the coupe’s hood, but all the casualness was gone from his posture as he drummed his fingers on the hilt of his sword, which Lola was now certain was not for show.
Any other day, that would have been her cue to run or at least conjure up some cover. Right now, though, Lola simply didn’t have the time.
“Knock it off,” she snapped, using her changeling knack of ignoring other people’s magic to slide through the freezing pressure as she walked over to put herself between them. “I’ve only got three pills left, and I’m not wasting them on whatever this is, so can we please focus?”
To her surprise, Tristan acquiesced at once, his friendly mask snapping back into place as quickly as it had fallen. “Lola-kitten jumps to your rescue,” he said, blowing the Rider a kiss before leaning back to grin at Lola. “Should I be jealous?”
“Only if you enjoy being delusional,” Lola said, reaching into her pocket to pull out another of her foil-wrapped, gossamer-tasting candies. “I found the fairy who’s been sending dreams all over the DFZ. He also claims that he’s the one who made me, and he’s working with Victor. I need you to taste his gossamer and tell me who he is.”
“No need,” Tristan said, hopping to his feet. “If even half of what you just said is true, we won’t be able to take him by ourselves, and speaking his name will do nothing but attract his attention.”
Lola couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “But you promised,” she said, fist clenching around the gossamer she’d made. “You promised me you’d help!”
“Any sign of the Paladins?” she asked when the silence had gone on too long.
The chair creaked as the Rider shook his head. “No. We’ve been here long enough for an ambush, but I haven’t seen a thing. My guess is the DFZ didn’t like them bringing a bunch of heavily armed American cops into her Free Zone and revoked their access.”
Lola closed her eyes. There it was again, that supernaturally rich, deep voice. She could almost taste the magic in it, but it didn’t feel menacing. Lola leaned closer, watching her reflection in the rider’s glossy helmet. What are you? she wanted to ask. Why didn’t you talk before?
If he’d spoken to her in that voice from the beginning, she probably wouldn’t have run. In fact, if he hadn’t been acting just like he always did, Lola would have suspected this talking man wasn’t the Rider at all. The warm, alluring voice was just too disconnected from the big, scary monster who killed with a flick of his hands.
“How are you here?” she asked. “I saw you turn to ash.”
The Rider shrugged again, and Lola sighed. Clearly, this new chattiness didn’t apply to conversations about himself. As curious as she was, though, Lola didn’t push.
She owed the Rider big-time now, and not because of the prison break. Anyone who could face her monster—touch her monster—and not run screaming deserved his secrets. Unfortunately, she was going to have to ask his help again. She’d pulled it back this time thanks to her reserve pill stash, but those were gone now. All the pills she had left were scattered across a parking lot under the Financial District, and Lola didn’t have the gossamer to change her body right now, much less to make a car.
“We need to keep looking for Victor,” she said, pushing up from the couch to carry her bowl back to the kitchen. “I have a lead on a fairy who might know where he is.”
And a taste of his gossamer, she thought, remembering the burning bite of the fairy’s magic. If she got that to Tristan, he should be able to tell her the fairy’s name, maybe even take her straight to him. Unfortunately, the card he’d given her with his number had been lost with her phone and everything else. She’d just have to go to his barrow and hope he was there, after she got her pills.
“We have to go back to that parking lot,” she said as she put her bowl in the sink. “Once I get my pills and collect the gossamer I left in my car, I’ll go to Tristan and get an ID on the fairy. If we can find him, I’m sure we’ll find Victor. Does that sound good to you?”
The Rider nodded and stood up. He walked over to her ruined door and stopped, visor turned toward her expectantly.
Lola got the hint. “Let me feed Buster,” she said, opening the cabinet where she kept the cat food.
Normally, the sound of the can opener would have brought her big chonk running, but he didn’t come today. Lola didn’t know if that was because the Rider was here or if he was still traumatized from seeing her monster. She really hoped it was the Rider, because the thought of her kitty being afraid of her almost sent Lola back over the edge. She caught herself before it went too far, but the fact that she was still so unstable was terrifying.
She didn’t have much longer, Lola realized. Even if she got her pills back, it was obvious that her gossamer was falling apart. Her sister’s thread was jerking on her arm all the time now, reminding her of what was at stake. She had to focus on getting as much done in the next twenty-four hours as possible, because that might be all she had left.
Setting the cat bowl down with shaking hands, Lola made a mental note to ask Simon to look after Buster. He was allergic himself, but he’d make sure her cat found a good home with someone who wouldn’t terrify him. That thought threatened to dissolve her again, so Lola forced it out of her head as she followed the Rider down the stairs into her garage.
His bike was ready and waiting by the time they reached the bottom of the stairs. The Rider hopped on, motioning for her to follow. Lola did so slowly, concentrating hard until she’d formed her misbehaving gossamer into a black helmet of her own.
Technically, it wouldn’t keep her any safer than her bare head since gossamer was gossamer, but she’d learned from the Rider the value of hiding one’s face. She definitely didn’t want Victor’s redhead showing up on any of the Black Rider’s urban legend fan sites, so she slipped the helmet onto her head. When she was completely covered, she sat down on the bike and spun herself a garage door remote to let them out.
The garage door had a hard time going up with the gap her monster had bent in the bottom, but it rose enough for the Rider to slip under. Lola closed it behind them with a click before dissolving the remote. The Rider was kind enough to hop off and bend the metal door back into shape so Buster couldn’t just run out. Lola thanked him in a whisper as he got back on his bike, hands shaking nervously as she wrapped them around his chest.
Even though she knew there was nothing inside his leather suit, Lola hadn’t exactly touched a lot of people in her life. Not in a good way, at least. So far, though, every time the Rider had touched her, something good had happened, like when he’d petted away her panic or when he’d shoved her out of the way of the Paladin’s fireball. That should have made her comfortable, but weirdly, Lola felt more nervous than ever, especially when she realized she still didn’t know his name.
“Um,” she said as he started down the alley. “Is there anything you’d like me to call you? Something besides Black Rider?”
He accelerated down the street as she spoke, covering her words in a rush of wind. Lola didn’t even know if the Rider had heard her. She’d decided to just forget about the whole thing when he suddenly replied.
“Valente,” he said, his rich voice rumbling through his chest into hers. “My mother named me Valente.”
“Valente,” Lola repeated with a smile. “Nice to meet you.”
The Rider nodded, but he didn’t say anything else as they whipped down the road, shooting through the maze of the Underground toward the parking lot, where, hopefully, her pills would still be lying on the ground.
Chapter 9
5 pills
Despite the Rider’s perfectly good theory about the city revoking her deal with the Paladins, Lola kept a gossamer grenade ready to throw as they pulled into the parking lot where they’d been attacked last night. It was still empty this morning despite it being nearly nine a.m., probably because it looked like a war zone. The asphalt was scorched black, and there were hundreds of bullets lodged in the cement face of the support pillar that ran alongside it, but the real candle on the cake was Lola’s car.
The two-door coupe lay in the middle of the scorched parking lot like a defeated tank. Its electric-blue paint job was bubbled and blackened from the fire, and its windows were completely shot out. If it had been a real car, it would have been irrecoverable. Because it was gossamer, though, the only real damage was a bit of stiffness from being left out on its own for so many hours.
It was going to take some finessing to get all of that hardened magic back inside, so Lola let the car be for the moment and got straight to the more important work of locating her pills. She found the spot where she’d turned into the monster easily by the gouges her claws had left in the pavement, but when she vanished her helmet to get a better look at the ground, all she saw were spent bullet casings.
“No, no, no,” she whispered, rolling the shells frantically with her hands in the hopes of catching a glimpse of red. “They have to be here!”
She heard the crunch of the Rider’s boots as he came closer, but Lola waved at him to stop. Victor’s pills were delicate. She couldn’t risk him stepping on one. Even when she pressed her nose against the ashy pavement, she didn’t catch so much as a whiff of blood. But just as she was starting to panic in earnest, she heard a familiar voice speak above her.
“You know, the best way to find a needle is to burn the haystack.”
Lola jumped with a squawk, scrambling backward to see Tristan standing over her with an amused look on his handsome face. As usual, he was ridiculously dressed in a slim-cut white suit and pointed white-leather wingtip shoes. His hair was long and blowing in the wind, and for some reason, he was wearing a gold-caged rapier dangling from his belt. Lola didn’t know if the sword was real or just part of his outfit, but it didn’t bode well.
“What are you doing here?”
“Looking for you,” the fairy said, glancing at her car. “That’s not normally a problem since the dream you fed me acts as a pointer, but when I followed it this morning, I found the larger portion of your gossamer in ruins and you nowhere to be seen. What have you been doing?”
“Unless you’re here to help, that’s none of your business,” Lola replied, pressing her face against the pavement to search under her car.
“Looking for these?” Tristan asked, holding up a small plastic baggie with red pills glinting like drops of blood inside.
“You found them!” Lola cried, leaping for the bag. Tristan let her grab it, but Lola’s soaring elation came crashing back down once her trembling fingers counted the pills inside.
“Three?” she squeaked, suddenly frantic again. “There’s only three? That can’t be right! Where are the rest?”
“That was all I could find,” Tristan said apologetically, taking a seat on the hood of her destroyed car. “And you’re lucky I got those. The scavengers were all over this place by the time I arrived. If I hadn’t come looking for you when I did, they’d have junked your gossamer car for parts, and you’d be in even worse shape than you already are.”
Lola didn’t feel lucky. Three pills wouldn’t get her past tomorrow even at the usual rate. The way she’d been popping them since Victor had vanished, it might not be enough to see her until sundown.
“Don’t look so sad, Lola-cat,” Tristan said, giving her a smile. “We’re not beaten yet! Though I would feel better about our chances if you’d actually followed my advice.”
His sea-blue eyes slid to the Rider standing behind her, but Lola shook her head.
“It’s okay. He’s a friend.”
The fairy snorted. “I highly doubt that.”
Lola stood up with a glare. “He saved my life.”
“Is that so?” Tristan said, hopping off the hood of her car. “Would you excuse us a moment?”
Lola didn’t realize that last part was directed at the Rider until Tristan’s sea-salt gossamer washed over her. The next thing she knew, the trashed parking lot was gone. So were the Rider and his bike, leaving Lola standing next to her shiny, fully-repaired coupe on an empty stretch of highway by the sea. Stone cliffs rose like a wall at her back while the ocean stretched out to the horizon in front of her, sparkling and blue-black beneath the light of a full moon. The taste of the warm, salty air felt so real on her tongue, Lola had to remind herself several times that it was only gossamer as she turned to Tristan.
“Where is this?”
“Southern coast of California,” Tristan replied, leaning against the guardrail that separated them from the fall to the rocky shore below. “I cleaned your car.”
He smiled as if he expected a thank you, but Lola just crossed her arms.
“What are you doing?”
“I could ask you the same thing,” he said, tapping his fingers against the ornate handle of his sword. “I specifically recall telling you to keep away from the Rider, and yet here you are, riding double with him.”
“And I’m telling you it’s okay,” Lola insisted. “The Rider works for Victor too.”
“That’s a large part of why I warned you to stay away from him.”
Lola gaped at him. “You knew he was working for Victor the whole time?” Seriously, did everyone know except her? “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because I didn’t want you falling into his clutches,” Tristan said. “He’s not safe.”
“Why do you think I’m with him?” Lola snapped. “If the burned car didn’t tip you off, I need some danger on my side right now.”
Tristan shook his head. “The fact that you think he’s on your side is the most dangerous thing of all. He belongs to Victor.”
“So do I.”
“There are differences of degree in all things,” Tristan warned, giving her a hard look. “What will it take to convince you to stay away from him?”
“A lot,” Lola said. “He’s saved a whole pig’s worth of my bacon in the last twenty-four hours.”
“How chivalrous of him,” Tristan said, his scornful voice twisting the word into an insult. “But the thing you call the Black Rider belongs to Victor in ways you can’t imagine, and he’s especially dangerous to fairies. He was built to be a weapon, and whatever he might have done to make you think otherwise, a weapon’s all he can ever be.”
She gave him a baleful look, and the fairy sighed. “Haven’t you wondered why Victor worked so hard to keep the two of you separated for all these years?”
Lola rolled her eyes. She didn’t want to play this game, but Tristan didn’t normally talk about these things, and she was curious. “Okay, why?”
Tristan leaned closer. “It’s because your dear Rider eats dreams.”
“He’s a fairy?” Lola asked, surprised.
“I would never call him such. He shares a few of our characteristics but none of our control.” The fairy flashed her a knowing smile. “That’s why your master feared to let his Rider near you. Changeling dreams are very delicious, and Victor didn’t want his Rider developing a taste for what he couldn’t have.”
Lola looked away with a sigh. Of course Victor had done it because he didn’t want his weapon being compromised. Clearly, all this turning-into-a-monster business was making her insane, because for a second there, she’d almost thought Victor had ordered the Rider to stay away out of concern for her.
“Don’t give him your dreams, Lola,” Tristan warned.
“Why not?” she asked, genuinely curious. She’d never fed anyone except Tristan.
“Because he won’t be nearly as nice with them as I am,” he replied. “And because your dreams belong only to me.”
Any other time, Lola would have put that down to Tristan’s eternal flirting, but he didn’t look flirtatious now. His blue eyes were sharp and hungry, staring down at her like a hawk with a cornered mouse, and suddenly, Lola felt very, very small.
The feeling lasted only a second, and it was Tristan himself who broke the spell. As suddenly as he’d shifted, he popped back to his old smiling self. “We’ll have to pick this up later, Lola-lamb,” he said, glancing up at the sky. “Your friend is growing impatient.”
Before Lola could ask what he meant by that, the warm sea night began to warp around them. The moonlit sky caved in, the stars stretching out as if the whole thing was just a projection and someone was pushing on the back of the screen. It was nauseating to watch and more than a little terrifying, but Tristan just shook his head and moved his hand in a sweeping motion.
The lonely highway vanished as quickly as it had appeared. Tristan’s gossamer melted like sugar, leaving behind only a faint, sea-salt tang on Lola’s tongue as the wrecked parking lot burst back into view. As it faded, Tristan sat back down on the hood of her still-gleaming car, the only thing left of the illusion he’d woven. Now, though, instead of the sea, the Rider stood in front of them with his arms crossed over his chest and the ground at his feet covered in a thick layer of frost.
“Temper, temper, Herr Ritter,” Tristan scolded, moving his sword to rest across his knees. “Nothing wrong with a private chat between old friends.”
The Rider stepped forward, and Lola felt a pressure land on her shoulders. She gasped at the weight of it. The stuff felt almost like gossamer but thicker and numbingly cold.
But while she instantly started shivering, Tristan grew very still. He didn’t stiffen when the Rider’s power landed, didn’t flinch. He just… stopped. And then, in a voice that was even colder than the invisible weight lying against Lola’s skin, he said, “You will remove this filth from me, or I will remove it for you.”
As he spoke, something in Tristan changed. Lola couldn’t say what it was, exactly. Nothing looked different. He was still flamboyantly ridiculous with his snatched suit, gleaming sword, and perfectly tousled hair. But while all of the pieces were the same, the whole they formed was now completely different. This Tristan looked like a drawn blade. He hadn’t moved from his relaxed seat on the coupe’s hood, but all the casualness was gone from his posture as he drummed his fingers on the hilt of his sword, which Lola was now certain was not for show.
Any other day, that would have been her cue to run or at least conjure up some cover. Right now, though, Lola simply didn’t have the time.
“Knock it off,” she snapped, using her changeling knack of ignoring other people’s magic to slide through the freezing pressure as she walked over to put herself between them. “I’ve only got three pills left, and I’m not wasting them on whatever this is, so can we please focus?”
To her surprise, Tristan acquiesced at once, his friendly mask snapping back into place as quickly as it had fallen. “Lola-kitten jumps to your rescue,” he said, blowing the Rider a kiss before leaning back to grin at Lola. “Should I be jealous?”
“Only if you enjoy being delusional,” Lola said, reaching into her pocket to pull out another of her foil-wrapped, gossamer-tasting candies. “I found the fairy who’s been sending dreams all over the DFZ. He also claims that he’s the one who made me, and he’s working with Victor. I need you to taste his gossamer and tell me who he is.”
“No need,” Tristan said, hopping to his feet. “If even half of what you just said is true, we won’t be able to take him by ourselves, and speaking his name will do nothing but attract his attention.”
Lola couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “But you promised,” she said, fist clenching around the gossamer she’d made. “You promised me you’d help!”
