Free Loose Changeling: A Changeling Wars Novel by A.G. Stewart

they've been outlawed for hundreds of years.”
    My mind went blank. I couldn't think of any retort, only, “What?”
    “No one is allowed to create a Changeling. It's against the Fae laws.”
    “I...why?”
    “It’s the Aranhods’ duty to explain your heritage, not mine. It’s complicated. But what this means is that most other Fae have it out for you.”
    “Well then, why don't you just drop me off at the Aranhods right now? Why are we driving around town? I don't like this any more than you do. Believe me, I don't.” I would have run out the door at the first stoplight if I weren’t sure that Kailen was the only thing standing between me and certain death.
    “You're forgetting something very important,” Kailen said. He cupped his hand next to his breast pocket. Jane crawled onto his palm. He held her out to me. “You can't leave this unfinished. You have to change her back. Every day she remains a mouse, the worse things get.”
    I took her, though my skin crawled from the feel of her tiny little feet against my hands and from the memory of catching her and Owen in bed together. “Okay, fine. Tell me what to do.”
    “Remember what I told you before—form the concept in your mind and then pack an emotional punch behind it. You've been doing it already, though unconsciously. Think about Jane as a human.”
    “And the emotional punch?”
    “It has to be strong, as strong as the one that turned her into a mouse.”
    Great. I didn't just have the visual memory seared into my brain, I remembered how I'd felt upon finding Owen in bed with Jane. Shocked, angry, hurt, each emotion hitting one after another, then blending together into a big ball of shocked-angry-hurt in my chest. How could I match that? I breathed in deep and closed my eyes, trying to ignore the climbing indigestion and the feel of Jane in my hand.
    I pieced together my memory of Jane—mousy brown hair, brown eyes, the thin covering of hair on her upper lip. I added the clothes I'd seen discarded at the side of the bed. She still looked too much like a mouse in my mind. I wasn't sure why it was so hard for me to think of her as human. Owen had. Owen had seen her as a woman, one attractive enough to take to bed. Before I'd burst in, he'd sounded like he'd been having fun with her. When was the last time Owen and I had had that sort of fun? I couldn't even remember.
    The grushound invaded my thoughts, lurking behind my image of Jane, nose lifted in the air, black ears pricked forward. My heart kicked at my ribs. A shower of pillows hit the hound, each dissolving into feathers as they did. The Jane in my imagination crouched, her hands covering her head. Before I could stop myself, she'd turned into a mouse in my mind, paws over her ears. I banished the grushound, the feathers, and tried to bring back the image of Jane as a human.
    I couldn't.
    “I can't do this!” I cried out finally. I opened my eyes, a colossal headache starting at the base of my skull. Jane stared back up at me, nose and whiskers twitching. “I can't concentrate. Every time I try, something else pops up in my head. It's either the grushound, or Owen, or feathers.”
    Kailen raised an eyebrow at the last item on my list but didn't comment.
    I leaned my head against the window, waiting as the pain dissipated. “This isn’t my life. I get up, I go to work, I relax at home. I like having a schedule, a routine. Turning a mouse back into a human? That’s so far outside my routine that it’s in another galaxy.”
    Kailen pursed his lips, his brow drawn low. He glanced over at me, and when he spoke, his voice was soft. “I’m sorry. I know this all must be a shock to you. For what it’s worth, you’re dealing with it better than I would have.”
    We exchanged brief, tight-lipped smiles—and then a thought occurred to me. “Maybe you should take me in to work.”
    The smile faded from his face. “We’ve been over this already—”
    “Remember when I asked you about