Cami sensed the buzz of the light above her before anything else. It bore into her skull like a torture device, some kind of siege on her sanity. She moved to cover her ears, but her arms were bound by… was that leather?

Her eyes fluttered open. Sure enough, a swinging lightbulb glared down at her. And when she turned her head, she saw two old belt-looking things repurposed into makeshift restraints. The rest of the room was relatively featureless: an old nightstand held a glass of water and a portable radio, and a vanity stood in a corner.

“What happened?” Her voice was little more than a raspy croak.

“Something long overdue.”

Cami looked to her right. Trintio stood at the door, leaning against the frame without a care in the world.

“Where am I?” she asked.

“We’re in Thorne Manor,” he replied, slouching a bit. “Not ideal, but luckily, you and Cassidy got patched up.” Before Cami could ask for an explanation, he continued, “Well, they patched you up the best they could.”

I have so many questions, Cami thought. Her mind spun, and the buzz of the lightbulb didn't help.

Last she remembered, she’d been at the party. The Halloween party. And things had been normal, until--

“Someone bad snuck in,” she whispered. “To the Halloween party. And someone else got hurt. And then… I…”

The room got louder. Not just the buzz of light, but her own heartbeat, and…

A decidedly familiar melody. That song she and Jane had heard in her backyard, with the low hum and the arpeggio. Except now it came from everywhere at once, reverberating against her skull. Cami groaned, straining against the bed. It was so much, too much, every note a strike in her bones. She wanted nothing more than to smash her own face in, and--

Trintio placed a hand on her shoulder, and the world went silent.

“I feel like you’re owed the truth,” he said, his voice little more than a whisper. Cami appreciated that small mercy.

“What truth? I-If it’s that I’m not human…” She laughed, despite it all. “I can do that.” She’d never fit in in the first place. Maybe the Average Joe would've been inconsolable, mourning the normalcy lost. But Cami had never had normalcy. If anything, this was an opportunity. No, more than an opportunity: an explanation.

“Not the response I expected,” Trintio said, raising a brow.

Cami rolled her eyes. “I’m used to being different.”

Trintio pinched the bridge of his nose. “They didn’t train me for this. Why can’t you just have a crisis like everyone else?”

“This isn’t my first rodeo,” Cami pointed out. “I was told I was autistic when I was twelve. Then figured out I was a lesbian when I was fourteen.” Her head was clearer now. Somewhat. “So, what am I? An alien? A changeling?”

“Why do I get the sense you’re not taking this seriously?”

And some part of her wondered the same. “Shock,” she guessed. “Or maybe denial. Who knows.” Maybe both. Her mind was in a strange sort of limbo right now, straining to register her new reality. “But like, really, what am I?”

“You’re a changeling who was never meant to be a changeling,” Trintio said. He spread his arms out, like this was all the answer she needed. When she frowned, he added, “Okay, so, there was a mixup in my department. Often, changelings come from… less powerful groups. But your family is very powerful. Around my level, actually.”

Cami raised an eyebrow. “Around your level?”

“That’s what I said, yes.”

“Higher or lower?”

Trintio cringed. “Higher.”

“Sounds about right.” Cami snickered. “As someone who technically outranks you, if I ask you to undo these restraints, do you have to?”

“I don’t, but I’m nice, so I will.” And sure enough, Trintio got to work undoing the leather bindings. Cami sat up and stretched, relishing in the freedom. Her arms swung back and forth, her fingers fluttering.

“So, do I get powers, now?” Cami asked.

Trintio laughed nervously, studying the floor. “Well, fey Awakenings are a bit more complicated than most. There's a reason we don't do the whole changeling thing anymore. We start with a catalyst, a sort of call that undoes the glamour you've worn since birth--"

"The song?"

Trintio nodded, a smirk playing on his face. "Clever. Yes, it's the song. You'll be hearing it a lot, for better or worse. Anyways, Awakening doesn’t end on its own, and you’ll be stuck with no control over your powers until you take the Fey Vow.”

“Fey Vow?” Cami echoed. She couldn’t help but grin. “That sounds cool.”

“It really isn’t. You become allergic to iron and lose the ability to lie.”

Oh. Shit. Cami grabbed at the bedsheets, just so she had something to hold. "What?”

Somewhere down the hall, someone burst out laughing. A stranger. And it hit her then, all of it, at once: her body was changing in unnatural ways, inhuman ways. No, she’d never been human at all. And it was only going to get worse.

The laugh rattled around in her skull. Cami fought back tears.

“It’s too loud here,” she croaked. “Make it stop. Trintio, make it stop.”

Trintio opened the door, presumably to shout to the others, but when he leaned his head out, he hit a wall.

Cami’s bedroom wall.

It was like something in a movie, a change from one shot to another. One second, she’d been in Thorne Manor. Blink, and it was her bedroom.

Trintio groaned, touching his forehead. “That actually might bruise. Dammit.” He glared down at Cami. “See, if you take the Fey Vow, this won’t happen.”

Cami barely heard him. How was she to be a functioning member of society if sensory overload sent her teleporting? This was wrong. This was bad. This was so wrong and so bad.

She looked around for something, anything, that’d ground her. Remind her she was real and tangible and… well, not human, but alive.

As she dove for her guitar, Trintio shut the door. “If your mother has any questions, I’m not sticking around to answer them.”

Cami strummed out a C chord, felt the strings vibrate under her fingertips. She played a D, and then an E. She didn’t trust herself to nail an F on most days, so she did that a few more times, trying to remind her body it was a body. Strange and out of control, but a body nonetheless.

“Or just ignore me,” Trintio muttered.

Cami’s hands dropped. She gave her brain a moment to adjust, and then asked, “When should I go through with this vow thing?”

“Well.” Trintio leaned against the door, stroking his chin. Like this was a math problem. Then he said rather plainly, “Soon. Your are currently unstable, and you’ll also look like that whenever you use magic.”

“Look like what?” Cami asked.

Trintio jerked a thumb towards her mirror. Cami got to her feet and, for the first time all night, saw her own face.

Except it absolutely couldn’t be her face.

First of all, she was pale as death, with an eerie greyish undertone. Her freckles had gone a strange, dark green, and stood out like ink on paper. Bristling, mossy fur of the same colour bloomed from her chest and shoulders. Her hair was a mess, longer than it’d ever been--darker, too, with an uncanny sheen. Two long, feathery antennae poked out of the top, and two pointed ears from the sides. She raised a hand to touch them, and found her fingers had become claws. She jumped, and a pair of wings fluttered to life behind her.

Worse than all that, though, was what had happened to her eyes. They were pale and glassy, like ice on a lake.

Cami struggled to find words for the entity before her. But there was nothing. She settled for a shrill, shaky groan. Even that felt off, with all the new fangs in the way.

“Cami,” Trintio cut in. “Cami. Look at me.”

Cami’s mouth snapped shut. Right. There was a way around this. Kind of. “I can’t even look at people on a good day,” she managed.

Trintio laughed. “Okay, fair enough. Just take my hand, then.”

Cami complied. In a blink, they were back in the first room. The one Cami had awoken in. Thorne Manor, he'd called it?

“I usually can’t teleport so easily,” Trintio admitted, “but there’s no raw power like an Awakening fey.”

“So I’m kind of like an extra battery?” Cami asked.

“Sure.” He glanced away, idly checking his nails. “I’m going to tell the others you aren’t dead, okay?”

“Did they think I was dead?”

“They were worried,” he allowed, “but thankfully, I was here.”

“Wow. My hero."

Snickering, Trintio threw the door open and strode out. Cami leaned over to watch him leave, vanishing down a long, dimly-lit hallway. Candlelit, in fact.

“Who uses candles these days?” Cami muttered. Especially in a hallway that, besides her and Trintio, looked otherwise abandoned. That had to be a fire hazard.

But as she wandered over, she realized they weren’t candles at all. They were electric. Which killed the aesthetic, sure, but was significantly less stupid.

“Cami?”

Cami whirled around to see Helena at the end of the hall. Still wearing her flannel. She looked at her like she was a miracle, like the simple fact they were together was some incredible feat of divine intervention.

Wait, no. That wasn’t awe on her face. That was horror.

Right. I don’t look human anymore.

“It’s me,” Cami managed.

Helena studied her. “You, you?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I…” Helena trailed off, laughing. Or was she crying? Cami couldn’t tell. “I don’t know. It’s been a long night. I’m just, like… glad you’re okay.”

She rushed forward then, pulling Cami into a hug. Cami stiffened at first, almost overwhelmed by the sudden touch. And with her new height, Helena felt so small, like a lost, clinging child more than anything else. But she managed to relax, some knot in her gut melting away.

Helena pulled back all of a sudden, and she looked ready to say something, but the words died unspoken on her lips.

“What?” Cami asked. “Did going fey make my hugs weird?”

“No. Uh, you’re…” Helena’s hand went to her pocket, and she pulled out her phone. “Hang on. Look.” She jabbed the screen Cami’s way, opened up to the camera.

A camera that held a distinctly human reflection.

And come to think of it, Helena was taller than her again.

Cami wrung her hands together, a grin breaking out on her face. “I’m me again? Why am I me again?”

“I don’t know, but I wouldn’t complain.” Helena snickered, tucking her phone away. “Even if you looked pretty cool. I’m just… like I said, I’m glad you’re okay.”

Cami blushed. “I looked cool?”

“Oh, don’t get all flustered,” Helena teased. “I’m me. I took a cardboard cutout of the Flatwoods Monster to junior prom.”

Maybe it was the day’s chaos finally taking its toll, but Cami burst out laughing. “A-A cardboard cutout of the Flatwoods Monster?”

“Listen,” Helena pressed. “There’s a story. I hadn’t exactly, uh, my mom didn’t know I was a girl, so she got me a suit, and I was really sad because I’d wanted a dress, so my friend… somehow got their hands on the cutout. To cheer me up.”

And there was so much crammed into that little anecdote, Cami almost didn’t know where to begin. After some consideration, she asked, “Where did your friend get a Flatwoods Monster cutout?”

Helena beamed, wrapping an arm around Cami’s shoulders. “It’s a long story. I’ll tell you on the way back. Because… really, we should get out of here.”

Cami couldn’t agree more.