During a blackout, a frail and ragged old woman stops to ask for a glass of water from a back yard barbecue party. Given a good supper instead, she looks around the group, and tells them, “Be who and what you truly are.”
Days later, seven of the people from the barbecue find themselves drawn into a trap laid by a pair of wizards and their accomplices, who kidnap them into a bubble reality.
All seven, who have known each other all their lives, are told that they are not in fact entirely human: they have active fae blood, due to a series of conditions culminating with the blessing of the elderly fae woman.
The transformation into fae form comes as a shock: all seven, whether originally female or male, find themselves now unreasonably beautiful women. More urgent even than that, though, is their captivity. Getting back to the real world is a higher priority than this metamorphosis that rapidly begins to feel natural… but this is only the first step, as the type of fae blood each has expresses itself.
With no resources except themselves, how can they escape this prison? If they succeed, how can they possibly reclaim their lives? Just how many other faelings have been kidnapped, anyway? And is there a way to make sure that their captors never put anyone else through this?
Back in the real world, Kayla, who learned long ago to trust her gut instincts, is absolutely certain that something is very wrong. The pattern in the list of missing friends is easy to spot, but makes no sense at all. Then a young woman turns up at the back yard gate who knows more than she should, and even though her explanation makes even less sense, every instinct tells Kayla that Riley is her only way to get them back. If they’re not quite what they were, well, that’s a bridge to cross later…
Due credit to cover source images, both from Wiki Commons as Public Domain and altered by the author:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Septagram-starofbabalon.svg
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Borromean-chainmail-tile.svg
