When Tyler left Zoë, she was only semi-conscious, drifting in the aftermath of the formation of the crimson bond. She sprawled in her bed for a few moments more, feeling weak and sleepy and floaty. She’d surrendered utterly, and shaking that off once she was alone again was harder than she could have imagined. He wanted her to rest until he came to her again. That would be so easy and natural.

But the thought of Ainsel out there, in need of rescue, was an iceberg in her sea of surrender. A chill ran down her spine and groaning, she rolled herself out of bed. But as she stood up, her lethargy faded quickly and she realized she didn’t hurt the way she’d expected. When she dressed herself, she felt positively buoyant. It was strange because she almost never felt buoyant. The last day of school before summer, maybe. The first few days after she met Ainsel. For reasons she could no longer recall, the day she turned eight.

And now her desk was a pile of wreckage on the back lawn, just like her life had been wrecked, and she felt energized and powerful. It wasn’t fair. When she looked in the mirror, she looked exactly the same as usual. He’d marked her, but not so anybody else could see it. She knew, though.

She went and looked out the sliding door at the desk and shattered computer equipment. Somehow, more than anything else in the past few days, it made her realize there was no going back. Everything had been almost dreamlike until now: Lucien’s beauty and sweetness, the werewolves, Tyler’s change, Ainsel’s disappearance. Part of her had still believed that at some point the crazy story would end and her life would go back to being ordinary. If she’d been asked, she wouldn’t have wanted that—but that was what always happened in the end, right?

She thought again about the boy that the unicorn Lucien had turned into, and how he’d broken his own arm in an escape attempt, and then laughed as a pack of werewolves swarmed him. It made her realize what a stranger he was. Even the new Tyler was more familiar to her than the unicorn boy, no matter how kind he’d been.

Zoë really hoped she’d have a chance to talk to him again. She needed to know what else had happened during the forgotten times, needed to know why he’d kept his other form from her. When she remembered his warm breath against her skin, his horn brushing softly over scrapes and scratches, she felt very strange.

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No. There was no going back. Even if by some impossible twist, everything returned to how it had been, she was different now. The constraints of normality on her behavior had been lifted. Destroyed. She didn’t have to do what anybody expected her to do. Not even Tyler.

Turning away from the glass door, she went through the door to the rest of the house to find her mother and Ainsel’s mothers. Nobody had investigated the crash of her desk that she’d seen, although admittedly she’d been pretty distracted. Before she did anything else, she had to see if they were all right. It mattered.

She found her mother in the kitchen, mixing up brownies. In the living room, Kishar and Andrea were talking quietly.

“Hi, Mom,” she said, after watching her for a moment. At least making brownies was something Sarah occasionally did, during her attacks of domesticity.

Sarah startled and the bowl of batter she’d been mixing clattered. “Zoë! I didn’t hear you come up. How are you feeling? Any better?”

Zoë hesitated, and then answered honestly, “Yes. But I’m worried about you.”

“Oh, no need for that. This morning was very exciting but everything’s settled down now. Kishar and Andrea and I have been working on a quilt!”

And this too, Zoë found disturbingly normal. Oh, not that Kishar and Andrea were participating, but Sarah occasionally did have quilting parties. She wondered what exactly her mother believed was going on.

“Did you have a nice visit with Tyler?” her mother went on. “I like him much more than that Lucien, you know.”

“Um,” said Zoë, and then her instinctive embarrassment and uncertainty was swept away by a need to know. “Mom, did you know Lucien could turn into a boy?”

“Yes, of course.” Her mother gave her a puzzled look, and then her expression darkened. “Don’t let it bother you, Zoë. If he keeps secrets like that from you, he’s not worth your time.”

“He probably had a good reason,” muttered Zoë, pushing her hair away from her eyes and recalling that he’d said he didn’t want to scare her. “Tyler came and talked to you?”

“Oh, yes,” said Sarah, smiling. “He told us he’d broken your desk but that he’d be replacing everything later.”

A morbid fascination compelled Zoë to ask, “Did he say why he broke my desk?”

“Of course.” Sarah started scraping batter into a pan. “He had to kill a spider.”

She said it so calmly and reasonably that a chill ran down Zoë’s spine. She took a step backward. “Oh good. I’m glad I don’t have to explain.”

Sarah nodded. “Such a responsible young man.”

“Uh-huh. Responsible. I’m just going to go check on Kishar and Andrea, okay?”

“Mmm,” said Sarah, and waved a chocolate-covered spatula before licking it.