“Hey babe,” said Tyler lazily, falling into step beside Zoë as she left her last class. “You’re kind of glowing. I like it. Did you meet somebody new?”

Zoë gave him a sidelong look. “Maybe. Jealous?”

Tyler grinned. “Do you want me to be?”

She didn’t, she realized. Once the thought of making Tyler jealous had been exciting. Now it just made her a little queasy. “Nah, I think things are better this way. What are you up to?” She stopped at her locker to put some books away.

“Not a lot. Want to hang out for a while? You can tell me more about your new friend.” He flashed a smile at the mirror hanging on her locker door.

Zoë bit her lip. “I’m going to…” She caught herself. “I’ve got stuff to do.”

“People to meet?” Tyler was still grinning, but his voice had an edge.

Even though she didn’t trust Tyler now, Zoë still felt a surge of sympathy. Her own friends had started blowing her off exactly the same way once they’d decided being about Ainsel was intolerable. “Look, I’ll talk to you later. Tonight. This isn’t a brush-off. I’ve just got a previous commitment.”

“Sure,” he said. “That’s cool. Where at? Maybe I can walk you.”

Zoë gave an exasperated sigh. “Tyler. Are you jealous?”

“I’m just feeling very… curious right now. You’ve been distracted lately. I miss the old you.”

“The feeling’s mutual,” Zoë muttered.

“Hey, I’m the same as I’ve ever been. Timeless and eternal, baby.” His smile was bared teeth. Zoë’s heart thumped in a sudden surge of adrenalin.

“I’ve got to get going.” She randomly fumbled two of her books into her bag, zipped it closed, slammed her locker door and started walking. He followed her, as silent as the pack of wolves in the forest, all the way to the front entrance of the school. Hoping to shake him off, she walked all the way down to the parking lot curb. Then, annoyed, she turned to tell him to stop… and he wasn’t there.

She’d swear she could feel his eyes on her. She could certainly imagine his mocking smile. But crowds of other students flowed past her and he was nowhere to be seen.

No, it wasn’t him looking at her. It was everybody else. Everybody who walked past her turned to look at her, just a casual glance each time, but it was an endless river of being observed.

Just a coincidence. A creepy coincidence. But giving up on getting rid of the sense of being watched, she went to her usual meeting spot with Ainsel to wait.

This isn’t a brush-off, she’d said. But it was. She didn’t trust Tyler any more and she’d feel safer if he didn’t talk to her or Ainsel. Why in the world had she said she’d talk to him later tonight? She had to learn to be tougher. But she remembered his bared teeth, and she was afraid of his anger.

Zoë shook her head. Where was Ainsel? Once she and Ainsel had gone to find the unicorn, she would feel better. When Ainsel was with her, she was barely afraid of anything.

The campus emptied, and when Ainsel didn’t show up, Zoë went straight for her phone.

“The number you have dialed is out of service or has been disconnected…” began the message. Zoë ended the call and stared at her phone. Ainsel’s old number had gone straight to voicemail and her new one had been disconnected. Something was wrong.

She’d only been waiting a few minutes this time before reaching for her phone. Ainsel had been so intense and bothered at lunch that Zoë couldn’t believe she’d let anything keep her away.

Zoë chewed on her lip, refreshing the messages on her phone as she tried to decide what to do. Normally she’d wait, she’d wander around. That’s what she’d done last time Ainsel hadn’t shown up. She hadn’t worried. Instead she’d stumbled into Tyler talking to strange friends.

Her stomach clenched at the thought of Tyler and Ainsel. After fidgeting with her phone for another moment, Zoë gave up on keeping cool and called Ainsel’s foster mom Kishar.

It was a brief conversation, and it made Zoë feel worse instead of better. Kishar didn’t know where Ainsel was, and furthermore, thanks to Zoë’s call, she was leaving work now to go home. She’d call Zoë if Ainsel was there. Ainsel had been stressed and worried lately, did Zoë know anything about that?

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

Zoë’s courage failed her. She muttered something about the dogs, promised to let Kishar know instantly if Ainsel contacted her, and hung up. Then she paced in a little circle. If she went someplace else, would Ainsel instantly show up and wonder where she was? But Ainsel’s phone wasn’t connecting. That wasn’t just being late. Something was going on.

She went to look in Ainsel’s final classroom, and then in the grove behind the gym, keeping a wary eye out for Tyler again. She didn’t see anybody on her walk over there, which was unusual. There should have been students moving about on extracurricular business. But she didn’t see Ainsel, or Tyler, or anybody else. It was like she’d wandered into a different world. It was so unnerving that she stopped by the outbuilding where the Drama Club met and peeked inside.

The members inside stopped the improv exercises they were doing and looked at her. One of them, tall and elegant and familiar from Chemistry, said, “Can I help you?”

“Nope! Thank you!” said Zoë brightly and slammed the door closed again and leaned on it. It was clearly just a coincidence that everybody was out of sight right now. She was overtired from her adventures the night before. That was it.

There were werewolves running around her town, and a unicorn in her forest. And she was trying to write off strangeness as being ‘overtired’. That was her exhaustion at work.

She walked home, pretending it wasn’t a strange, creepy trip, with big dogs following her and drivers on the road turning to look at her as she crossed streets. Everything was fine, la la la, except for how Ainsel wasn’t answering her phone. That was all she was going to worry about right then. Kishar called her halfway there to tell her Ainsel wasn’t at her own home, which didn’t really surprise Zoë. That would have been too straightforward.

Kishar said, “And you don’t have any idea where she might have gone? I’ve been trying to find her phone’s GPS and it’s just gone.”

“I do have an idea,” said Zoë cautiously. “I’m going to check into it.”

“Well?” demanded Kishar impatiently. “Where?”

Zoë thought of the unicorn’s hidden space. It seemed just possible that Ainsel might have skipped out on her afternoon classes and gone to Zoë’s house on her own to look for the unicorn. If she’d stumbled into the unicorn’s secret hideout, maybe wireless signals wouldn’t be able to find her phone anymore than werewolves could find the unicorn. Maybe she was there, with the unicorn, and didn’t even know people were worrying.

Zoë summed that up with, “There’s a spot behind my house. It’s kind of a dead zone. I’m hoping she’s there.”

“Well, let me know as soon as you check it, please, whatever you find.” Kishar’s voice was crisp and calm, as if she was talking about the weather. “I’m calling the school office manager next.” She hung up.

Zoë had slowed while talking, but she picked up her pace again. She wouldn’t run, because there was a big dog following her and even normal dogs liked to chase running targets. But she promised herself she wouldn’t go outside again without a pipe wrench.

The wind strengthened and a few drops of rain blew in her face. The trees rustled and swayed, as if even they were bending to look at her. She shook her head and huddled in her coat, trudging on until she arrived at her house.

She went inside. The house was dim and still, just as it had been when she left. Halfway to the back door, she stopped. Something was wrong, right here, inside her house. She went to the cupboard under the kitchen sink and picked up the pipe wrench her father never remembered to put away. Then, methodically she went from room to room, trying to figure out what had struck her as wrong about her own home.

When she looked in her parents’ room, saw the bed her mother neatly made every morning, she realized what it was. She hadn’t seen her parents in almost two days. They hadn’t come home last night. They’d left yesterday morning and neither of them had been home since.

Fear stabbed through her and she ran from room to room, looking for some sign she was wrong, some message they’d left. After tearing through the living room and her father’s office, she caught herself on the door jamb of the kitchen and tried to calm her panicked thoughts. Maybe they’d just gone on a spontaneous mid-week romantic getaway and forgotten to tell her. It didn’t seem beyond the bounds of reason. They often forgot about her.

And maybe Ainsel was out back, talking to a unicorn.

It was all reasonable, all plausible. Unlikely, but not impossible.

Zoë’s heart pounded in her chest and liquid fire raced through her veins and gathered as burning tears in her eyes. She wanted to go back to bed, pull the covers over her head and wait until everything went back to normal.

Instead, despite the lump in her throat that threatened to choke her, she forced herself to walk over to her back door and outside. It had started to rain hard while she’d been searching her house. She walked through the cold downpour to the forest behind her house and stopped under a fir tree to put the wrench in her coat pocket and wipe away the wetness from her face.

“Hello?” she called, and walked slowly in the direction of her star-watching hill, her arms spread wide as if she might catch hold of the unicorn’s secret place with the tips of her fingers.

She made it all the way to the hillside, then walked back to her own yard, then did the walk again, along a different path, calling out as she did. “It’s me. I’m here. I need to talk to you. It’s important. Hello? Please?”

She hadn’t dreamt it, she hadn’t, she was sure. But she was walking through the forest, talking to the trees, reaching out for something that didn’t respond. And her parents were gone, and Ainsel was gone and she was all alone, humiliated and ashamed and afraid, caught in a nightmare and reaching for what was clearly no more than a dream.

She could’t bear it. Her knees gave out under her and she fell to the carpet of needles, her coat puddling around her as she hugged herself and sobbed. Her misery devoured her thoughts, feeding on itself until she was wailing, even as a tiny voice in the back of her head tried to make her control herself. What did it matter, anymore? Let the monsters come.

The wind blew across her, bringing the scent of cinnamon, and the shadows flickered. Then something warm brushed her cheek and blew sweet breath across her face. “Don’t cry, sweet Zoë. I’m here. You’re safe, now.”