There wasn’t very much to see, watching a unicorn do sanctuary magic. He wandered around slowly looking at tiny branches, rocks, and ferns, inching closer to the hillside. Zoë followed him and tried not to be distracting. But when the hour approached, she touched him lightly on the shoulder.

“Hm?” said the unicorn, giving her a dreamy look.

Zoë bit her lip. “We’re near the hill and I have to go meet them. I’ll bring them back here, all right?”

Lucien shook his head, as if a fly had landed on his nose, then stared at her in surprise. “Oh.” His head lowered, his ears flopping out. “I’m sorry.”

“No, no!” Zoë said hastily. “You’ve been working hard and I bet you’ll be there soon and it’s really helpful, but an hour isn’t a lot of time… I’ll just go over there, meet them and we’ll back as quick as a wink.”

He stared at her as if he couldn’t quite process her words and she realized he was still caught up in whatever magic he’d been working. There wasn’t really time to make him understand. According to her watch, the hour was ticking over even now.

“I’ll be back,” she repeated, then turned away, trudging through the forest toward the hillside she could just make out among the trunks.

It was getting dark, but even if it had been full dark she’d have been able to make her way to the hillside by memory and sound cues. She’d lugged her camera gear up to the top of the hill so many times that she felt like she knew every bush and bump of grass. Andrea and Kishar were not as familiar with the location, though, and she hoped she’d be able to find them in the twilight. Lucien hadn’t reported the wolves moving from their stakeout of her original location, which meant she’d probably given them the slip. But the breeze picked up at sunset and there was no point in staying out and exposed any longer than necessary.

At the base of the hill, Zoë paused, looking and listening. There was no sign of Kishar and Andrea, even though it was a few minutes after their meeting time. But Andrea had been acting strange and maybe she was giving Kishar grief about coming out to a random piece of forest at night.

The hill was quiet, although there was distant road noise now that she was out of the muffling presence of the main forest. The ground squelched underfoot as Zoë shifted her weight and considered climbing the hill so that she’d be easier for Kishar to find.

One of the shadowy bushes trembled, and a wolf stood up. Zoë went cold and took a step backwards, her mind suddenly racing. The wolves, here! Had they taken Kishar and Andrea? She needed to run—

A hand from behind her closed around her neck. Spots danced in front of her eyes.

The next thing she knew, she was enclosed in something fabric. A blanket, she realized. The blanket from her own bed? She struggled, trying to escape, trying to remember how she’d ended up there. She’d been waiting for Ainsel’s moms and then she was here.

She was hanging upside down, the blood rushing to her head. No, she was being carried over somebody’s shoulder, wrapped in the blanket from her own bed. A hand patted her bottom.

“Behave,” rumbled a voice. “You’re all wrapped up nice and safe.”

Zoë promptly struggled more. She couldn’t help it. Nobody had picked her up and carried her around since she was a child, and it was hard to think anybody who would snatch her from a hillside had the same meaning for ‘safe’ that she had. But breathing was difficult inside the blanket and she quickly ran out of energy.

Besides, what was her plan if she got her captor to drop her? Roll away? The blanket was clearly tied somehow. And her head still wasn’t working quite right from whatever they did to knock her out. She ought to just wait and see what happened next. Her head really felt weird…

When she woke up again, her head had been freed from the blanket although the rest of her body was still wrapped up. A boy’s face hovered in front of her own, biting his lip in concern. She recognized him. Danui? Something like that.

She’d been folded onto a couch in a living room somewhere. It was even less familiar than Danui: hovering on the edge of recognizability as if she’d seen it once in a dream. There were photographs on the wall of a couple that Zoë had never met, and it was nicely furnished with cream upholstery on the couch and armchairs. Sky blue curtains were half-closed, and it was still night outside. Danui sat on a polished oak coffee table right in front of her.

“Are you awake? Do you remember your name?” asked Danui.

“Zoë,” she muttered. “Why the hell am I wrapped up in a blanket?”

“We had to bring you to him safely.” Danui waved his hand around her as if he wasn’t quite sure what to do now. “We’re new to kidnapping.”

“We probably could have had an accident,” said a new voice. A young woman with short hair, dressed in rags and a nice new boy’s jacket, crouched on an armchair. “He would have understood. We’re hunters, not snatchers.”

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

“Stop it, Jae,” said Danui calmly. “This is better for everybody.”

Zoë glanced around, noticing that Jae and Danui weren’t the only people in the room. There were two more boys, lounging in corners. One of them sat with his knee up, but both of them watched her like a cat watching a mouse.

Jae made a face and hopped off the chair, looking toward an archway that led deeper into the house. Tyler appeared a few seconds later, strolling in with his hands in his pocket, master of all he surveyed. That was when she remembered where she’d seen the living room before. She’d visited Tyler’s house a couple of times, briefly, waiting in the living room while he picked something or other up. She’d never met his parents, and she wondered why he wasn’t in any of the photos.

“Hey, Zoë,” he said, as if they were accidentally meeting at the corner store. “Wow, that looks snug. Well done, guys. Get her out of that thing. Now.”

Jae scowled as Danui immediately started fumbling with the bungee cords wrapped tightly around Zoë.

“Tyler?” Zoë said. “You sent these guys to kidnap me? Why? Because I wouldn’t hang out with you? That is screwed up!”

“I’m sorry, sweetheart,” said Tyler easily. “I got tired of waiting for you and your friend to come out and play.” He moved into Danui’s space, nudging the other boy out of the way. After tugging on a corner of the old blanket, he put his hands on Zoë’s shoulders and started inching it down. His thumbs passed over her collarbone and she couldn’t help the goosebumps that raised on her skin.

He smiled, and finished working the binding over her shoulders, where it fell down to her waist, freeing her arms entirely. She promptly pushed Tyler away from her. “Back off, I’ve been crowded enough.”

He let her push him back, and settled back on the coffee table. “We need to have a talk, Zoë. I want to know where you went, and why you smell stronger than ever of unicorn.”

Zoë’s eyes widened before she could school herself to not react. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Come on, Zoë.” Tyler’s voice dropped cajolingly, and she was reminded of how he’d convinced her and Ainsel to stay out late to watch the new superhero movie the night it had premiered. They’d had fun together. Why was he suddenly acting like this?

“Who are your friends?” Zoë asked.

“They’re not really my friends. More… servants. Hereditary servants.” He glanced up, met Danui’s gaze, and smiled toothily. Danui flushed and looked down. “It took some work to get them here, too. But they are here, just in time, and I have everything I need except the unicorn. Are you a unicorn, Zoë?”

Zoë clamped her lips shut on an inane desire to say, What’s a unicorn? Instead, she started untangling her legs from the blanket. “This is stupid. I’m going home.”

Tyler shrugged and leaned forward again. “Eventually. Once I’ve freed you from the spell you’re under.” He put a finger under Zoë’s chin and tipped her head slightly up. Before she could jerk away, his eyes caught her own. They were the color of chocolate, warm and liquid. She couldn’t look away.

“Yeah,” he murmured. “You’re under a spell. You’ve seen something lately, something you thought was wonderful. Something you’d lie to your best friend for. But they’re using you. And now I’ve come to save you.”

Fluffy clouds drifted through Zoë’s mind. They changed into ridiculous shapes and she giggled. Then she thought, But Ainsel’s my best friend and I haven’t lied to her. It loomed through the clouds, a pillar in the vault of her mind.

“You can just relax now,” Tyler went on, his voice smooth caramel to go with his chocolate eyes. “I’m here and I can take care of things. I’ve got everything managed. You don’t need to worry. Just tell me who’s cast this wicked magic on you.”

“There was a spell cast on me,” Zoë admitted, through the fog of pink clouds. Then another pillar emerged from the clouds. Lucien said I broke the spell he cast on me.

Tyler smiled. “And don’t you feel better for telling me?”

Zoë frowned. “I don’t know.” She felt funny, as if she had a blindfold on that let her see big things but miss the small details. She’d worked hard at learning to notice details, darn it.

His smile went strange. “Ah. Tell me more and it’ll be all right. Come on, you can trust me.”

Pursing her lips, Zoë shook her head. The fog made her confused, but she didn’t trust Tyler. She just couldn’t quite remember why anymore.

Tyler stared at her for a minute. When he spoke again, his voice was different: sharper, colder. “Ainsel cast a spell on you, and I am lifting it, so you can see Ainsel as she really is: shallow, selfish, manipulative. Somebody else has bespelled you, too: made you hide them, lie for them. Tell me who.”

Zoë frowned. Ainsel was like that?

Tyler’s words cut through her, an icy knife of fact, but Zoë couldn’t believe it. The facts were flawed. She could see the thin places.

She’d broken Lucien’s magic once before. Now, as she struggled against the dream Tyler was pushing, she had a glimpse of how it happened, like something glimpsed in a fever delirium. It made no sense, but it happened again.

The facts lined up. Tyler was lying to her. He was backing his words with a power that made them hit like a weighted pendulum. He hated Ainsel. And he was trying to make her hate Ainsel, too.

“Shut up,” Zoë said. “Stop trying to make me think things that aren’t true. You’re being a jerk.”

Tyler blinked. “You’re resisting me,” he breathed. “Oh my God.” His eyes dilated and his cheeks flushed. Then his hands were on her shoulders and he was kissing her. His mouth was hot and hard against hers, his teeth nipping at her lower lip, one hand holding her head so she couldn’t jerk back. His tongue flicked against hers as she struggled in panic. He moved his mouth to her ear and whispered, “I love it.”

Then he pulled away, not so much releasing her as thrusting her against the couch. He had an unholy, insane grin, his teeth bared and his eyes glittering. “Resisting me. Wonderful.”

Zoë scrubbed at her mouth and stared at him apprehensively as he bounced to his feet. “She won’t tell us anything. I have a new plan. Where’s that postman? I have a use for him after all.”

One of the werewolves jerked his thumb at the back of the house, and Tyler nodded. “Feed her if she’s hungry, let her sleep on the couch. At dawn, we’ll go solve this mystery a different way. It’ll be hard work, but I’ll have something nice waiting for me after.” He turned that wild grin back on Zoë again and she couldn’t help shrinking back against the couch.

He ran a hand through his hair. Once she’d thought that gesture was cute, but that Tyler had been goofy and charming and carelessly kind. Now it was arrogant and frightening. He barely looked at the werewolves, keeping that kindling gaze on Zoë as he said, “Don’t lose her. I’ll be back in a while.” Then he walked to the back of the house, leaving Zoë alone with the werewolves.