April 1996

Under the cover of the gray, light-polluted night sky, Vanessa broke the latch on her second-story window and swung her leg over the awning. Blue paint scraped off the side of the house as her foot caught on the paneling. Carefully, she swung her body over and dropped to the first story roof, snapping the shingles under her shoes.

Finally. Vanessa rolled her neck and sighed. She had always felt cramped in that house with its picture-perfect walls squeezing her amidst her parents suffocating ineffectual ideologies. The picket fence, the barbeques, the blank white smiles—all of it functioned as a smokescreen designed to hide them from unicorn blix hunters who wanted death and from humans who wanted cages.

Deep in the heart of suburbia lived blixes' havens. Unicorns wouldn't come into such populated settlements even for a desired kill and humans blind with prejudice could never imagine the nice next-door neighbors were blixes. However this haven forced contortion to fit inside.

The normalcy of mailboxes and white shingles and report cards and church gossip railed against the blixes' restricted life. Every Friday night, the neighborhood blixes would come over for gambling and drinking and fun to escape the reality outside the haven—blixes being hunted to extinction by both unicorns and humans. The rowdiest parties always followed the loss of a fellow blix to to a zoo or death. Escaping one cage for another.

Cages, cages, cages, cages.

Vanessa dropped to the earthy ground. She had finally broken free of this one.

Unlike all her role models dolled up and hidden from sight, Vanessa intended to embrace herself and survive. Humans would fail to trap her in a preserve—like some feral animal in a zoo—and the stakes of sinister unicorns would splinter on impact. Furthermore, Vanessa would find people who shared her ambition. She wouldn't live in complacent fear like her parents and their friends, drinking away the fear of discovery.

The night sky shined on Vanessa; the smell of oncoming rain smothered her senses. Gravel crunched under her shoes and her backpack encumbered her shoulders. But when she opened her mouth to scrape her pearly teeth on her new life, the air tasted like freedom.

—

Months later, she found herself alive and safe from blixhunters—but broke and bouncing from shelters to the beds of men who would let her in like a stray cat.

Her naivety had burned away in the past fortnights of struggle, but she knew there was light at the end of the tunnel. The Society of the Evening Star. A Society that protected blixes and other creatures like her. She could find them. And she tried to, at all times.

In pursuit of this asylum, she bit everyone she saw. Unethical, sure, but Vanessa could care less for the human moral strictures she had grown up inside. One day, a victim was going to lead her somewhere. It had already led her to food and money, which had a tendency of evaporating fast, but it had yet to lead to something as necessary and permanent as housing.

One night in a homeless shelter for local youth hundreds of miles from home, Vanessa snuggled into her blanket and quieted her mind. Heavy exhaustion smothered the screams of her stomach's hunger and deep pit of anxiety.

But before she could slip into slumber, a hand shook her shoulder, and she startled up. It was Megan, another teenager stuck in the shelter, but the facial expression told Vanessa more. The downturn of the lips, the knitting of the eyebrows. This was her mother despite the different body.

"Vanessa." The singular word conveyed such a depth of disappointment and rebuke without loving words or exultation at finally finding her missing daughter.

Vanessa shrugged the hand off her shoulder and dived back under the threadbare blanket. She couldn't speak. Tears pushed at her eyelids and her lips trembled. She bit down. No. She harbored more strength than this.

The past months painted a grand tapestry in which Vanessa had fought and kicked to survive. In contrast, her mother resembled a small paint speck of danger.

But, Vanessa didn't want her mom to see her like this. It felt like she had failed.

"Come home," Megan said with her mother's fluctuations of speech. In front of everyone else, her mother had perfected the tone of voice that suggested motherly love. But, alone, her words fell flat and empty. Like now. "Everyone's asking where you are."

Oh, so her mom was only worried about herself? Worried Vanessa's disappearance would draw scrutiny that would lead to some blixhunter finding her? Silent tears raced down Vanessa's face. Her parents had never wanted a daughter. If only they hadn't forgotten the primary consequence of sex seventeen years ago. Cold air raised goosebumps on Vanessa's skin. There was no central heating in the shelter.

With a heavy sniff, the hand withdrew from her shoulder. "Suit yourself. You were always such a drama queen. At least I can tell John I tried."

—

The next year saw Vanessa begin work at a mechanic's shop after the owner had taken pity on her when he found her rifling through their junk cars. Pity or something else—lust. But Vanessa kept her head down and survived.

Surrounded by rapscallion types outcast by suburbia, Vanessa picked up on the fashion and wore her beloved, gifted leather jacket every day she wasn't in the garage.

Vanessa started as a receptionist and grew into a kind of catch-all assistant. But, after weeks of pleading, they finally let her try her hand on the cars. And she was good.

It wasn't talent; it was her watching with a keen eye. Every time the mechanics had paused by the receptionist's desk talking about the issue, Vanessa listened. Every time she had to deliver something to the inner garage, she observed the techniques used by Matt, Liam, and Hennessy. All the while mentally noting the terms they used—like axle or ABS or beltline or anything really because her dad had never taught her how to do any car stuff. But, Vanessa figured it out all on her own and got her hands dirty and did it right.

The shop serviced all kinds of cars: Volkswagens, Toyotas, Ford, Chevrolet, Cadillacs. And Vanessa smiled whenever she got a red one, as her mom had  always hated red cars. But her excitement truly peaked when she got her hands on a Ferrari or Bugatti or Porsche.

With her hands soaked in the oil of a 1967 classic and her hair tied back in a bandana, Vanessa knew one day she would have a car of her own. And she wouldn't be fixing them. It would be her fingers that turned the start key, her hands that spun the steering wheel around a turn, and her fist that shifted the luxury car into the highest gear possible.

When she daydreamed about hopping into the driver's seat of her project, she wasn't fostering ambition without substance. Vanessa knew she was intelligent. She had out-smarted her family, her school, the horrid people who preyed on teenage girls in the streets, and blixhunters. All of them. And she could do more. She knew she could.

One day, her ambitions would manifest into reality. All of them. She would free her kind from the chains of humans and unicorns, and she would own a super-sweet sports car.

Each goal was equally important.

—

One week, her coworkers tallied how many times she complained about her aching tooth until it ended in them practically forcing her to go to the doctor. However, dread pooled in her stomach when the receptionist read her her bill. She took the offered payment plan, but still didn't have enough to cover both food and the motel fee for the week.

So, Liam, one of her younger coworkers, offered her his couch for the week. It was ratty and stained with beer, but it was a place to sleep. She knew her coworkers, all male, either saw her as a daughter or a potential hookup. But, Liam had never made her feel that way.

Vanessa huddled into the couch and closed her eyes to begin her morning routine. So many previously bitten victims were still asleep right now. Maybe one could lead her to the Society.

Unfortunately, that chance was low as she had zero victims with known connections to magic. The only magical people she knew growing up were blixes and they were way more careful of anyone's mouth than a layman.

Nevertheless, she started with Phil, her old high school Biology teacher. During a pep rally, she had crept under the bleachers and bit his ankle. Her proudest moment? Maybe not. But it had been exciting. He had told everyone the next day about the unidentifiable spider bite.

Vanessa opened her eyes. She was in Phil's bed, next to his long-term boyfriend that he never spoke about in class. His sheets were so comfy and the room so coolly air-conditioned. Vanessa sighed. This was nice. She would have her own bed, just like this, one day.

Vanessa rolled out from under his sheets and went to his computer. He was one of the only people she knew who had one. It was boxy and beige and very cool. She couldn't believe she hadn't thought of this earlier.

After navigating to the search bar, she typed in "Society of the Evening Star." She found a pixel video game, a religious group, and a rock band. Vanessa paused. Maybe this wasn't such a good idea.

But before she could dive deeper into the results, cool water splashed onto her face—not Phil's face. Pain stabbed her mind as she violently returned to her own body.

"What the fuck?" Vanessa spluttered. She sat up straight on the couch and glared at Liam and his dumb patchy blonde beard.

"Sorry. You're a deep-sleeper or something. There's someone at the door for you."

Vanessa groaned and cuddled back into the dirty coach. "Tell them to go away."

"Get up. It's 9 am. Don't make me fill up this cup again." He went back to the kitchen, heating up leftover pizza for breakfast.

Vanessa rose with a glare and wrenched open the front door. A beautiful, brunette woman stood with car keys in her hand. "Hi. I'm Clara. Are you Vanessa?"

"No," Vanessa answered. She went to shut the door, but the woman caught the edge with her hand.

"Wait. I just have a question."

"But, I'm not who you're looking for," Vanessa said. She didn't have the time or energy for whatever this lady needed.

An awkward smile befit the woman's features. "Sorry, it's just that my car broke down in the woods and people just told me you were probably the only mechanic good enough to fix it up."

With a heavy sigh and a happy ego, Vanessa followed the woman through the trailer park into the nearby woods. The little pride she had left retained incredible sensitivity to compliments.

Vanessa stopped when Clara did and looked around the pine trees. "So, where's your car?"

But when Vanessa turned to Clara again, she had lost her smile. Vanessa scanned the forest again and repeated her question.

"Oh, I don't drive a car." The woman pulled out a pearly white spiraling unicorn horn, and fear froze Vanessa's limbs completely. Not the magical kind of fear. Just the pure, unadulterated fear of her childhood boogeyman coming to life to steal hers. She remembered the stories. She remembered the imagery of unicorn horns piercing blixes' flesh.

It was this image that spurred Vanessa into a sprint. Her pajamas caught on the branches and trees reached out to get her and her flip flops fell off as she lunged over fallen trunks. Acorns and broken glass and needles pierced her bare feet but the pain fueled her speed. She liked to think she could outrun Clara, but Vanessa knew that unicorns were fast, strong killing machines.

Regrets flooded back to her. She didn't want to die. She didn't want to die now.

Clara laughed as she ran after her.

"Please!" Vanessa screamed, begging for mercy. The laughter only intensified. "Help!"