To celebrate a rare day of November sunshine, a group of us sat outdoors at the table with our lunches. I’d been away from the site too long, missing the noise of construction and overseeing general operations for the business.

I had Nandi’s leftover fried chicken from the previous night, while the guys beside me opened boxes of pepperoni pizza. Steam rose from the surface of a meat lover’s with jalapeños and onion, Sergio’s favorite. I grimaced at him.

“You’ll be crying later over your heart burn.”

He belched in my face. “I’ll be fine.”

I rolled my eyes and returned to my dinner. On top of chicken, she’d whipped together a pot of creamy mashed potatoes with the sparse ingredients in my fridge, using the last of some heavy cream I’d bought for Sasha to sip during movies.

“You’ll be in the john later begging for Pepto.”

“Whatever. Anyway, you coming to Thanksgiving dinner or not?”

“Seriously man?” I stared at him until he squirmed and looked away.

“What?” Sergio cleared his throat. “Ma asked me to check.”

“When she’s able to call and tell me she accepts my choices, I’ll come to dinner.”

He reached over and stole a fried chicken wing. I let him. “Man, you can’t skip Thanksgiving. She’ll be heartbroken.”

“I can, and I will. Thanksgiving is a time for family, and that means my whole family. Girls included. If Mamá doesn’t accept that, then it’s her loss.”

He remained silent for a time, expression gradually transforming from horror to silent rapture with each bite. “If Juanita fried chicken like this, I’d probably do the same. So which one made you dinner?”

“How you know I didn’t make it?”

He glanced at me, scoffed, and took another chicken leg. When Nandi cooked, she made enough for several days, and I’d overpacked my lunch with the expectation of feeding my brother, too. “I know that bland shit you make.”

“Bland? Eat your damn pizza and stay out of my stuff.”

“For real though, good on you for standing up to Mamá. I think sometimes she forgets she can’t run our lives the way she runs Pops.”

“Yeah…”

We ate in silence for a while before the subject changed to our plans for the bonuses Dupont had promised for the holiday. Sergio wanted to take his wife and kids to Disney World.

I wanted to buy three identical engagement rings, but I lied through my teeth and gave him some bullshit about finishing the fence.

After lunch, we parted and went our own ways. I had phone calls to make, and he was overseeing work on the second wave of houses.

Around closing time, Jesús popped into the office. “Hey, where’s Sergio? He’s supposed to be giving us a ride. If he’s going to be staying late, he should have said. I got places to go, man.”

“Man, don’t you have a vehicle of your own?”

“The Range Rover uses a lot of gas, amigo. It just isn’t realistic to ride in it every day to the site when we live so far away. You seen Sergio or not?”

I glanced out the office window. My brother’s ancient car hadn’t moved. “He didn’t say anything about staying late.”

I called him twice. No answer.

A knot formed in my stomach. A nervous tingle in the tips of my fingers told me I hadn’t done enough yet.

Jesús checked his phone too. “Not a single damn message. Man, this isn’t like your brother to disappear. What do you want us to do?”

“We start searching for him. How many of you are left?”

“Almost everyone is gone for the day, boss. It’s just me, Alan, and Paolo waiting on him. We carpooled.”

“Find anyone else on site, split up and check the houses in wave two.”

When I moved onto the unpaved roads and let the smell of the site surround me, the wind brought the odor of motor oil, damp earth, drying cement, and a couple dozen men. There was dust and grit, the wide-open sky above us bringing in smells from miles away, and somewhere beneath it, I’d find my brother.

I tilted my head back and inhaled a long breath, letting it fill my human lungs. The subtle hint of Sergio’s cologne came to me. Following it at a dead sprint brought me closer to the source, and the smell intensified, bringing another familiar odor.

Blood. I smelled blood. I dialed 911 along the way and gave the operator the address of the site.

“Sergio!” I called. “Man, are you here? Are you hurt?”

I couldn’t remember the last time I’d prayed for anything or anyone. I prayed then, because I couldn’t be the one to tell our Ma something took my little brother away from us under my watch.

I burst through the open door and found my brother sprawled across the uncarpeted floor with a big, wet gash across his bald head. He was surrounded by tools and the open box beside him wasn’t far from his hard hat.

Wary of causing further harm by shaking him—fuck, what if he’d had a neck injury?—I crouched to one side and tapped his arm instead. “Sergio. Sergio. Say something.”

After a few seconds, he stirred and groaned.

“Easy now, brother. Don’t move.”

I ducked over to the front door and threw it open, shouting loud enough for the bass to carry my voice to the remaining guys on our crew. “I found him!”

Sergio blinked his eyes in the dim light. “What the fuck happened?”

“I was hoping you could tell me.”

When he tried to roll to his side, he gasped and abandoned the effort. Tears glistened in the corners of his eyes. “Shit.”

“I told you not to move, pendejo. I think your arm is busted. Maybe your collarbone. You’re lucky you didn’t crack your fool head. Why weren’t you wearing a hard hat?” I barked at him.

“Was scratching an itch and thought I heard something. Must have been a raccoon or something on the upper level. Something heavy enough to knock over that toolbox.”

My gaze swept across the tools scattered around the rough floors. “Looks like. It shouldn’t have even been up there.”

I didn’t smell raccoon either. Instead, a dusty smell filled my nose, like hot sand and moldy bones.

Flashing red lights filtered in through the plastic-covered windows and voices came into focus.

“Ah man, don’t tell me you called an ambulance. Don’t you know those are expensive? Juanita is going to kill me.”

“So is our mother. Get used to it.”

---

By the time I parked and made it inside the emergency room lobby, the paramedics had already wheeled Sergio in on a gurney and vanished into the back. Half my family had crowded inside the small room, and I imagined the rest would show up within the next hour once word got around about the accident.

My father paced the waiting room floor while my mother spoke with a frazzled looking nurse. She abandoned the poor woman the moment she spotted me.

“Oh, Esteban!” She threw her arms around me and squeezed hard enough to force the air from my lungs. “You saved him.”

“Ma, you’re squishing me,” I wheezed.

“Sorry.” She released me and stepped back to mop her tear-streaked face with a linen handkerchief from her purse. Then the rosary came out in its place. “What happened? How could such a thing happen to my baby?”

Across the room I heard Samuel mutter, “Now he’s her baby. I’ve been ousted.”

Mariana shushed him.

“It was an accident, that’s all. The paramedics said he was stable, and I’m sure a doctor will be out soon to speak with us.” At least I hoped it would be soon. Patience, especially when it came to her children being hurt, wasn’t exactly one of my mother’s virtues.

My father joined us. His shirt was misbuttoned, a sign of how much he’d rushed once they received our call. “What happened? Sergio is always so careful when on the job. I always taught you boys to be cautious at all times.”

“Yeah, you did. He messed up this time, and he knows it.” I explained what happened with the toolbox, and that I suspected Sergio was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Pops frowned, bushy brows drawing closer together. “That would be a strong raccoon to move something so heavy. But possible, I suppose. Damn. That boy is lucky. There must have been an angel or something watching over him. If all those tools hadn’t come tumbling out of the toolbox, it could have crushed his—” He cut himself off, gaze darting to my mother.

Too late. Her eyes grew large and she clutched her rosary tighter, fingers white knuckled around it. “My baby could have died?”

“Ma—”

“You! What if it had been you instead.”

I’d have probably shrugged it off already. I wanted to tell her I’d been shot twice this month already and bounced back, but now didn’t seem like the appropriate time to have a heart-to-heart discussion about shapeshifting and my weird lineage. “But it wasn’t. I’m fine—”

She hugged me again, tighter than the last time. “What if it had been you? Then the last conversation between us would have been that awful fight.”

“Ma—”

“No more. I will not have our family torn in two. I want you home, mijo. I want you with us for Christmas, the way you should be. Bring your friends if that’s what it takes.”

Friends. I sighed, and the ounce of hope warming in my chest frosted over again. “They’re more than friends, Ma. I told you that. They mean a lot to me—more than Gabriela did.”

She gazed at me in silence for the span of a few heartbeats, eyes misty and shimmering with unshed tears. “Bring them home to meet us,” she insisted.

“We’d love to have you home, Stebi,” my father agreed. “You and your ladies.”

While I was relieved to have her grudging acceptance, I wished the cost hadn’t come at so high a price.

“Thanks, Ma. I missed you, too, and I’d love to be there for the holidays.”

She swiped at her eyes and dipped her chin. “Good, good.”

“Castillo?”

All heads swiveled toward the sound of the voice calling our name. A woman in snowman themed scrubs stood in the doorway leading back into the ER. She wore the same tired expression I’d seen on Sasha a hundred times after one of her busier shifts, but still managed to smile.

“I’m Mr. Castillo.” My father stepped forward, and the woman met him halfway across the room.

“Hi, I’m Doctor Ringstead. I thought you might like an update on your… son?”

“Yes.”

My mother hurried up to her husband’s side. “Is he all right? Can we see him?”

“Your son broke his left arm. Good news, it’s the only fracture he suffered and the break is a clean one. He’ll have some major bruising around his shoulders but better that than a broken collarbone.”

“Thank God for small mercies,” I muttered. My mother sagged against my father and wrung her hands together.

“Can we see him?” Pops asked.

“Soon. He’s been to X-ray and in for a scan already. He took a nasty bump to the head from one of those tools and has a definite concussion. We’re also going to set his arm and get him in a cast. Right now he’s been given something for the pain.”

Ma fretted and fumbled through her purse for her cell phone. “I should call Juanita. His wife is driving up from Houston.”

“I’ll do it, Mamá,” Mariana said. She already had her iPhone in her hand anyway, the device a perpetual part of her palm.

“I promise to keep you up to date and let you know the moment you can see him. Though,” the doctor glanced to the many worried faces, “we’ll have to limit it to two at a time.”

“Of course,” Pops agreed. “Thank you so much.”

Doctor Ringstead smiled and made her way back through the double doors.

“She’s young to be a doctor. Too young.”

At least she’d waited for the doctor to leave before she started fretting out loud. I reached over and settled my hands over my mother’s twitching fingers. “I’m certain she’s very capable, Mamá. Sasha’s a doctor and looks about the same age.”

She muttered something under her breath and let the subject drop, which I took as another small favor from above. Now that everything was relatively settled, exhaustion struck, replacing the adrenaline that had been fueling me since discovering Sergio missing.

Juanita arrived and my mother’s attentions turned to her, granting me a few moments peace and quiet. Pops patted my hand and sat beside me in silence. As I sat there waiting for news, I closed my eyes and thought back to the site. Something about it still nagged me as wrong, and Pops had been spot on when he said the toolbox was too heavy for a racoon.

More was at play than a simple site accident, and I was determined to get to the bottom of it.

---

Moments after I shut my eyes after the shift from hell, Esteban’s special ringtone jarred me awake again.

As my bleary vision cleared, my eyes focused on the digital clock on Nandi’s nightstand. Esteban never called after midnight, my first clue something was wrong. When I wiggled away from Nandi to reach for the phone, she muttered into her pillow and scooted into my back again.

“Esteban?” I whispered, afraid of waking her. “What’s wrong?”

“I… I really hate to wake you in the middle of the night, but I need a favor from you or one of your teammates.” His voice sounded low and raw, an emotional tremble giving way to something dangerous.

“What happened?”

After Esteban caught me up on what happened at the site, I disentangled myself from Nandi and slid into a pair of jeans laying on the floor. “I’ll be there in thirty.”

“No, you don’t have to do—”

“I’ll be there in thirty.”

“Sash?” The pillows muffled Nandi’s drowsy mumble.

“Yeah, baby?”

“Where ya goin’?”

“Esteban needs help. We think snakeboy was at his site messing with shit, so I’m going to go with him and smell around. I caught a whiff of him in the parking garage that day, a good whiff of both his human and animal form.”

“I’ll come with you.”

I tugged a shirt over my head and flipped my hair out from under the neckline. “To do what?”

“Help.”

“If there’s danger, I’d rather you be here where it’s safe.”

“If there’s danger, three of us will take a bite out of it.”

I paused, considering the odds of anything surviving a mauling from three adult lions. Esteban had already proven himself to be deadly even if it was feral instinct. “All right.”

Leaving a note for Isisa if she awakened in the middle of the night to look for either of us, we made the trip to north of Houston and pulled up to the gate of his work site. Esteban was waiting for us in his truck, the glow of a phone on his face, and the engine cool.

He got out and slipped the phone into his pocket. “Hey. You both didn’t have to come out like this.”

Nandi stepped forward and hugged him. “Is your brother okay?”

I squeezed against the other side of him, one arm behind his back. “We wanted to.”

“Yeah. They said he’s got a concussion from one of the tools striking him in the head. He threw his arm up when he heard the commotion above him, and that’s probably the only reason he’s alive. The toolbox fractured his arm instead of crushing his skull. He’ll be in a cast and a sling for a while. Something about how he was struck.”

“Oh no,” Nandi breathed. “Then he’s out of work on top of it? It’s almost Christmas.”

“Yeah, tell me about it. He bitched and moaned about needing to afford their holiday plans.”

“His health matters more,” Nandi murmured, “but it must be difficult for him.”

“Doctor said no physical work at the site for the next two months, but I’ll figure out something for him to do.” He glanced over his shoulder, nervous, then back to us. “C’mon, let’s get inside. This house over here is finished. I can drag in a heat lamp if you need it.”

“We’re fine,” I assured him. “But yeah, better to get out of the open. If someone is lurking, they’ll see our cars, but they won’t know where we are at least.”

“Sergio claims it must have been a raccoon or something. Stray cat maybe.”

“Does that happen?” Nandi asked.

“Yeah, it can in unfinished houses that are still open to the elements, but I don’t think it was. I didn’t smell anything like that. I smelled… I dunno what it was really, but it sure as hell wasn’t a cat or racoon.”

“Which is why you think it wasn’t an accident.” My lips pursed. “Is it safe for us to look around without setting off alarms?”

“Security system is off right now. I went into admin and disabled it for now.”

Nandi unzipped her hoodie. “All right. Strip then.”

A weak smile raised the corners of Esteban’s mouth. “It’s kind of hot when you get all bossy.”

We dropped our clothes and shifted first. It took Esteban a few minutes longer, working himself up to it, even pacing like a caged lion when frustration stalled out his transformation, but he did it.

I bumped my head beneath his chin, proud of him. Nandi moved to his other side, and we followed him outside and down the dirt roads.

The stench I’d encountered outside Club Hysteria lingered in the air. With my nose to the ground, I followed the scent through the project zone. There had been three different uninvited snakes throughout the site at some point during the day, their scent trails fresh. Had they sabotaged some other area of the site?

Esteban claimed the lead. He caught a trail and started to run, loping through the development toward the far northern end. The buildings here hadn’t been finished yet. As we drew closer to one house, I caught the faint whiff of blood.

He bumped open the door with his head and led the way inside. Nandi growled at the door and didn’t follow. Instead, she twitched her tail and turned to circle around the large house.

Upstairs was almost as cold as the rest of the house, but they were in the process of closing it up and concealing its guts. I shifted back again inside and grimaced. Goose bumps arose on my arms. Esteban lingered for a few seconds, staring at me in silent admiration.

“You can do it, too. I know you can. Think of what you want most, use it as your motivation.”

My lion stepped forward from four legs onto two and dragged me against him. His hands chafed up and down my back, warming me. “Did you smell it?”

“Yeah.” My teeth weren’t chattering yet, but I was cold. “And you’re right. There was no raccoon in here. You had a snake. See these scuff marks over here? The toolbox wasn’t anywhere near the ledge. Our Medrano buddy pushed it over.”

“But of course there’s no fucking way to prove it.” He ran both hands through his hair and swore in Spanish.

“There may be.” I glanced at the shadowed corners of the unfinished house and considered the blind spots perfect for a hidden camera. “Nadir is our surveillance specialist, and I’m positive he’d have something special to help with this.”

“Special? You mean like concealed cameras?”

“Yes.”

“Can I install hidden cameras though? Or is that crap inadmissible in court?”

“Honestly, Isisa might be the better one to ask about that, but my gut instinct would be why not? It’s your site. Your security. I imagine your client would be the final word, and if you added extras without tipping off the crew for security reasons I don’t see the issue. But maybe we can do one better than camera footage that people could claim was faked.”

“What’s that?”

“Set them up and catch them red-handed.”

---

After the illuminating events of the previous night, I’d gone home and crashed a couple hours. With Sergio gone, Jesús had stepped up as a capable replacement until my brother was on his feet again.

Nandi had followed the snake’s odor to the fence where it continued beneath a small gap and disappeared at the road about fifteen yards later. Someone had probably taken Medrano away by vehicle there.

“Hey, boss, is it true we’re clearing out early today?”

I looked up from my laptop and forced a smile. Jesús, Xavier, and two other guys with families stood in the office doorway with hopeful expressions.

“Yeah, man. Since Thanksgiving is tomorrow, consider this my gift to you all. I’ll still pay you for a full day.”

“Still need me to come in this weekend to accept supplies?” Jesús asked.

“No, I’ll handle it. It’s just a matter of signing for them and ensuring they get laid down safely in one of the locked buildings. No need for you all to break away from your families.”

“What’s coming anyway?”

“The Italian marble for the countertops in phase one. Over three hundred bucks per square foot, man, and we have about two thousand feet of it coming.”

Xavier whistled. “That’s the good shit, ain’t it, cuz?”

“Yeah.”

Nadir had a theory about someone on my crew working as a double agent for Medrano. Man, I wanted him to be wrong. Step one in our plan involved making sure people knew the shipment was coming and what was in it. These loudmouths would get the word around.

Xavier lingered in the office after the others left. “You really not coming to dinner tomorrow?”

“I’m really not coming. I love you guys, but I have an invitation elsewhere.”

“That’s cool. Hope we see you at Christmas.”

“I’ll be there, just like I promised Mamá.”

Julia and Lyle had invited the four of us to join them for Thanksgiving in Quickdraw, so I’d jumped on the chance. Apparently, Lyle and Isisa spent the day playing video games while the women cooked the actual meal last year.

The crew cleared out early, the guys accustomed to riding with Sergio had arranged alternative ways home. After they left, I hung around to complete my work day, and Nadir arrived two hours later to help me set up cameras—after we confirmed the area was clear of any snakes hiding nearby.

Nadir shook his head in disgust. “Hard to believe anyone could be this desperate. This project should be small change for them.”

“It should be, but it isn’t. Dupont offered us another out in San Antonio for twice as much. Medrano missed out on a gold mine.”

“Huh. Still, it’s not like they’re hurting for cash. I’ve been doing some digging around, and that family has their fingers in everything. Construction, real estate, entertainment, dining—”

“Yeah, shoot me a list of places to avoid from now on. I don’t wanna funnel them any of my cash.”

Nadir chuckled. “Sure thing. All right, this is the last of the cameras. The team and I will take shifts monitoring the site from a safe distance. No one will come in though unless we have to. Don’t wanna tip them off.”

“Then I arrive Saturday to accept the phony supplies.”

“Yup. Make a show of leaving. Then we’ll get you back in place with us.”

“What’s to stop them from smelling us?”

“Artificial pheromones and chemicals. Snakes have an excellent sense of smell, so they’ll be difficult to fool, but not impossible. I plan to have a guy come in and fog the place beforehand, and we’ll also have them in the shipment itself. By the time they get the packages open and realize they’ve been conned, we’ll have the evidence we need,” Nadir answered.

“What do you want me to do now?”

“Now? Nothing. Go home and have a nap. Go bang one of the girls and chill. Do lion shit.”

“Lion shit,” I repeated. “Why the hell not? I guess it’s good to be the king.”