"They wouldn't stay," she said. "The dream of south is too strong."

"Then let them go."

She did not turn to me, and I almost lost her words as the first raw edge of dawn broke.

"I also dream."

In a glittering rain of dust, she faded. Only the goose remained.

I expected the geese to fly at any moment, and I could see they expected it as well, but she kept them there. They circled the pond restlessly and wandered the meadow with their eyes glued skyward. My dad hid himself the full day, leaving only a brittle shell for me to watch over. His open eyes reflected nothing. When the sun bled into the horizon, the geese were still there. I hurried to the shore where my mother was waiting.

"You stayed," I said, handing her the dress.

"Yes." She pulled it on.

I clasped her hand, ignoring the deep itch shivering beneath my skin, and we walked together toward the shack. My chest was buoyant with giddiness. I could've flown right then.

"I'll make you a warm place by Dad's side tomorrow and make sure you're well-fed and safe during the day. No fox will make it within a thousand feet."

I glanced over, saw the shadows darkening in her eyes, and stopped.

"You're not staying, are you?"

"The south still calls. You will understand. In the spring."

She ran her free hand down my arm. I could almost feel the sickening pop of feathers bursting in her wake.

"No." I pulled myself free and stepped back. "I will never understand."

By dawn, I had settled at the pond's edge, shotgun in hand. Mother appeared, shook her head at the gun, and removed her dress. She held it out for me to take, but I refused. Carefully, she set it in the grass.

"Spring," she said. "Wait for me."

Hadn't I waited long enough already? I wanted to ask her, but the words wouldn't come.

She slid into the water with ease and with the breaking of dawn became the goose again. Ripples fled across the pond, and her flock called out for reassurance against the tang of iron in the air.

"Stay," I said, aiming at the nervous geese. For their lives, surely she would stay.

She circled a moment in silence, then honked, and all the geese but her burst into the air. I pulled the trigger, and lead shot sprayed the scattering flock. Three of them plummeted back into the water.

They were just geese, I told myself. Nothing less, nothing more. Even Mother, black and gray and full of spite like any common goose, was no different. I aimed the rifle at her.

"Stay."

She glared; she hissed. She flapped her wings and hurtled toward the sky.

I fired.

Just geese, nothing more, I repeated again and again as her drifted in quiet circles. Between my shoulder blades, a deep itch fluttered and pressed for freedom.

I pictured the city until it passed.

MOONLIGHT AND BLEACH.

SANDRA MCDONALD.

My mother was the most beautiful werewolf in Brighton Beach. Four legs, sleek silver fur, and a mouth full of well-brushed teeth that could rip your throat out. My father was a Russian immigrant who started a janitorial company that at one time serviced every public school and city building on Coney Island. As their only kid, I inherited the worst of both worlds: my mother's were-curse and my father's ruthless passion for cleanliness. Every month I transform into a magical creature who slinks along the city streets carrying a bucket and a mop.

Yes. I'm a were-maid.

"Like that's the worst thing in the world," Mom used to say, her face beet-red as she scrubbed at pots with steel wool. Until she and my father retired, she did her own housework every day. "Sweetheart, you'll see. A woman who cleans and cooks is a woman who will always have a husband."

She's from German stock, very traditional. She wanted me to be a wife; I wanted to be a career woman. She hoped that I would settle down in Park Slope with my boyfriend Jason after we both graduated from Fordham Law. Instead Jason announced he was dumping me for a public defender in Queens who didn't sneak out of the apartment late at night and return smelling like furniture polish. I told him about the curse. He insisted I had some weird obsessive-compulsive disorder.

"He's an idiot," Mom said when heard the news. "His bathroom will never be as clean as it was with you."

My parents' sympathy is long distance these days. They spend most of each year in Germany, where Mom can run free through the Black Forest when her arthritis isn't acting up. I'm their only child, and by day I'm an ambitious junior partner at the law firm of Sidoriv and Puginsky. I wear nice suits and expensive shoes. Under the full moon, whatever I'm wearing transforms into a black polyester dress, a white apron, and ugly black shoes. The yellow rubber gloves that coat my hands won't come off until sunrise. My hair curls itself up into a bun, tight and impossible to dislodge.

Tonight's one of those nights.

"Hey, baby!" A red car slows down and the driver leers out his window. It's one of those hot summer nights that makes you glad for the miracle of air conditioning. "Going to a party? Want to clean me up?"

I ignore him. The perils of walking around in a maid uniform at night in New York can't be underestimated, but I've got a bottle of industrial grade cleaner in my bucket and I'm not afraid to use it.

He makes some lewd suggestions about sponges and finally drives on. Ten minutes later I reach my destination and knock on the alley door.

"There you are," grumbles my cousin, Alexi, after he opens it. "You're late."

"I had to get ready for a meeting with the D.A. tomorrow," I say.

The smell of chlorine is heavy in the humid air, but the halls are dark and empty. This is one of the smallest, most exclusive Russian banyas in the borough. A banya is a bathhouse to you and me. The bathroom stalls, locker room floors, steam room benches are all prime breeding grounds for germs and grime. It's good, hard work.

Alexi is top masseuse here. He's a big beefy man, and when he has bad news he comes out and says it. "Look, Tania. The customers. The morning after you come, they say it's too clean."

I push my maid's cap higher on my head. "Too clean? What does that mean?"

"Too much bleach. Makes them sneeze. Could you maybe try, I don't know, vinegar?"

"It's not as good."

"I'm just saying." Another shrug, a spread of hands. "Olga wants you to stay in the morning. She wants to meet you, talk it over."

Olga is his boss. We've met before, at business functions, but never while I'm under my curse. "I can't! She'll recognize me!"

"Then you better take tomorrow night off. Find someplace else for a month or two."

It's not that New York lacks places that need cleaning. It lacks safe places that need cleaning. Without a haven like this, who knows where I'll end up tomorrow, the last night of the full moon. In desperate times I've broken into hotels and apartments, infiltrated hotels and motels, even hung around bus terminals with a long coat over my uniform. Once I almost got arrested for trying to mop the Brooklyn Bridge.

Alexi holds up one finger. "Good news, though. I've got a guy for you. Needs help."

I squint at him. "What kind of guy?"

"Nice guy," he insists. "Widow. Not a pervert, okay? Just needs a little help."

I trust Alexi with my secret and I'd trust him with my wallet, but you've got to be careful with a curse like mine. Some guys get off on having a woman in a maid's uniform visit them late at night. Leering can lead to groping, and groping can lead to me hitting someone hitting over the head with a mop. I prefer to avoid personal injury lawsuits.

"Nice old guy," Alexi repeats. "University professor. I'll give you his number."

"Fine." It doesn't seem like I have much of a choice. "But first I've got some toilets to clean."

Not only am I the most ambitious junior partner at Sidoriv and Puginsky, I'm the only partner the firm actually has. My bosses are Igor and Boris, two cantankerous old farts with hearing problems, high blood pressure and a fondness for cheap cigars. They've been partners in law for fifty years and closeted gay lovers for at least as long. Or maybe not so closeted. My father used to roll his eyes whenever he saw them, and wring his hands, and then say, "You'd think they could at least marry, have some children. A few seconds of poking and you're done. For appearances."

Most of the firm's work is citizenship problems, workman's compensation and landlord disputes for the economically disadvantaged Russians of Brooklyn. I like most of my clients. They're loud and colorful, on bold new adventures in a foreign land, and the older ones bring us onion and cabbage pirozkhis. I also like being useful. America is full of predators who prey on immigrants the way my mom, during her werewolf nights, is a threat to stray dogs, feral cats, and luckless animals of the forest. Occasionally I do some criminal defense. My current client is an elderly cabbie named Vlad who tried to run over a couple of punks who stiffed him on a fare. I'm dead tired from scrubbing porcelain all night but I make it to the district attorney's office on time for my meeting.

"It was attempted murder," says the prosecutor.

"My client was upset and confused," I reply. "He thought they were trying to rob him."

"He braked, reversed, and then jumped the curb again."

Vlad has big blue eyes that make you want to believe him, but if he ever gives you a hug, be sure to check your pockets afterward. He waves his hands around and speaks rapidly in Russian.

"He thought he saw a gun," I translate.

"Your client is a menace," the prosecutor says.

By the time we leave I have a pounding fatigue headache, and the wretched heat of the day makes my suit cling to me like wet leaves. Back at the opulent offices of Sidoriv and Puginsky-that would be four small ancient, cluttered rooms over what's now an Indian grocery store-I gulp down a giant cup of iced coffee.

"She stays out too late," Igor says, the unlit cigar in his mouth bobbing as high as his bushy gray eyebrows.

"She needs a social life," Boris retorts, shuffling through a mound of folders. Both of them refuse to use computers. "Girl like her, who wants to be alone?"

At times like this, it's best to ignore them entirely.

When I get home to my apartment I feed Alfred, the gray tabby I adopted after Jason left me, and crash for a few hours. The full moon rising in the east calls to me, invokes the change. Like all were-curses, it digs unyieldingly into my sleep. Some were-folk dream of woods dark and deep. I get bleach and moonlight, and oven cleaner that never works as well as it should, and those extendable feather dusters for use with chandeliers and ceiling fans.

It's dark but still searing hot out when I knock on the door of apartment 501 in an old box factory on St. Mark's Avenue. The door to 502 opens instead. Standing there is a handsome guy wearing green shorts and a Fire Department T-shirt. Dark hair, blue eyes, a physique to kill for-he could easily be Mr. January in that charity calendar the FDNY puts out each year.

And here I am, in my polyester dress and dorky flat shoes.

"I thought you were the pizza guy," Mr. January says.

My face heats up. "No pizza here. Sorry."

The door to 501 swings open to reveal a stooped-over old man wearing a baggy black sweater despite the heat.

"Ah, Miss Tania," my client says. "So nice that you came."

I'm waiting for Mr. January to misinterpret the situation and make a snarky remark, but he just smiles. "Hi, Mr. Federov. Thanks for the mushroom noodles. All the guys liked it."

Federov waves his hand. "It was just the extras."

"It was a four-quart casserole dish," Mr. January tells me. What a great smile. "Ask him for some of his fruit cake."

"Off with you." Federov sounds gruff and pleased at the same time. "Come in, girl."

Mr. January leans against his door frame and watches me go into Federov's apartment.

The place is small but has high ceilings and windows from its factory days. The air conditioner rattles but doesn't do much for putting out cold air. Textbooks and foreign novels cover three old bookcases, and bric-a-brac of a long life litter and small tables-photos frames, tiny vases, hundreds of glass figurines. Lots of lovely dust.

"Alexi says you are very good," Federov says, sitting in a lumpy armchair. "That I should not ask questions. That if I ask questions, you will not return. That I should feel free to sleep away the long hours while you toil."

I nod. The raw, pulsing need to clean is making my head hurt.

Federov looks at me shrewdly. "You do this of your own free will?"

"Yes, sir."

"For so little money?"

If I had my way, I wouldn't charge at all. Taking money for my curse just makes it all the worse. But a cleaning lady who only works while the moon is full would raise even more eyebrows if she refused to take any wages for it. My salary here will go straight to charity.

"The money's fine, Mr. Federov. Can I get started?"

"Hmmm," he says. He's thinking about whether to trust me. I might be a harmless housekeeper, or I could be a thief and murderess here to steal his secondhand books about the Bolshevik Revolution.

Finally he shakes his head. "Such a pretty girl, such a situation. Please proceed."

He turns the TV to some late night show with canned laughter and hip young guests. I inspect the premises. The bathroom is tidy enough for a man's apartment, but the grout in the old porcelain tile has gone gray and there's an impressive ring in the bathtub. The bedroom closet is jammed with clothes that smell like old cologne and which need to be thoroughly ironed. In the kitchen I find my true calling: a refrigerator filled with spills and crusted stains, a sink full of dirty dishes and coffee cups, an oven that hasn't been scoured in years. I'm sure there are roaches lurking in the cabinet by the hundreds.

I think I'll pass on that fruit cake.

By dawn Federov is asleep in his chair and his apartment is cleaner than it's been in years. The moon is waning, so I won't see him again until next month. But that means I won't see Mr. January, either. Which is a good thing. I don't need an incredibly handsome complication in my life right now. The district attorney still wants to charge cabbie Vlad with attempted murder; Boris and Igor are feuding daily over Igor's nephew, the no-good troublemaker who wants to borrow money again; Alfred swallows something which makes him get constipated and feverish, and I have to take him to the vet for two days of X-rays and kitty laxatives.

I've just finished hauling Alfred back into my apartment when my throwaway cell phone rings. It's the one I give to clients but I don't recognize the number.

"Hey," says the guy on the other end. "It's Mike Hennessee. My neighbor Ivan Federov gave me your number."

It's Mr. January.