The practiced lie rose easily to her lips. "My brother crossed a few years ago. Gave me some advice."

He smiled. "Brothers are like that."

Eduardo had given her advice, when she showed up on his doorstep in Cuauhtemoc. Much of it had involved swearing. Not that he doubted what Ines had to say; Mother had once sent him out into the desert, too, as she had later done with Ines. But he thought she should let it go. Or let someone else take care of it-as if that had done any good yet.

And she owed Javier too much to let it go.

"If an old man can give you advice, too," Miguel said, even quieter than before, "watch out for that one." He made a tiny gesture toward El Rojo. "He's got his eye on you. But not in the usual way."

Ines' fingers tightened on her backpack. "What do you mean?"

Miguel shook his head. "I don't know. The big one, he wants what you'd expect, but the leader . . . he's watching you for something."

For what, Ines wanted to ask-but El Rojo rose smoothly to his feet, and they had to follow. It wasn't a question Miguel could likely answer, anyway.

With the sun now up, the desert rapidly heated from pleasantly cool to sweltering. Ines and Miguel both took turns carrying the small children, to give their mothers a rest. Why were they crossing now, in the brutal conditions of summer? Couldn't they wait for milder weather? She bit back the desire to yell at the mothers for stupidity. She didn't know their reasons. And it would upset the kids, who out of all those here were completely blameless. Not that innocence would save them, if immigration agents caught their families; they would be deported back to Mexico, with or without their parents.

Ines gritted her teeth and kept walking.

When the noon halt came, people sank down wherever they stood, trembling and drenched with sweat. El Rojo wandered among them, cursing and kicking, until everyone was as hidden as they could get. Even in this desolation, they couldn't assume they would remain unnoticed; the so-called Minutemen rode through here on their self-appointed patrols, and some of them were far too ready to shoot.

Miguel joined Ines in her clump of creosote. The bushes didn't offer much in the way of shelter, not with the sun directly overhead, but it was all they had. The older man offered her beef jerky; Ines gave him chips in exchange, wishing she had brought more. They made her thirsty, but it was necessary to replace the salt lost through sweat, and she could tell that few of the migrants had known to bring their own. She hoped they found a cache of water left by one of the humanitarian groups; some people hadn't brought enough.

Murmurs rose here and there as people made brief conversation, then gave it up out of exhaustion. One curt order, though, made Ines stiffen: El Rojo, speaking to the mother whose daughter had fussed the most. "Come with me."

Miguel's hand clamped down on Ines' arm before she could move. "Don't."

"I can't let him-" Ines growled, trying to rise. El Rojo was leading the young woman to the far side of a cluster of ocotillo.

"Yes, you can," Miguel hissed. "Look." He jerked his chin; Ines, following, saw Pipo watching her. He wants what you'd expect, Miguel had said-what El Rojo was about to take from that woman. Something else to offer, the coyote in the cantina had said. For all she knew, this was part of the woman's bargain with El Rojo. Which didn't make it right, didn't make it okay- You aren't here to rescue them, Ines. Not like that. Don't forget your purpose.

She sagged back down, defeated, and tried to sleep. It wasn't the heat and relentless sun that kept her awake, though, but the muffled sounds from nearby.

They rested through the hottest part of the day, then rose to walk some more. Now it was clear that, however hard the night and morning had been, that was only the beginning of their trials; stiff muscles protested, and weariness made everyone clumsy. One of the young men stumbled on his way down a slope, nearly falling, putting Ines' heart in her mouth; if he twisted an ankle, he was dead. Nowould carry him, not all the way to the reservation. He regained his balance, unharmed, and they went on.

Until the sun set and the desert air cooled, and Ines, stupid with exhaustion, began to wonder if all this risk and effort was going to come to nothing whatsoever, except an embarrassed trek back to Phoenix, and a passport in her mailbox with no stamp marking her return to the United States. It isn't nothing, she thought, you know about El Rojo now, and can tell- "Hide," the coyote snarled.

The migrants didn't move fast enough. They'd been stumbling along, one foot in front of the other, like zombies, and now they stared at him; Pipo and the others began shoving people to the ground as distant headlights sliced through the thickening dusk.

Ines remained standing, staring, until Pipo knocked her down, almost into the spines of an ocotillo. Two lights, moving independently: all-terrain motorcycles, not a Jeep. Border Patrol, not vigilantes, and following their trail from the fence.

A low, quiet laugh from El Rojo raised all the hairs along her arms and neck. "Come on, boys."

Making only a little more noise than the desert wind, he and his three fellows loped off toward the approaching motorcycles.

Ines shoved a hand into her pocket, pulling out the rubber-banded tin. When she rose to a crouch, Miguel whispered, "What are you doing?" He wasn't close enough to grab her.

Keeping those agents alive. "Stay here," she hissed back, and ran before he could protest.

She kept low, taking advantage of the scant cover. Already she'd lost sight of El Rojo and the others, but that wouldn't matter for long. She just needed to get far enough away from the migrants. . . .

Good enough. Ines dropped to one knee, stripped out of her clothes, and pulled the rubber band off the tin.

The pungent smell of the teopatli inside rose into the dry air. Its scent brought memories swarming around her like ghosts: her first visit to Cuauhtemoc, at the age of fifteen, re-united after seven years with the family she had lost. Her mother sending her out into the desert, with teopatli for her skin and pulque to drink and a maguey thorn to pierce her tongue, as her ancestors had done for generations before.

Careful despite her haste, Ines dipped her fingers in the paste, and began to dab it onto her body. Legs, back, arm, face, rings and clusters of spots, and even before she was done she could feel the ololiuqui seeds ground into the paste taking effect. Her vision swam, going both blurry and sharp, and smells assaulted her nose. Then everything came together with a bone-wrenching snap, and leaving tin and clothes behind, Ines ran once more.

The coyotes weren't hard to follow now. They feared no predators, out here in the desert; Border Patrol, vigilantes, ranchers, all were just different kinds of prey. They ran together for a time, then fanned out, and Ines went after the nearest, knowing she would have to be fast.

He was on his way up a steep rise, aiming for a cliff from which he could leap. Ines caught him halfway, slamming his wiry to the ground, her jaws seeking and then finding his skull, teeth punching through into his brain. The coyote died without a sound, as in the distance, the barking calls of his brothers pierced the night air.

The motorcycles growled lower at the sound, but they were still approaching much too fast. Ines ran again, the teopatli giving her strength she'd lacked before. She was made for the stalking ambush, not the chase, but the lives of those two agents depended on her speed. The second coyote died with his throat crushed. The noise dropped sharply; one of the engines had stopped. She caught the third coyote on his way toward the motorcycles, and this one saw her coming; he twisted away from her leap, yipping in surprise, before going down beneath her much greater weight.

Even as the hot blood burst into her mouth, she heard a scream from the direction of the engines-a human scream.

Cold blue light flooded the narrow valley where the migrants had walked. One of the motorcycles had fallen on its side; the rider lay moaning and bleeding. His partner had a shotgun out, and was pointing it in every direction, unsure where the next attack would come from. If Ines wasn't careful, he would shoot her instead.

Now it was time for the stalk. She circled the area slowly, paws touching down with silent care, nose alive to every scent on the wind. She thought the third coyote had been Pipo-couldn't be sure-but the last was El Rojo. He was the smart one, the subtle one, the sorcerer who had given them all coyote shape, the better to hunt the humans who came to hunt them.

He knew she was out here. Ines realized that when she found his trail looping upon itself, confusing his scent. He'd heard Pipo die, of course-but maybe he'd known since before then. He's watching you for something, Miguel had said. Maybe El Rojo recognized a fellow sorcerer when he saw one.

On an ordinary night, she wouldn't have been stupid enough to approach the overhang. But the strength the teopatli gave her was no substitute for sleep; Ines' human mind was sluggish, ceding too much control to the beast.

A weight crashed into her back. Pain bloomed hot along her nerves as the coyote's jaws closed on her neck. Acting on instinct, Ines collapsed and rolled, dislodging El Rojo. When she regained her feet, she saw at last the creature she had come all this way to hunt.

His coat was different than the others', more uniform in color along the head and back. In sunlight, it would be reddish brown. El Rojo, the red one, whose jaws now dripped red with her blood. Who had murdered Javier, and Consuela, and David, ranchers and vigilantes, and probably some migrants, too. Coyote attacks, the official reports said; they were suddenly more common than before. But agents of the Border Patrol died more often in the line of duty than any other federal law enforcement division, and the people in charge were more concerned with human killers than animal attacks.

Only Ines suspected more. She could hardly tell anyone it was nagualismo, though, even if she admitted to being a nagual herself. And so she had gone south, into Mexico, returning as an illegal immigrant, to hunt the coyote who ran on both two legs and four.

They snapped and feinted at one another, El Rojo using his greater speed and agility. But that was a dangerous game for him to play, especially on his own; when coyotes hunted larger prey, they did so in packs, and his was dead. That was why he had ambushed her-and as if he remembered that at the same moment, El Rojo turned and ran.

Ines followed. It might be enough to have killed the others, or it might not. If he could share his nagualismo with anyone, it wouldn't take him long to be back in business. But it wasn't pragmatism that drove her; it was the memory of Javier's funeral, and his sister's grief. And her own devastated face, staring back at her from the mirror.

The beast wanted his blood.

And the beast was stupid, forgetting she wasn't the only predator out here tonight. The shotgun blast clipped her right hip, a few of the pellets raking bloody tracks into her fur. El Rojo had lured her back toward the motorcycles, and the agent with the gun. That man didn't know she was a friend. Ines roared, and leaped out of range.

Bleeding, trembling with exhaustion even the teopatli couldn't erase, she prayed, as she'd once prayed to the spirit of the day on which she was born. Alone in the desert, hallucinating and exhausted, bleeding from the tongue in the old manner, she'd begged the spirit to come-and the jaguar had answered.

El Rojo was creeping up behind her, not quite silent enough. Ines waited, paws braced against the rocky dirt. Closer. And closer.

When he leapt, she twisted to meet him, with all the speed and power of the jaguar.

One massive paw slammed him to the side. El Rojo yelped, but it cut off as her jaws found his neck. With a single bite, she severed his spinal cord, and his went limp in the dust.

Panting, she stood over the of her prey. Not far away, she heard the second engine start up again, and the crunching rush of the motorcycles driving away. The wounded agent was well enough to ride, then, and they'd given up the chase.

For now.

Ines licked her spotted fur clean as best she could. Then, wearily, strength fading again, she padded back along her own trail to her clothes and the tin of teopatli. Changing back to human form brought all her previous exhaustion and then some crashing down; she could barely persuade herself to get dressed. The only thing that moved her was the knowledge that sixteen frightened migrants waited in the darkness, knowing only what they heard: motorcycles and guns, coyotes and the roar of a jaguar. She hoped they hadn't run.

They hadn't. It would have been suicide, in desert territory none of them knew at all. Miguel stood up as Ines approached, and a few others followed suit, including the mother Ines had failed to protect from El Rojo.

The silence stretched out. She hadn't thought this far ahead, to what she would tell the migrants. Lack of energy made her blunt. "They're dead. The coyotes."

One of the other women whimpered. Ines stood, only half-listening, as a babble of questions and fear broke out. She didn't come out of her daze until Miguel drew close and said, "Do you know where we were going?"

The Tohono O'odham reservation, probably, where El Rojo would have had some means for them to continue onward. Ines didn't know what that would have been. But she knew some of the Indians protected migrants, and sent them along to others who could help.

Miguel saw it in her eyes. "You'll have to lead us, then."

Ines opened her mouth to answer him, then stopped. She had climbed the fence with these people; she had paid a coyote and gone into the desert, just like the rest of them, and that made them kin. Here in the middle of the wilderness, she could not say to Miguel, I'm an agent of the U.S. Border Patrol. I don't do coyotaje. I arrest those who do.

She would take them to the reservation, of course; it was that, or abandon them here to die. But when they arrived, she would have to hand them over, to be deported back to Mexico.

Her gaze fell on the young mother, with her infant daughter. Eduardo had been the same age when their mother carried him across the border. He was eleven when they deported him, with no memory of the "home" they were sending him back to; Mama, caught in the same raid, had gone with him. Ines, born in the United States, had stayed, and lost her family for years.

She'd joined the patrol to fight drug smuggling, to end violence, not to hunt people who only wanted work and a better life. Sneaking across the desert, risking death every step of the way, was no kind of answer-but they had no other. And Ines could not tell these frightened, hopeful men and women and children that the dream was not for them.

"We'll rest for an hour," she said. "Then I'll take you someplace safe."

SWEAR NOT BY THE MOON.

RENEE CARTER HALL.

The wolf watches us from the far corner of the enclosure as the girl fumbles with her keys to let me inside. I don't bother to call to him; his hearing isn't as good as it used to be, and besides, he won't come near until we're alone.

In the brochure, they called the enclosure an "enriched personal habitat," but it's really more of a pen, a section of grass and trees fenced with chain link. They've tried to make the grounds look something like a forest, but the effect is too neatly trimmed to be convincing. Instead, it looks more like a park-or a zoo.

The only thing that's wild here is him.

In the nearest corner, a three-sided wooden shelter shades two stainless steel bowls. One holds fresh water, changed every hour-a touch I appreciate-and the other is half-filled with a pile of pink beef scraps.

I watch two flies buzz around the meat. It doesn't look like he's touched it at all.

I sigh and turn back to the girl, who has already closed the gate behind me. "Has he eaten anything today?"

She glances at his chart. "No, sir, not today. They tried giving him venison this morning like you asked, but he didn't eat any of it."

"Was it cold?"

Even with the chain link separating us, she blanches under my gaze, and I look away briefly to make her more comfortable. I know, then, that she has no faol blood in her. "I don't know," she says.

I try to keep my voice gentle. "He won't eat it unless it's warm."

She jerks a nod. "I'll make a note, sir."

I don't doubt that she will. They love notes at this place: charts and paperwork and orders typed in all caps. But I wonder if they ever bother to read any of them. One shift ends, another one starts, and you might as well have never said anything in the first place.

If it's frustrating for me, I can only imagine what it's like for him. At least I can still speak.

"Thank you," I tell her, though I'm not really sure what I'm thanking her for. "I'll find you if we need anything else."

She locks the gate and hurries away. I wonder how long she'll keep working here.

I double-check that the gate is closed securely, then sit down on the wooden bench under one of the trees. The wolf whines softly as he rises and comes to me. He is thinner than the last time I saw him, and his gait is stiff-legged. If he hasn't been eating, he likely hasn't gotten many pills down for his arthritis, either. He thrusts his muzzle against my hands, and I stroke his silver head lightly, respectfully.

"Hi, Dad," I whisper.

I remember the first time I saw him in wolfshape. He told me not to be afraid, but still, watching the full-grimace of the change was terrifying to a ten-year-old. It reminded me of the horror movies where you think you're approaching a loved one from behind, until they turn around and the music shrieks and you realize you're seeing the monster instead.

But at the end of it, he wasn't a monster. He was a strong, healthy gray wolf, lean muscle, lush pelt, white teeth. As a man, he had always seemed to me somehow smaller, weaker than the other fathers I saw-although I hated to admit that, even to myself-but as a wolf, he was powerful, he was fierce, and I felt I was seeing his true self for the first time. It was disorienting and wonderful.

As a wolf, I turned out to mirror him in miniature, a fact that pleased me immensely.

He taught me what it meant to be faol, to carry a wildness within you. The wolf is always there in your mind, even in human shape, just as the human side of you still lingers in wolfshape. In form, you are one or the other. But in your mind, you are neither, and both. And it is so much simpler, and so much more complicated, than that sounds.

There were no large packs near our home, but he took me to the others within our range. I saw them bare their throats and bellies to him, saw them lick his muzzle. The wolf in me knew what that meant without being told, and the boy in me nearly burst with pride.

Two females ran with that group, both with silver coats and sweet voices, but while they fawned over my father, he never took any special notice of them that I could see. My mother had been gone almost since I could remember, and I asked my father once why I couldn't have one of these for a mother.

He smiled. "The wolf wants to make things easy," he said at last, "but the man knows it isn't that simple. As a wolf, I could. As a man . . . " He didn't finish, and, sensing something in his silence, I never asked him about it again.

Those were star-filled nights, summer-sweet, and like all children, I never imagined they would end.

"Dad," I say now, "you have to eat something. I know it's not what you're used to . . . "

He looks up, his golden eyes cloudy. I can't read his expression, can't tell if he's pleading with me or simply struggling to focus.

"For me, okay? Just a little. I'll bring some liver next time." For one crazy moment I wonder if I could smuggle something alive in here-a calf or a lamb or even a rabbit. He needs hot meat, blood meat, but I don't know if he even has the strength left to make a kill.

The wolf, in the end, is greedy. Bit by bit, year by year, it grows in the mind. Some happily take to the woods for good, as far from humans as they can get. Others hold out as long as they can, until they can no longer change back to human form. Born as men, faol die as wolves.

He always swore he would know when that time came. Sometimes he talked of getting to the national park a few hours' drive away. Sometimes he talked about the gun in his nightstand drawer.

That day when I went to his house, when I hadn't heard from him and he wasn't answering the phone, I didn't know what I would find. And so when I saw him lying in wolfshape in front of the old recliner, the TV still tuned to the baseball game, I was glad. Even when his eyes met mine and I could somehow taste the sorrow and defeat that hung about him-even then, I was glad.

I glance back at the gate, but there's no sign of the girl or anyone else. I take my clothes off, carefully arranging them on the bench so they won't get dirty or wrinkled. The change comes swiftly and easily.

I tuck my tail, lower my ears, whine, and lick his muzzle. His eyes brighten, and his tail lifts a little higher.