“Gotcha, no witnesses.” I was tempted to tell Don Pedro that I actually knew a real shapeshifter—it had something to do with biology and optical illusions—but he’d insist that he was one himself.

“May I come to your room?” he asked.

“Only if you promise not to put the moves on me.” I was joking since he was a little bug of a fellow that I could crush between my fingers.

He tittered and said, “I shall treat you with the utmost respect even though you are certainly a most enticing young woman and if I were younger—”

“Stop or you’ll give me brain cooties. I’ll see you at noon.”

There was a knock on my door exactly at noon. I opened it to see Don Pedro Nascimento, officially the author of Spiritual Transformation: Adventures of a Shapeshifter.

He was a tiny brown man with enormous chocolate eyes behind oversized black-framed glasses. He wore khaki pants, a white shirt with colorful yarn embroidery of birds and flowers, and a brown and white woven jacket with a llama motif and fringe. He carried the same worn leather satchel he’d had when I’d first met him.

“¡Mi Milagro!” he said, and reached out to hug me.

I moved away and said, “Come in, Don Pedro.”

He walked into the room and sat down on the love seat. He smelled of coconut oil, and I had a sudden craving for a piña colada, a sunny beach, and a Rupert Holmes tune playing on a boom box. I turned the desk chair to face Don Pedro and sat down.

“Your aura is even more brilliant than when we last met!” he said. “I hope that your journey is astonishing.”

“Yes, first-class is definitely the way to go.”

“I meant your journey on this astral plane, Milagro, exploring and discovering your spirit self. Your power glows from you like the sun rising over the red rocks of Sedona, where I once met a shaman in the form of a javelina—”

“That’s utterly enthralling. Let’s talk business.”

He crossed one toothpick leg over the other and said, “I have watched you in my dreams, and I am both enraptured and fretful.”

“That’s kind of you. Do you mind saving the caca for people who pay for your seminars and private consultations?”

“There are different truths, Milagro. There is the truth that you think you know about me, and there also exists the truth of your book as I lived it.”

“How could you live something that I fabricated?”

“It could only happen through the magical meeting of our minds, my Milagro!” he said ecstatically. “This is why you and only you can help write my second book. It explores life in different realms.”