Though there were wolves all around him, it was my eyes Guayota sought. “I’m so hungry,” he said. “Where is she? She was supposed to be here.” And then there was just nothing where he’d stood. Nothing. No wisp of clothing falling to the ground, no dust or ash. He was just gone.

Adam turned to look at me, and I tried to get up. But the movement sent sparkles through my vision, and I was lost in darkness.

The smell of cleaning solution woke me briefly.

“…broken neck blah-blah-blah.” It sounded like Samuel, but there was something wrong with his voice. He sounded so sad, so I tried to listen. Maybe I could cheer him up. “And the burns … I’m sorry, Adam—”

Adam said something, and I sank into his voice like it was a warm sea.

“It’s probably better if you talk to me and don’t pay attention to all of that,” said Coyote.

I was lying on a thick field of new-mown grass that smelled a lot better than the cleaning fluid had. I watched the sky where small groups of clouds chased each other like little ducks.

“Mmmm,” I said dreamily.

Coyote chuffed a laugh. “They do have you on some strong stuff. But you’ll remember this anyway. Guayota isn’t dead. You can’t kill one of his kind unless you destroy what he represents. That need not concern you—although I wouldn’t be in a hurry to go visit the Canary Islands for a while. A few years, and he’ll forget. He shouldn’t have worn a human-seeming for so long.”

“Like you did when you became Joe Old Coyote,” I said.

“Not at all,” he told me indignantly. “That cloud looks like me, don’t you think?”

“The bigger one?” I asked.

“Yes, that one that looks like it’s about to eat an egg.”

“No. That one’s a rabbit.”

“Rabbit,” he said indignantly. “That’s a coyote.”

I laughed, but that was a mistake. My vision went black for a few minutes, then, slowly, the sky, clouds, and grass were back.

“Don’t do that,” said Coyote. “It makes it difficult to hold you here. I break things, a lot of things, but I don’t want one of them to be you. So just rest here.”

“What about…” It was difficult to be worried; most of me wanted to just watch the clouds drift by.

“Let me talk,” Coyote said. “You don’t know what questions you want to ask. Unusual decision to bring Joel into the pack. You could have used the walking stick to cut the threads of Guayota’s spell, and that would have done the same thing as you managed to do with the pack spell.” He paused. “Maybe. Maybe it would have just burned to ashes. I don’t know. It’ll be interesting to see what happens to the pack with a tibicena in it.”