Panic rose in Calliope’s chest. Why would the girl have gone outside? She knew how dangerous it was. She’d seen the dead man’s body.

Calliope called out again, grabbed a jacket from the coatrack beside the door, threw her hair towel to the floor, and rushed out into the snow.

Chance must’ve heard her calling because he came jogging from the side of the house. “She’s out here? You saw her?”

Calliope nodded, pointing toward the small prints punctuating the snow. They followed the tracks toward the lake, which was covered with a crackling sheet of ice that couldn’t have been thick enough to sustain a body, not even a child’s. Through the ice, waterweed and coontail reeds wisped upward like downy child’s hair. They moved quicker, calling out for the girl, scanning the ice for cracks or holes, any sign that she had fallen through. Inwardly Calliope chanted Don’t-let-her-be-dead don’t-let-her-be-dead. On the ground, a bright red bloom like a poppy growing from the snow: Eunjoo’s blood-soaked thumb bandage. Calliope had been so consumed by her own grief, her own needs, she’d forgotten to check on the girl’s wound. Now whispering her chant aloud, she picked up the bandage, tucked it in Tía’s jacket pocket.

The footprints circled around the lake, leading toward an outcropping of piñon and ponderosa pine trees, joined by another set of tracks Calliope might have thought belonged to a dog except these were narrower, perpendicular to the girl’s, as if she were following …

“Coyote,” Chance said. “Why would she run after a coyote? She could get killed.” He hollered, “Eunjoo?”

A few feet ahead, dappling the footprints like cherry syrup on a snowcone, new drops of blood. Calliope’s throat tightened. She ran, heedless of her former cramping. The cold air stung her face as she pounded into the small bosque screaming Eunjoo’s name.

Mara’s story of Lizard singing in Coyote’s stomach flickered in Calliope’s mind. An image of Eunjoo curled inside the animal like the twins inside of Calliope.

There she was. Cradled beneath a looming ponderosa pine Eunjoo hunched on hands and feet, her back arched high in the air like an animal on edge, face-to-face with the coyote, its tawny fur bristling, ears pointed, frozen in place.

Calliope sprang forward, but Chance held her back, signaling her to hush.

The déjà vu unnerved her. This had been the scene she’d come upon in the gas station parking lot, Eunjoo facing a coyote in what almost appeared as a confrontation for dominance. The first time, in the parking lot, the girl had cowered, terrified. This time though, she poised ready to pounce. Was she the one trying to intimidate the coyote? Calliope sucked in a gasp at how wild Eunjoo appeared, how menacing.