Salena and I were going for ice cream.

  My dad said he’d pay, but we both knew he wouldn’t. My babysitter and I had nodded when he spoke, pretending we believed him, but Salena hadn’t even glanced his way when we opened the door. As the door closed, I looked back to my dad. He was on the couch in his underwear. He hadn’t bothered to put on pants when Salena knocked on our door. I’d urged him to get dressed, but he’d only winked and said that maybe Salena would like what she saw.

  But now the door was closed and we were outside and heading for ice cream. I could’ve put all thoughts of my dad behind me, except that Salena seemed distracted. Distant. And I felt like I knew the reason why.

  “Sorry about my dad,” I said.

  “Huh? Oh, he’s no problem. I ignore him. He’s not worth a single thought. Oops, that was rude. I’m sorry, Josh.”

  “Yeah.” Any other answer would’ve been too much. I didn’t want to agree with her, because it would’ve felt too sad. I didn’t want to disagree with her because then I would’ve been wrong.

  We were almost all the way to Parlor Tricks, the ice cream store, when we saw the foxes. They came slinking out from behind cars on the street, and down the sides of buildings, uncaring of gravity, not falling, but instead walking with that bouncy little jaunt of their kind.

  There must have been a hundred foxes.

  “Fuck,” Salena said.

  “What the shit?” I said. “Foxes?” I wasn’t sure if I should be terrified or amazed. Then Salena’s hand tightened on mine in a way that gave me the answer. Her grip hurt. The foxes bared their teeth and moved closer. They all took steps at the exact same time. It was unnerving.

  “Fuck fuck fuck,” Salena said. “Shit.”

  I looked around to the other people. A man in a Statue of Liberty shirt. Two women passing a phone back and forth, laughing. The man who owned the strip club, walking carefully with two bags from the Verdant Veggies burger store and a tray of precariously perched drinks. There were others as well. Not one of them noticed the foxes. They didn’t move around the foxes, and the foxes didn’t step out of the way. Whenever they met, they’d simply pass through each other, like one of them was a ghost.

  “I have to kill them,” Salena told me. “It’s going to be frightening for you. I’m going to howl.”

  “You’re what?” I asked. Everything was happening too fast. My mind couldn’t process the speed of how my world had changed. I could feel my heart shuddering with every combined step of the advancing tide of foxes.

  Salena started to howl.

  It began as a low sob in her throat, the sound someone makes when their heart is breaking. A wail of loss. But then it turned into a howl. A shuddering, booming, frightening howl. I wondered if she was turning into a werewolf.

  “Salena?” I asked, in the frightened, timid manner of a lost child.

  She fell to her knees. Her head arched back. More howls. Nobody was watching. Nobody was paying any attention. Nobody but the foxes, padding closer. Salena slumped forward, catching herself with her palms flat on the concrete. Drool spilled from her mouth.

  Her shirt ripped, torn to shreds by invisible forces, turning to smoke and wisps of flame. In moments it was gone. Vanished. She was nude to the waist, wearing nothing but a pair of Capri pants and one sandal. The other sandal had fallen off. I picked it up and hugged it to my chest, watching the contortions of muscles on Salena’s back. She howled again. Inhuman.

  There were fox tattoos on her arms. I’d never seen them before. A single fox high up on each of her shoulders. And then another on her chest, depicted as sitting. The ones on her shoulders were stalking toward the fox between my babysitter’s breasts.

  “Don’t run,” Salena said. The effort of speaking left her breathless. “They won’t care about you. Unless you run.” She tried to say something else but a series of violently shuddering heaves made it impossible for her to speak. She only curled to the sidewalk in a fetal position. The foxes moved closer and I was at an absolute loss. I thought about running to get my dad but then the absurdity of him actually helping cleared my mind. I knew it was all up to me. I reached down and grabbed Salena’s arm, meaning to drag her into what I hoped was the safety of the ice cream store, but as my hands clamped around her forearm I felt something weird.

  Fur.

  Salena’s skin was covering in fur. Her pants ripped away. Her body began changing. Muscles were reforming. Her hands turned to paws. Claws extended.

  I was holding a tiger. A vast one. The size of a car.

  The massive head swiveled to me. The beast’s eyes seemed a hundred million miles deep.

  “Let go of my leg, Josh,” the tiger said. The words were drumbeats. Hot and heavy. But it was Salena’s voice.

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  I let go of her leg.

  “Do not watch,” Salena said. “Keep hidden. I will protect you.” And then before I could make any comment, the tiger pounced.

  She crushed three foxes in her jaws. A swipe of her paw sent several more flying. The tiger was a flurry of movement. Sharp and quick but fluid at the same time. Her teeth sought foxes. Found them. A snap and a shake of her head. The foxes fell to pieces, ripped to shreds. The tiger’s claws peeled them open, spilling their blood, their organs, and lives. The foxes tried to bite, but their jaws could never quite find the target. They came at Salena from the rear, trying to take her from behind, but her hind legs would kick out and slice the foxes apart, or send them hurtling to abrupt stops against cars or the sides of buildings.

  The battle was over in moments. The foxes were strewn about, severed and crushed. Their meat smoldered and turned to ash, or went ghostly white and faded away. Soon there was nothing left but me, a trembling seven-year-old wreck of a boy, and an enormous tiger with one paw on the sidewalk and another on the back of a parked Chevy truck. The tiger turned to me, saw me, considered me, and let out a rumbling growl of a warning.

  “My head, Josh,” the tiger said. “Inside my head. More foxes. I couldn’t kill them all.” The words were strained. The tiger’s fangs were grinding together.

  “Salena?” I said. My voice was all over the place. My feet felt cemented to the sidewalk. The tiger took its paw off the back of the truck, with the Chevy’s suspension groaning in relief. The paw came down on the sidewalk. The air felt humid. Drool spilled from the beast’s mouth, and I remembered the way Salena had been bent over on the sidewalk at the beginning of this nightmare, spilling her saliva like a waterfall, like a faucet, like a tiger that had killed a hundred foxes and was still hunting for death.

  “Everything burns,” the tiger snarled. “Everything inside me is chewing.” The tiger moved closer. It was so large that a single shift of its body meant that it halved the distance between us. Her claws left raw lines in the concrete. I felt nauseous. Cold. I felt like I should run but that’s not what I was doing. It wasn’t within me.

  “I should kill you,” the tiger said, in Salena’s voice. “I should kill everything. I should even kill myself. Josh, my little boy; what should we do? How can we stop this? How does it end? All these nights? All this fear? Molly must never know. Molly must run. My little girl. My last spark. Josh, Josh, Josh, what’s this hidden inside of you, here?” With the last she reached out a paw and extended the terrible sharpness of one single claw to rake across my shirt and stomach. The fabric of my shirt parted, but my skin was untouched.

  The heat of her breath was unthinkable.

  “Salena?” I said. The tiger took a sudden step back.

  “Josh?” it said. The tiger’s eyes went wide and she convulsed like she’d been struck by a wrecking ball from all sides. She squished. She twisted. Her bones broke. The tiger’s body caved in upon itself, and then in a flash it was Salena on the sidewalk, a broken thing, her arms and legs splayed out. She was on her side. Naked. Bruised. A puddle of urine formed around her.

  My babysitter’s eyes were closed. She was motionless. I thought she was dead.

  “Salena!” I shrieked. My voice was a mess. “Salena? Salena!”

  “Huh?” she said, in the voice of a woman waking from a dream. She sat up. I was worried everyone would see her, but nobody did. Nobody looked our way. They didn’t see the naked woman sitting in her own urine, or me in my terror, or even notice how everything seemed stained with blood.

  “Oh,” Salena said. “The Fox Geas.” She stood up. Shaky. I tried to help her but was only in the way.

  “Did I hurt you?” my babysitter asked. I shook my head and told her I was okay, my words only whispers as I watched her getting dressed, moving a hand down over her body, with clothes covering her like she was pulling down a shade. It was the same clothes as before. The shirt. The Capri pants. Both her sandals.

  “I’m being murdered,” Salena told me. “But I’m fighting back. A spell from an old foe. Fector Candleman. What a ridiculous name. It scares me so bad.” She was straightening her hair. A wind rose along the street and acted like a janitor and a repairman both. All the blood was washed away. All the damage repaired. Everything cleansed. The world didn’t know what had happened. But I did. I always would. It was seared into my brain.

  “What’s happening?’ I asked. I didn’t think there could possibly be any answer. “All those foxes? You turned into a tiger!”

  “I’m a witch, Josh. I’ve never lied to you about that. I’m a creature of magic. What’s happening is that I met a man and I fell in love. And he loved me. And he died. And his family, his organization, blames me. And Candleman is killing me for it. You saw the foxes tattooed on me? They’re real. They’re alive. They’re burning me.” She touched fingers to her shoulders, chest, and forehead. “They get inside my head and make me think the most horrible things. I want so much death, sometimes. I want to bite.” She barred her teeth. I think she meant it as a joke, but her jaw trembled and she shook her head, squeezing her eyes tight.

  “Sorry,” she said, opening her eyes. “What’s happening is that Candleman and his people believe I stole something from them.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I stole something from them.”

  “Oh. What?”

  “Something that I needed to hide. Something that I’m going to give to you, because I’m going to die.”

  “You’re not!” I yelled. Salena was not going to die. I wouldn’t allow it. I would grow up and become strong and save her. It had to be true.

  “I am, though. It’s not okay, but I’ve come to peace with it. I’m going to spend my last few days making sure I keep my mind intact, despite these damn foxes. And I’m going to spend my last few days hiding what I stole, hiding it where I think, I hope, you will grow up to find it.”

  “Where?” I asked her. “What is it?”

  “I’d tell you,” my babysitter said, “but you’d only forget.”

  “No I wouldn’t!” I promised, but Salena reached out and put a finger on my forehead, and it felt cool and smooth and soothing, even when it pushed inside my skin and past my skull, moving like the finger of a ghost, invading but not destroying, until her finger was firmly lodged inside my brain, where it wiggled.

  And I forgot the foxes. I forgot the tiger. I forgot everything that Salena had told me. I forgot Fector Candleman.

  I only remembered the ice cream.

  “What flavor of ice cream are you getting?” I asked Salena. She was holding my hand. I liked it. It didn’t make me feel like a little boy. It made me feel like something more. Something special.

  “I’m thinking probably… chocolate chip cookie dough?” my babysitter answered. “I’m feeling decadent.” She smiled at me with all the warmth and wonder in the world as she opened the door to the ice cream store, but as I went inside, by chance, I looked to the door and saw her reflection in the glass.

  She wasn’t smiling. She looked sad. And haunted.

  I wondered why.