"Happy now?"

The voice twitches my ears and makes me lurch sideways, my paws slipping in the mud and the blood.

A few yards away among the trees, weirdly bright for it being the middle of the night, a rabbit's watching me. But it couldn't have spoken. Animals can't talk.

Yeah, right, Esther. Same way a crazy old lady shouting in some guttural language can't turn a college sophomore—major still undeclared, thank you very much—into a nightmare wolf monster. Same way a life-long pacifist—which is to say a life-long scaredy-cat—would never take a running leap at a guy pointing a rifle at her. Same way a vegan since age eight—the burnt-rubber taste of Ma's chicken soup finally drove me to it—would never dig her teeth into the rifle-guy's hand and chomp off his trigger finger when said rifle-guy kept trying to shoot at her even though he was flat on his back with a wolf monster sprawled across his chest.

Looking back and forth between the rabbit and the now-unconscious guy—the blood absolutely pumping from the ragged mess at the end of his wrist says I maybe chomped more than his trigger finger: so sue me—I start wondering if I might be panicking a little.

The rabbit holds up his paws. "Not that I'm criticizing a wolf, of course. But as a fellow forest creature, I feel obliged to point out that, if one of us gets in wrong with these humans, it has a tendency to go badly for all of us."

His little mouth is moving in time with the words and everything. It'd be like watching a puppet show if, y'know, I wasn't a wolf monster out in the woods behind campus with some guy's blood all over me.

But for all of that, the only thing I can think to say is, "Why do you sound like my Uncle Manny?"

Again, the rabbit gives a sort of shrug. "How could a stringy, old, bitter-tasting rabbit such as myself have any ideas about the deep and abiding familial relationships you wolves maintain?"

With my brain continuing to rattle and clank, I just say, "I'm not a wolf."

He blinks. "Of course not. The teeth and the eyes and the black, bristling fur should've told me right away you were a chipmunk."

"I'm a human!" Without thinking, I bound across the clearing, the rabbit's ears falling and his head tipping back to stare at me towering over him. "My boyfriend sent me a text breaking up with me just as I was going to bed, so I slapped on some clothes and stormed across campus to his dorm! But the R.A. wouldn't let me in and I sort of crashed out into the woods down the hill and right into this clearing where some old lady in a weird patchwork dress was holding a big curving knife! She points it at me and shouts something that sounds like my grandma after she swigs her Metamucil, and the next thing I know, I'm a wolf monster! She turns around, marches into the trees, and then this guy with a gun steps out!" I'm dripping blood and spit down onto the rabbit this whole time, but honestly? I can't quite make myself care much about that.

The rabbit just stands there, the thin stream of red I've drooled on him trickling through his brownish fur. "Yeah, that old lady's bad news," he says, his voice wobbling as fast as his nose. "She's used that knife on so many of my family, I tell all the kits to stay out of that whole part of the woods."

I'll admit I get a little shouty right about then. "If you know where she is, you gotta take me there! I've gotta, I dunno, get her to change me back!"

He taps his front paws together. "You're sure that's the best idea? Not that a scrawny, flavorless, insignificant rabbit like me would ever think to contradict a noble and virtuous—"

"Just do it!" Which conjures an instant image in my head of this rabbit wearing two little pairs of Nikes while he races weaving through the trees.

And that, weirdly enough, is what smacks me into stepping back so I'm not drizzling disgusting goo all over him anymore. No, he's not wearing shoes, but imagining him wearing shoes is apparently enough for me to cross some mental line somewhere. "Hey, sorry," I say. "It's just...I've been having kind of a rough day."

"Tell me about it," he mumbles, then he slaps his paws over the end of his snout. "Not that a worthless scrap of—"

I growl before I can stop myself, but at least it shuts him up. I'm about to press a paw at the ache starting to throb between my eyes, but I remember the mud and the blood. "Look," I say, flopping back to sit on my tail. "I'm not interested in eating you, okay?"

"Of course." He gestures past me. "Since you already ate and all."

"What?" I leap onto all fours again. "No!" But just to be sure, I spin around and find the mangled remains of the rifle-guy's hand right where I spat it out. "I don't eat any part of anything that used to have a face! It's, like, the basis of my whole philosophy!" I whirl toward him, and to be totally honest, I'm a little surprised that he hasn't run off while I was looking away. But he didn't, so I go on. "It's also a big reason why I don't want to spend the rest of my life as some God damn mangy animal, right up there with the whole scratching fleas and shitting in the woods part of it! No offense."

"It's a living." The rabbit does another of those little shrugs. "And living, I'll point out, is something you might not be doing for too much longer if you tangle any further with that witch lady."

Cowardice, old, cold, and familiar, tangles my gut. I mean, I used to walk four blocks out of my way to get to and from P.S. 127 when I was a kid 'cause Mrs. Frobisher's dog would bark at me whenever I got anywhere near her house.

Of course, right now, I could probably chomp down the little schnitzel or Schnauzer or whatever it is in two bites, but no. Vegan, I remind myself.

Something in the back of my brain points out that I did just tear a guy's hand off because he was trying to shoot me, so maybe...

Maybe I can do something like that to the old lady? Not tearing her hand off: she'll probably need that to change me back. But since me being a wolf will kill me just as surely as a rifle—kill me in a philosophical sense, I mean—I can threaten to tear her hand off, can't I? It'd be purely self-defense, right?

"Why are you asking me?" The rabbit's voice startles me back half a step.

"Was—?" I swallow. "Was I talking out loud?"

He does that shrugging thing for the fourth or fifth time. "You have a very expressive face," he says, and it hits me all at once: not only does this rabbit sound like Uncle Manny, he moves like him, too.

I lean forward. "Uncle Manny? Is...is that you?"

The rabbit's nose stops twitching for an instant, then kicks back in even faster. "Oh, if only I could have a wolf for a niece! How many of my problems would such a connection solve?" His ears spread. "Or do you mean 'manny' because, as your uncle, I'm really human, too, the same way you are?" He cocks his head. "Not that I mind taking part in whatever delusion you're indulging in, Niece, but...could I be your Uncle Coney instead?"

My head feels like the inside of a bell: hollow but clanging at the same time. "Just take me to where this old lady is, all right?" And I have a brainstorm. "Maybe I can convince her not to cut up your actual nephews and nieces and whatever!"

Not that I really think I can, though I'm extra careful to make sure I don't say that out loud. But pretty much everything is riding on me getting to the old lady, and Uncle Coney is the key to that. So I smile like I mean it.

Unsurprisingly, he shrugs. "Worth a shot," he says, and he turns away to start hopping off into the deeper woods. I follow.

And what's already been the weirdest night of my life gets even weirder. Because it's completely dark, the branches of the trees blocking out what's already a midnight sky, but it's not dark at all, the starlight that flickers down through those branches more than enough to show me trees and rocks and mud and bushes and everything. And while it's completely quiet, too, not a whisper of the regular hum of cars and air conditioners and computers that've surrounded me my entire life, it's not quiet at all, the breeze rustling the branches, various creatures—squirrels or lizards or who knows what—scurrying around through the fallen leaves. And the smell! The leaves and the bark and the dirt and the mud and the water all combining even while each one stands out! The animals, too! Every different kind, all sweating or eating or bleeding or farting or doing who knows what just everywhere!

Like I said: weird.

"Okay," Uncle Coney says, and I realize that I've been paying so much attention to all the nothing going on everywhere, I don't know how long we've been traveling. "Now just to be clear, you don't want me to pound on the old lady's door so she'll chase me while you lurk in the shadows to jump her and tear her throat out? Nothing like that?"

I blink down at him, sort of skipping along beside me. "Sounds like you've given this some thought."

He tosses his head, his ears flopping from side to side. "When you're a rabbit, you've always got big plans. But..." And I swear, he manages to shrug even though he's down on all fours.

Then he's slowing, and he gestures forward with his snout. "You see the light, Niece?"

Compared to the non-darkness around us, it's practically a beacon blasting through the trees, just bam! A place that's entirely human. I have to stop and take a second to wrap my head around it. It's like...like someone wanted to build a wall around themselves but only managed to blow a soap bubble. Like they really want to separate themselves from the rest of the world and are pretending they have even through they actually haven't. Like they're apart but also a part.

"Huh," I say, or something equally profound.

Uncle Coney's stopped in the shadows cast by the last row of trees before the lit-up clearing. "So. Is there a plan?"

I try a shrug of my own. "Not so's you'd notice." And I amble out from between two trees.

The clearing's not really lit up, I see first thing. There's one light, an actual lantern with a little flame inside flickering orange and yellow, and it's hanging from a nail above the door of this tiny, tiny cabin—more a shack or a tool shed, really—with a window on each side of the door and a peaked roof on top. With everything else that's happened tonight, I half-expect the thing to be made of gingerbread, but it's just regular wood as near as I can tell.

Still, at least it doesn't look like either me or Uncle Coney'll have to knock on the door: the old lady's standing right out front under the lantern, the same patchwork shawl over her shoulders that I saw when she put the whammy on me, her dress long and made from fabric just as jumbled up as the shawl. She's squinting at the trees like she's looking for something, but when I step out into the wavering light, the way she shouts, "Hellfire and damnation! Why aren't you dead?" I'm guessing it's the rifle guy she's waiting for instead of me.

"Look, lady," I say, figuring if she can turn people into wolves, it's not that big a stretch to her understanding animal talk, "I don't even know who you are! What did I ever do to you that you'd want to ruin my life?"

Snorting, she reaches under her shawl and starts rummaging around. "Oh, get over yourself, you little drama queen. You were just in the right place at the right time." She pulls out the knife, the slightly curved blade half as long as her forearm, the same knife, of course, that she used to wolf me up. "Or the wrong place at the wrong time, I suppose, for you."

The knife blade glows more than I'd expect if it was just reflecting the lantern light. I'm not really all that interested in finding out what else she can turn me into, so I'm about ready to scramble back into the tree shadows. But that's when I notice Uncle Coney creeping along the side of the little shed.

It takes some effort, but I very carefully don't look at him, very carefully don't think about how he could maybe jump on her and distract her so I can jump on her and do more than that, and very very carefully don't say any of that out loud. To make double sure of that last one, I instead say out loud, "But you've got to tell me! I mean, sure, fine, you didn't turn me into a wolf because of something I did! But what's the point of turning anyone into a God damn wolf?"

Her shrug looks a lot more natural than Uncle Coney's. "Money," she says. "It's illegal to shoot wolves, but there's dickheads whose lives will be empty and barren without a wolf skin rug on one of the forty or fifty floors they own. So I put the word out that I can get 'em the chance to shoot their own wolf for a quarter million dollars, and you college kids're like roaches: nobody cares if a couple of you go missing here and there, now and then."

My ears fold back, but so much else weird is going on, folding ears hardly even registers. "Money?" I shout. "What the hell're you gonna do with money?" I wave a paw at the shed. "Put in an Olympic pool?"

Her smile's the picture they put in the dictionary next to the word smug. "I've already got one." She tips her head at the door behind her. "There's a mansion in Coral Gables through there." Raising the knife to point the tip at me, her smile slips from smug to nasty. "But if this dickhead missed you, there's another dickhead somewhere who'll do better." Little forks of lightning start crackling along the blade. "I'll just pop you into a pocket of space-time, and—"

And that's when Uncle Coney jumps her.

Granted, it's not a great jump. But if he's as old in rabbit years as my Uncle Manny is in human years, then it's a pretty good jump: he crashes into her about mid-thigh, and he's the size of a fair-to-middling house cat.

It surprises the old lady anyway. "What the hell?" she shouts, stumbling sideways and flailing her arms out in both directions. The knife goes flying from her fingers, and as fast as I can form the idea, I'm leaping for it, baring my teeth, grabbing the hilt, and hitting the ground with my legs already pumping.

"Break it, Niece!" Uncle Coney yells. "That'll shatter all the magic she's ever cast with it!"

Now, what I know about shattering magic knives could fit on a mouse's hatband, and mice don't wear hats.

Yeah, that line worked better in my head...

Anyway, the knife's long and thin, and looking at it out of the corner of my eye as I sprint for the trees at the other end of the clearing, I have this sudden flashback to Halloween ten, maybe twelve years ago. When I was a kid, anyway, and we were all over at Uncle Manny's carving pumpkins, me, my parents, my dad's cousin who's Uncle Manny's daughter—Uncle Manny's really my dad's uncle, not mine—her husband and their kids who are all my cousins—I think. I always got confused when it comes to relations...

The point is: we're at Uncle Manny's carving pumpkins. And Uncle Manny stabs a big long knife into the top of a pumpkin. It gets stuck there, and trying to wrench it out, Uncle Manny manages to snap the handle right off the knife, leaving the blade sticking out of the pumpkin.

So I charge to the nearest tree, rear up and sideways, and slam the tip of the knife into the tree's trunk.

"No!" the old lady shouts from behind me. "I'll change you back! I will! Just don't—!"

But I couldn't stop myself now if I wanted to, my teeth dug into the knife's handle, the blade dug into the bark of the tree, and my forward momentum carrying me onward. The thing resists for a second, maybe two, pressing back against my jaws, but then the pressure's gone with an explosive crash like the time I dropped one of Aunt Evelyn's big flower vases—she was Uncle Manny's wife, may she rest in piece.

The sound's so loud, it literally smashes into me like a sudden blast of wind, spinning me ass over teakettle and tumbling me down hard into the dirt. I catch up against a tree, bash my elbow, and sit up wincing, rubbing it with my—

With my hand. I stare at it, flex the fingers, touch them with the fingers of my other hand.

I'm back! Back to me! Back still wearing the sneakers, jeans, and flannel shirt I'd grabbed before stomping off to yell at Dennis!

"Yes!" I shout, jumping up, and at the same time, I hear a squeaky voice shout, "No!" from off to my right.

I look back into the clearing, and the little shed is gone. The lantern's sitting in the dirt, though, and in its flickering light, I can squint and see two big rabbits standing beside it. "Damn you, Coney!" one of the rabbits is shouting, and it's the old lady's voice. "You've ruined everything! Again!"

"Oh, now, Queenie," the other rabbit says, and this one's absolutely Uncle Coney. "Don't be like this. You know killing humans isn't the answer. And one at a time?" He shrugs. "I don't want to use the word 'inefficient,' but—"

"Hey!" I point a finger at the two of them. "She was killing your family, too! Using that knife on other rabbits!"

"What?" The new rabbit—Queenie, Uncle Coney called her—she presses a paw to her chest. "Why would you think I—?" Her little eyes go wide, and she turns to jab that same paw at Uncle Coney. "How could you tell her that about me? You...you....you— Oh!" She leaps away and kicks a cloud of dirt at him as she runs off into the woods.

Silence flops over the whole place—and I mean a real silence this time, no rustlings or creakings or anything. I break it, of course. "What just happened?" I ask.

"You did good," Uncle Coney says, and he hops over, settling back on his bunny behind to look up at me. "You tell your Uncle Manny that him and me, we're square now, okay, Esther?"

It feels like a watermelon is growing inside my chest, and staring down at him, I can't get a single word out.

He leans forward and taps my shoe. "You tell him King Coney says all accounts are balanced, and I'll see you around." With a little wink just like Uncle Manny always gives me, he spins off bouncing across the clearing and calling, "Queenie! Darling! I only did it 'cause I love you and wanted you back! You know that!"

And then I'm standing by myself in the middle of the night out in the God damn woods.

I check my hands, my sleeves, my pants, and my shoes again, but I don't see any blood, not even any mud, really. Crossing the clearing, I pick up the lantern and look around at the trees everywhere. Campus is off in one direction, but if I'm remembering right, the whole little forest is surrounded by roads. So any way I go, I'll hit civilization eventually.

Whatever civilization really is. I shake my head, chalk this whole thing up as a lesson in how hard relationships are—family, boyfriends, humans and animals, kings and queens of the rabbits, everything—and start walking.