"Coyotaje"

The coyotes of Mexicali were bold. They did their business in cantinas, in the middle of the afternoon; the police, well-fed with bribes, looked the other way. Day by day, week by week, people came into Mexicali, carrying backpacks and bundles and small children, and day by day, week by week, they went away again, vanishing while the back of the police was obligingly turned.

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I keep wanting to call this a companion piece to "Comparison of Efficacy Rates for Seven Antipathetics as Employed Against Lycanthropes," but the only connection between them is that they're both in shapeshifter anthologies edited by Ekaterina Sedia. Much less silly than the Fake Werewolf Paper, this is, as you can tell, a story about illegal immigration. Special thanks go to Janni Lee Simner for helping me edit it.

It appeared in Bewere the Night, published in April 2011.

Table of Contents
• "The Thief of Precious Things," A.C. Wise
• "Poison Eaters," Holly Black
• "Go Home Stranger," Justin Howe
• "The Heavy," Cherie Priest
• "Tusk and Skin," Marissa Lingen
• "A Song to the Moon," Richard Bowes
• "In the Seeonee Hills," Erica Hildebrand
• "The Sinews of His Heart," Melissa Yuan-Innes
• "(Nothing but) Flowers," Nick Mamatas
• "The Coldest Game," Maria V. Snyder
• "Red on Red," Jen White
• "Extra Credit," Seth Cadin
• "Thirst," Vandana Singh
• "Grotesque Angels," Gwendolyn Clare
• "Blue Joe," Stephanie Burgis
• "The Werewizard of Oz," Lavie Tidhar
• "Seven Year Itch," Leah Cutter
• "An Unnatural History of Scarecrows," Mario Milosevic
• "The Gaze Dogs of Nine Waterfall," Kaaron Warren
• "Snow on Sugar Mountain," Elizabeth Hand
• "The Aphotic Ghost," Carlos Hernandez
• "The Fowler's Daughter," Michelle Muenzler
• "Moonlight and Bleach," Sandra MacDonald
• "She Drives the Men to Crimes of Passion!," Genevieve Valentine
• "Coyotaje," Marie Brennan
• "Swear Not by the Moon," Renee Carter Hall
• "Infestation," Nadia Bulkin
• "Watchmen," Aaron Sterns
• "And Neither Have I Wings to Fly," Carrie Laben