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the fishing and tourism jobs. The houses were a smashed-together mass of wooden gabled roofs and stilted legs that edged out over the ocean. Every building on Komodo had stilts, which looked kind of funny until you realized that these people lived with dragons. There were no walls between the park and the people. Dragons walked through their backyards, dragons ambled onto their beaches, and dragons attacked their goats and other livestock. The fact that the dragons were there first didn’t translate all that well.
    Meg had read the story over and over, every version in every paper Ben could find. The kid and his uncle were walking toward the water, loaded down with their fishing nets and bait, sweating in the already roasting air, when the boy made the last decision of his life. He asked to pee.
    He went to the ditch on the side of the road to do his business, but he wasn’t alone in the long grasses. The dragon attacked, seizing the boy by the stomach with jaws like a shark, row upon row of serrated teeth designed for tearing flesh and bone apart, and dragged him into the underbrush. It was the dry season, and without water all the dragon’s natural prey had vanished. There were no deer or pigs—none that hadn’t already been poached, anyway. It had probably been weeks since the animal’s last meal, and hunger made him desperate.
    The boy’s uncle intercepted them, pelting the dragon with his fishing gear. Drawn by the screams, the villagers rushed out of their houses and armed themselves with rocks and sticks. Together they beat the dragon back into the park land and away from the small, mangled body. They took the boy away, but there was no medical clinic on the island, and he’d bled too much. A dragon’s bite was poisonous, and the lethal mix of saliva, venom, and bacteria had already seeped deep into the lacerated remains of the boy’s stomach. He died within a half hour. He was eight years old.
    “Ready to tame the beast?”
    “Shit!” The foot Meg had propped against the wall hit the floor with a jerk, and her heart stuttered. She shook her head a little, clearing the attack vision from her brain, and took a deep breath. The concrete walls of the keeper’s hallway came back into focus. Gemma stood fewer than two feet away with Desmond just behind, his uniform unbuttoned down to a sweat-stained undershirt.
    “What is it?”
    “A little jumpy, huh, Yancy? You on probation again?” Desmond rubbed his chest and grinned. The three of them ran the Reptile Kingdom, but each had their own niche. Meg handled the lizards, and Gemma specialized in turtles. Desmond was the snake man, and after years of the same gig, he was actually getting slithery around the eyes.
    Meg ignored him, looking at her watch. “Is it time?”
    “Yeah, you guys go ahead and suit up.” Gemma grinned.
    “What, me?” Desmond looked at Gemma, surprised. “You said you wanted to talk about something.”
    Meg hid her grin. Ever since Gemma started working at the zoo, Desmond had been hitting on her. At first it was earnest—invitations to dinner or some event going on at the mall; he even bought a stuffed animal for Gemma’s daughter once—but after getting the brush-off for months, he’d eventually slid back into the more familiar dirty jokes, hisses, and whistles that everyone else expected from him. He acted as though he didn’t care anymore, but everyone knew he would trip all over himself to follow Gemma if she asked to speak to him in one of the dark, back hallways of the zoo.
    “Meg and I—we wanted to talk to you about assisting with Jata’s feeding. Today. Right now, actually.” Gemma reached her arms up into the air and stretched, leaning to one side and then the other. She always looked as if she were in the middle of a yoga class.
    Meg opened the supply closet and handed Desmond a fiberglass shield and a pair of industrial, elbow-length gloves. She’d just started pulling on a pair of safety boots when Desmond