Cal Watson was an engineer.

Not the type that kids want to be when they grow up, the ones who drive trains across the dusty Old West and fight the outlaws every week. No--he was a computer engineer, specifically a InsalaTech Client Integration and Sales Support Specialist II, and if he travelled all over the west it was just because there were customer offices scattered up and down the Pacific coast.

Weeks where he didn't set foot inside his Lockport apartment outnumbered the ones where he did. Not that there was really much there for him in Lockport anyway, with family back in the midwest and only a few friends in the city. His last relationship (such as it had been) was months disintegrated. There wasn't even a cat to meet him at the door and whine to be fed. Though hardly gregarious normally, lately it seemed life had come to consist mostly of work, sleep, and the internet.

Of course, as far as his company was concerned, this was fantastic. No real commitments in Lockport meant no objections to being constantly dispatched elsewhere. And honestly, Cal himself didn't really consider it a hardship either--InsalaTech's liberal expense policy meant he could spend his off hours exploring new cities and staying in pretty nice hotels. Oh no, the horrors of valet service. Once they'd even sent him to Europe.

Although it was Santa Dolora, with all its big tech companies, where he ended up most often. Trips there weren't nearly as wild as that time he was sent to Las Vacas and got kicked out of a casino for counting cards (he wasn't! he was way too drunk for that!) only to find himself in the backstage of a Lemonista concert playing strip Catan with the stage techs. But a dozen visits over the last two years had made downtown Santa Dolora at least familiar--he knew where to go for coffee, for music, for bars, for just sitting and reading, for the best Vietnamese food in the States. And where to stay: a little place on the border between Chinatown and the Waterfront called Akavita Palace.

Despite the name, Akavita was not large--maybe eight rooms total, in a weathered wooden building with vaguely east-Asian architecture. Nor were the rooms themselves palatial, though they were comfortable and well-kept in a sort of Martha-Stewart-meets-imperial-China kind of way. Rather, what had hooked Cal and kept him going back was the ridiculously friendly atmosphere.

Akavita was run by three generations of a family from somewhere in the Shaan basin, wherever that was, and all of them tried to make guests feel as much at home as possible--from the ancient matriarch who smiles and pats your hand before directing one of her grandsons to take your luggage up, to the girl who'll fill your ear with good-natured gossip as she fills your mug with hot chocolate, to the earnest-faced uncles who tailor breakfast to your tastes and keep the Roman-style baths at the perfect temperature. Concert tickets, restaurant reservations, and fortune cookie factory tours could all be gotten through the owners' various relatives. Or you could just stay in and spend the evening chatting with the staff and the other guests, many of whom hailed from the same region as the owners and were eager to practice their English, hardly noticing when Cal stumbled over his own words. It was an environment Cal would never have thought he'd like until he'd stumbled into it, and while he knew most of it was just good customer service--it was easy to forget.

So it was with nagging feelings of guilt that, late one evening, Cal found himself in the downstairs lounge in order to make a complaint.

Seeing one of "aunts" (they all asked to be called "aunt" or "great-uncle" or "cousin" or the like) on the couch watching TV, he tentatively cleared his throat.

"Uh. Sorry to bother, but--"

The aunt immediately jumped up from the sofa, muted the National Geographic show she'd been watching and spun around to face Cal with a smile. Cal thought her name was Khola, or maybe Khala--she was one of the ones he didn't really talk to since she only knew a little English and he knew almost no Shaanan. Like all the aunts she seemed friendly enough though.

"Sorry! Yes?" she said, head nodding and black curls bobbing wildly. "Cold? Need pellow? Tootbrush? Drenk?"

"No, nothing, I, uh..." Cal squinched his eyes and rubbed at his forehead. This week's client had insisted on "starting things out right," which apparently meant bar hopping until midnight. Cal was currently hanging between "sloshed" and "hangover" and his brain balked at forming any coherent sentences. He tried to push one out anyway.

"There... is there a tiger? In my room? Is it supposed to be there?"

Aunt Khola just gave him an uncertain look.

"Sorry! You need... 'taiger'? I tenk we not have. Maybe get tomorrow?"

"No, I--" Cal sighed and dug his smartphone out of his pocket, fingers stumbling through unlocking it and turning on wifi. "Here, this," he said finally, holding up the screen showing an image search for "tiger."

The aunt glanced over the pictures of broad-faced orange felines, apparently now even more confused.

"This," Cal tapped on the screen, "Is in my room. A real one." At least he thought it was real. If a stuffed tiger was curled up on your bed it didn't raise its head to squint at you when you staggered into the room. "We should... I don't know. Get everybody out and call the police? Or the zoo? Or somebody?"

Still getting no reaction, Cal was just about to give up on Aunt Khola and go look for someone else when her puzzled look abruptly switched to narrow-eyed suspicion.

"You room es top floor? Roof room?"

Cal blinked. "Uh, yes?" What does that have to do with anything?

Lightning flashed across the aunt's eyes, but the smile and voice she turned on Cal were sunny.

"You come. I fix!"

Cal's attempts to convince Aunt Khola that a wild animal couldn't just be "fixed" fell on deaf ears. He settled on just grabbing the most weapon-like thing nearby--an ornamental sword tacked up on the hallway wall--and following warily behind as she threw open the sliding door and barged into his room.

The tiger was on the bed where he'd left it. Languidly, it raised its head, saw the storm-faced Khola, and yawned.

The sight of its three-inch fangs briefly pierced the fog around Cal's thoughts, freezing him in place on a sliver of fear. The effect on Aunt Khola, however, was a little different: she stalked over and jabbed the tiger's nose with a finger. It flinched back, face the picture of nonplussed indignation.

Cal nervously fidgeted with the sword, unsure what to do. A thought stumbled into his head to just grab the aunt and run--but the tiger didn't seem to be doing anything aggressive. In fact, it was just sitting there as Khola... scolded it in rapid-fire Shaanan. So Cal watched.

Though when the tiger started yelling back at Khola in the same language, he gave up and fled to the bathroom.

Fifteen minutes later, Cal was newly washed, watered, and ibuprofenned, and the sounds of incomprehensible arguing had finally stopped filtering through the door of his hideout. So he cracked the door open and crept back out into the room. Aunt Khola, leaning against the far wall with an expression like she'd just eaten a tree of lemons, spotted him first.

"We very sorry," she said, pleasant tone belied by her irritated tapping of Cal's forgotten sword against her hand. "Es beg mestake. That one explain. I go to downstairs. Ef you want hem gone, you come, you talk to me, I make hem gone. Like he never here! Es good?"

Confused, Cal looked over to the bed. Where he saw the tiger... well, wasn't a tiger anymore. Uncurled and sitting up, it looked more like someone had taken a stocky human-ish figure, stuck a broad feline head on it, and covered the entire thing with brindled black and rust fur. Then tacked on claws, a shaggy tail, and some blindingly cyan cargo shorts.

The not-tiger glanced up, briefly meeting Cal's brown eyes with his own amber ones and flashing an apologetic smile before staring down at the floor again.

Feeling like he really should be more freaked out--but quickly becoming too tired to care--Cal turned back to Aunt Khola.

"Uh. Sure, it's fine. He isn't going to eat me or anything?"

"No." She shot a piercing glare at the not-tiger on the bed, a sudden loud smack of the sword on her palm causing both him and Cal to jump. The felid looked, if possible, even more chagrined. "That one know what happen ef he bad," Khola continued. "He not make more problems. Good night. Sleep well please."

With a stiff nod at Cal, she stalked out of the room.

Cal watched as the sliding door thunked shut behind her, closing them in.