10
New Orleans, USA.
As they walked away from the museum, Naomi felt a rising dread at the thought of heading into the bayou later. She was a city girl, raised in the high-rise jungle of New York, where predators wore human masks as they stalked the shadowed streets. She knew how to deal with them well enough, but she had experienced little of adventure in the wild. She was more at home with books, even sleeping in her tiny office when she was deep into research.
The stacks of the local library had been her escape from the poverty and despair of her neighborhood growing up. She read of heroes who roamed the African savannah and turned the pages as intrepid heroines hunted evildoers across ancient cities. She reveled in the cathartic thrill of story, but she also loved closing the book a
