In the Company of Spirits

by Starhawk

Chapter 1: In Your Space

Lily was the first one to notice. Not that it was subtle, and not that any of them wouldn't have noticed too if they'd been with her. But they hadn't been, and she had a hard time explaining it to them after the fact.

"My animal spirit!" she exclaimed, bursting into the kitchen with her hair loose and her eyes wide and bright. "It was with me on the street!"

"Ah," RJ said, turning neatly around Casey at the baker's table and sliding two orders into the oven at once. "That's very good. You're becoming closer to your totem. Hat, please."

"Yeah, really close," Lily said. She pulled her hair back, fumbling a scrunchy out of her pocket and twisting it into place. "Like right next to me! Walking beside me!"

RJ smiled indulgently, but Casey stopped what he was doing long enough to frown over at her. "When you say 'walking beside you,'" he began.

"I mean I'm not kidding about this!" Lily declared. "There was a cheetah walking down the street next to me! This high. This long. Yellow! With spots!"

Casey's frown deepened. "An actual cheetah," he repeated.

"Yes!" Lily exclaimed. She yanked her apron down off of the hooks and wrapped it around her waist. "An actual cheetah! What part of 'there was a cheetah walking down the street with me' isn't clear?"

"Could other people... see this cheetah?" RJ asked, holding up one hand to illustrate the people. The other hand, presumably, represented some kind of abstract sight.

"Yes," Lily said impatiently. "They could see the cheetah, because the cheetah was an actual completely solid wild cat, standing right there in the middle of the sidewalk with me!"

RJ and Casey exchanged glances. "I see," RJ said after a moment. "Well, that's... unusual."

"Where did it go?" Casey wanted to know. "It's not still with you, is it?"

Lily rolled her eyes at him. "Do you see it with me?"

Casey squinted at her.

Noise from the floor preceded Theo's dramatic entry into the kitchen, looking only a little less startled than Lily had a minute before. "Uh, guys? Big problem."

A ghostly mottled glow followed him into the kitchen. Like dusty light spilling through the door, it could have been a trick of the afternoon sun except that even after the door swung shut the light swirled around him. Yellowish, as high as his waist... with faint spotting?

"The jaguar," Lily said.

"Yes," Theo said. "Yes, I'm being followed by a not-so-invisible animal spirit. Could we do something about this, please? It's creeping out the customers. Not to mention me."

"Oh, does it creep you out?" Lily sounded disappointed. "I thought it was kind of cool. Except for the scaring other people part."

"Wait, this happened to you too?" Theo looked outraged. "You couldn't have said something? A little warning would have been nice! What's going on, anyway?"

"No idea," RJ declared, sounding positively cheerful. "I'm guessing it's..."

He paused, and they all stared at him, waiting for the answer. "Some kind of cosmic puzzle," RJ finished at last. "We should probably check on Dominic."

Casey rolled his eyes, but Lily and Theo exchanged wide-eyed glances. An exotic cat, large and predatory though it might be, was one thing. A rhinoceros was something else entirely.

The moment Casey got it was very clear, because he froze. "Uh, Lil? You said yours was sort of... solid?"

"What?" Theo looked from one of them to the other, but Lily and Casey caught each other's eyes and bolted for the stairs at the same moment.

Theo looked at RJ, who hesitated. "I think maybe we should..." He held a hand over the table, waved it at the kitchen door, then pointed with both hands toward the stairs. "Go with them."

"Fran!" Theo shouted at the door. He backtracked, pushing the door open and calling again, "Fran! Code white! Back in a minute!"

"I love you too!" Fran's voice replied.

RJ smiled. He and Theo arrived upstairs to find the loft deserted, but the eerie quiet probably boded well. Surely a rhinoceros would make more noise in such a confined space?

"The porch," Theo said. The glow around him was gone, but his animal spirit had always been able to find Lily's. "They're outside."

Since Dominic slept on the porch, and he spent most of the days he had off sleeping, that wasn't surprising. He looked more surprised than any of them, still tangled in pajamas and a blanket in the middle of his hammock while Lily and Casey both talked at once. He found RJ with his eyes when they followed their teammates out onto the porch, and he relaxed a little.

"Okay," Dominic said, interrupting Lily and pre-empting Theo, who had just opened his mouth. "No offense, guys, but I was out kind of late last night and I'm not really sure I'm awake yet. Could you pick a spokesperson or something?"

"Our animal spirits are appearing without being called," Theo said, without waiting for anyone to elect him. "Mine and Lily's, anyway. And we're not the only ones who can see them."

"Huh," Dominic said. "That's weird."

"Mine was see-through," Theo said. "Like a ghost. Lily's wasn't."

"I was walking down the street and all of a sudden there was a cheetah walking next to me," Lily told him. "An actual cheetah. I could touch it and everything."

"Huh," Dominic repeated, lifting his hands to scrub at his face before he looked around. "That sounds... distracting."

"I'm a little concerned that a rhino might not--fit on the porch," RJ said thoughtfully. "You might want to sleep inside for a while. At least until we know whether or not your spirit is going to start manifesting at random."

"Is yours?" Dominic wanted to know. He'd completed his survey of the porch, apparently not turning up any rhinoceroses lurking in the corners.

RJ held his hands out to the sides. "Not so far. Casey?"

"Well, mine wouldn't, right?" Casey folded his arms, looking vaguely uncomfortable. "I mean, if it's me... it's already here. I haven't noticed a second me around anywhere."

"That's a terrifying thought," Theo muttered.

"Okay," RJ said. "Here's what we're going to do. Dominic, I think you should move inside. Just in case. The rest of you--"

He eyed them for a long moment, then held a hand above his head and turned away. "Back to work. The after-school crowd is on its way."

"But what about the cats?" Lily followed him, Theo falling into step beside her. "What are we going to tell everyone downstairs?"

"Well," RJ said, "there's nothing to see right now. If that changes, we'll just say we're... testing a new holographics system."

"We don't have an old holographics system," Theo pointed out. "Do we?"

"We will when this one isn't new anymore," RJ replied.

Casey and Dominic were left on the porch, eyeing each other warily. "Sorry to bust in on you like that," Casey muttered. "We were... Lily was pretty freaked, what with the whole cheetah thing."

"Nah, it's cool." Dominic didn't move. "Better to be woken up by you guys than by a giant rhino."

"Okay. Well." Casey shrugged awkwardly. "You can, you know. Sleep in my hammock today, if you want."

"Thanks." Dominic looked surprised. "I'll probably just crash on the couch. I don't want to get in anyone's space."

"I don't think RJ'll mind," Casey offered. "I mean, you guys know each other, right?"

Dominic frowned, reaching up to scratch his fingers through his hair. "Uh... yeah?"

"Yeah," Casey echoed. "So." There was a pause, and he added, "See ya," as he turned to go back inside.

"Casey?" Dominic called after him. "Why would RJ mind me sleeping in your hammock?"

Casey stopped in the doorway, hanging on the frame as he looked back. "Because it's in his room?"

Dominic blinked. "Oh," he said. "I... didn't know that."

"I don't sleep there," Casey told him. "It just didn't fit anywhere else."

"Oh," Dominic repeated. "Right."

Casey lifted his hand in a half-wave, but Dominic's voice caught him again before he could go. "Casey--you and RJ--are you guys...? I mean, are you... how close are you?"

Casey just stared at him. "Close enough."

"Right." Dominic nodded, like that was all he'd been asking. "Got it."

This time, when Casey turned to leave, Dominic let him go. He waited, maybe long enough to be sure Casey was gone, before he said under his breath, "He always had to go for the dangerous ones."