ANGIE. STILL BEFORE THE BATTLE.

The owl again said, “Whooooooooo calls me?” She sounded, well, pretty much like an owl would if it were capable of human speech, but with barely comprehensible rumbles, like distant thunder, that came a moment after each word and echoing it. This was weird and borderline creepy, even for Angie, who prided herself on her high weirdness tolerance. Angie could tell that it wasn’t her crittertongue that allowed her to understand—the owl was speaking Seattle-Common, and anyone else who spoke Common would have been able to understand it just fine. Ryan presumably would, watching from the porch.

Angie had to focus on controlling her breathing to remain calm. The entity before her triggered deep seated fight or flight instincts. Luckily Angie had known she was coming. And she’d met it before, of course. The previous Spirit’s Feast, it had wandered into the open house they’d decided to have at The Grove and struck up a conversation with Angie and Evan—mostly Angie—while pointedly ignoring Ryan.

Now Angie was worried it didn’t remember her, and she didn’t know how this would go without that pre-established relationship. Spirits as a rule had pretty good memories, which the wizards believed had to do with their not using meat brains to think, but it was not universal.

While this flashed through Angie’s head, the silence stretched on. That is, until the owl started making this little chuff-chuff-chuff noise, which Angie realized after a second was laughter. “Oh, I’m just kidding Angie dear,” Mistress Rainflipper said after a few moments of this, speaking slowly and deliberately, which gave the echoes time to emphasize, rather than interfere with, the next word. “Just a little owl joke. Of course I remember you.”

Angie blinked, then a laugh tore out of her throat despite herself, and she found her smiling back at the owl. Obviously it was a pretty bad joke—real low-hanging fruit. But she found it funny and rather sweet that the spirit had thought to make it. The Venn diagram of human and spirit senses of humor didn’t, as a rule, tend to overlap much, so the spirit was probably pandering.

“Thank you for coming, Mistress Rainflipper,” Angie said. She was opening her mouth to say more, but an owl hooted not ten feet away from her, a long note followed by several shorter hoots. She jumped despite herself, twisting and looking around, as the storm owl in the circle started chuffing again. There were owls sitting in the apple trees all around her, owls of all sorts. Barn owls, short-eared owls and long-eared owls, spotted owls and barred owls, even one huge great horned owl that had to be a meter tall, and was probably the one that had startled her, based on the call.

“What can I dooooo for you?” the storm owl asked her, the ‘do’ sounding more like another hoot than it did the human word—it was followed by a double clap of distant seeming thunder. She tilted her head pretty far to the left, certainly farther than a human might be able to. “I understand the matter is urgent?” Her huge yellow eyes blinked several times. The gray eyes crackled.

“Yes, my apologies,” Angie said, feeling a touch of heat creep into her cheeks. “Your escort startled me. I have a friend, Evan, who is acting the fool, out walking through the streets tonight. I fear he will find a Beast that is more than he can handle.”

Ms. Rainflipper bobbed her head, a motion both like and unlike nodding. Angie didn’t know if it was meant as such.

Angie continued, “I’d like you to find him and watch him, and protect him if he is in danger from a Beast.

Ms. Rainflipper bobbed her head a little more, then said, “You ask for a great deal of my time, Angie dear. I am a busy owl—storms do not just direct themselves, after all. Indeed, you ask me to risk danger to myself by engaging an Empty Thing. Though I am in little danger from the Things that can scrabble through your walls, little danger is still more than no danger. Any Empty Thing can be dangerous if you’re not careful, after all.

“However, I have a friend who has been asking around for some help, and I do so appreciate being your first ever call—really quite a pleasure my dear—so I think in this case I think we can probably come to an agreement.” She fell silent, regarding Angie steadily.

After vacillating for a few moments as to whether the owl might go on, Angie asked, “What do you propose?”

“There has been quite a buildup of trash and litter in the outer reaches of the Bear’s Last Woods,” Ms. Rainflipper said, “Around the areas where you humans all spend your time walking. Your kind are awfully blasé about scattering the borders of his territory with your rubbish.”

“I know, right?!” Angie said, anger flaring up the fires down in her guts at the mention of the subject, an indescribably weird sensation, for all she was used to it by now. “Interrobang!? There’s signs saying that no one cleans up in there, the peril valuation makes it too expensive, and that the spirits remember people who litter in there! It’s totally crazy that people would still leave all their shit behind!” Angie paused. She’d said interrobang again. She could not believe how much of an effect Megan coming back was having on her.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

The owl seemed to be laughing again, the chuff-chuff-chuff noise itself pretty funny sounding—Angie couldn’t help smiling in response. After a moment, Ms. Rainflipper said, “Well, you should be pleased by this price then. In exchange for my service tonight, I ask that you remove litter from that which you call Bridal Trails park.”

Angie blinked back at the owl for a moment, apprehensive but also confused. Ms. Rainflipper blinked in return, the motion’s exaggerated slowness due to the size of her eyes a little surreal. Angie said, “Just some litter? A couple of napkins enough?”

“The amount,” Ms. Rainflipper said, not sounding amused, “Will be determined by the specifics of the service you wish from me.” She blinked several more times, one eye and then the other, which was something Angie knew owls to do—she didn’t mistakenly think she was being winked at.

“What do you mean?” Angie asked.

“Yoooou want me to watch this boy, and protect him if he encounters one of the Empty Things,” Ms. Rainflipper replied, sort of wobbling her head back and forth, tracing out sine waves. “But the manner in which I might intervene will determine what the price is. What did you have in mind for that?”

Angie paused, for a moment, taken off guard by the question, though she realized she shouldn’t be. “I don’t know, I kind of figured you’d blast the Beast with a lightning bolt or something?”

“Dangerous for your boy, if he and the Beast are in close proximity,” the owl responded, “And quite an expenditure of energy on my part, as well. If that’s what you would like, that will be twenty-five of those big bags your kind usually use when cleaning up such rubbish.”

“Twenty-five?!” Angie said, aghast. “That would take me days!”

“That is the price of such an overt display of power,” the owl replied, her tone, to the extent that Angie could read her tone, final.

“Okay, um,” Angie said, thinking for a second. “How dangerous are we talking about?”

“The thunderblast of a lightning bolt can expand ten meters or more out from the path the bolt takes,” Ms. Rainflipper replied, the thunderesque echo of her voice coming more quickly, almost simultaneous with the owl voice, “And can destroy the ears, fling creatures larger than humans through the air, break bones, and damage the innards of the unlucky.

“Plus it’s not always easy to control where lightning goes. If he carries one of your iron guns, the bolt may be drawn to him despite my best efforts. Lightning is a dangerous weapon around those who fight with metal. Some might be able to control it better, but I can simply look in a general direction and call the bolt. I’m not as we once were.”

“Crap,” Angie said. “Maybe not lightning then. Um. What would you suggest?”

“My advice has its own cost, my dear,” the owl said in return.

“Fuuuck!” Angie said, trying not to freak out. Spirits could be a pain, and the time they chatted was time Evan wasn’t defended. “Could you make a big gust of wind?”

“Of course,” the owl said, sounding a bit miffed. “I’m a spirit of storms.”

“Okay,” Angie said, gnawing on her lower lip. “If it looks like a Beast is about to kill him, can you knock him out of the Beast’s path of attack with a gust of wind? And then blow the Beast further away from him with another gust? How much would that be?”

“Yes, that would be simple, if still fairly dangerous for the boy,” Rainflipper replied. “I think two gusts of wind would be… oh, let’s say, five of your normal bags full of your garbage.”

“Phwibf,” Angie phwibfed, letting the sensation of the flapping of her lips quell her annoyance of how high the price still was. She was trying to save Evan’s life, after all. Then she had a thought, and said, “What is the price if you never have to use a gust?”

“Three.” Well, that explained that. Fair enough.

“Okay, let’s do that,” Angie said, nodding. “If you only want one extra bag per gust, use as many as you need on the Beast if you need to start using them to blow it away from Evan to give him time to get away. But don’t interfere unless it’s necessary to save his life.”

“Understood,” Mst. Rainflipper replied, bobbing her head like owls do.

“We have a deal?” Angie asked.

“We have… a deal,” Mst. Rhodo Rendron Rainflipper said. The word seemed to reverberate around the clearing, and it was only after a second Angie realized it was because all the other owls surrounding her had said “Deal” as well, with varying rates of delay in repeating it. On the final ‘deal’ there was a great multi-crack of thunder, followed by long rumbling aftershocks. The owls spread their wings and took flight, Mst. Rainflipper last of all, spreading a massive wingspan that covered the entire clearing and really blasting Angie good with the afterdraft. Her hair was going to be brilliant after this—it was a good thing she didn’t have long hair anymore.

Spirits fucking loved making bargains. Angie couldn’t tell you why. No one could, really. It’s just how they were.