Most of the people outside at this hour were smokers back on the main line of shops, though only that bar seemed to be particularly active. While I was distracting myself with faster and faster somersaults and hand-walking around a fountain in the town’s small park there was a small commotion down in the bar, a few shouting men and at least one angry women. I sliced the air open to race over and see what was going on, almost getting run over by a truck as I bolted without looking across a side-street. I don’t think the driver saw me, though he might wonder later why there was a handprint on his front bumper, imprinted as if it were soft putty.

Landing on the carwash, then leaping onto a closed office building just two stories high, I looked down at the humans. Did my thirst stir, and start whispering in my ear? Of course it did. But I was still more curious, and midnight was coming soon, the inhale about to reverse – that let me focus, enough to study the angry woman I had heard cursing in French as she sat just outside the door with two men awkwardly beside her, mumbling and giving the woman napkins. It seemed that she had cut her finger.

She says a bird took a ring off her finger, and they don’t believe her. They think she just dropped it … though it seems she has a scratch on her finger.

I could believe that drunks would have excuses … but recently animals had turned out to be more than just animals for me. I wondered if Raccoon Man would know anything about this, and felt that it was almost time to return to the overturned garbage can.

It was just a few buildings down, avoiding a streetlight’s glare by hunching above it in shadow. I sniffed and listened.

“You’re early.”

But the voice wasn’t from a raccoon. I felt two feet land on my left shoulder, the bird defeating all of my senses.

Spinning my head, I saw a raven that somehow grinned at me, its black eye and beak an inch from my nose. It fidgeted and walked over my back to my right shoulder. The voice had nothing to do with its beak, which clutched a small circle of metal.

“Take it. Much better than anything Azeban could find.”

“… thanks.” I held out a palm and the raven dropped the stolen ring down. A small stone gleamed, mounted in the gold, maybe a low-carat diamond.

“You don’t look like a magpie.”

“You’re a city boy, you would need to look up a magpie to be certain.”

That was true.

“So you noticed me cursing at the sainted road?”

The bird nodded, twisting its head to preen feathers that merged into the night even to my eyes. “That road has been a bother for me, since the spuds think so little of carrion birds. When a bird goes over that particular road my manitou gets left behind, and I have to find the bird later, which is very annoying. But now there’s a small hole in the wall, many thanks.”

“Are you … the Raven? The one they all talk about, coast to coast?”

“Divisions are for mortals and near-mortals,” the spirit scoffed. “Nanabush is in many places at once, he teleports and splits, and he can disagree and argue with himself. I am … the finger from a stream from a river, and that great river is the Raven.”

I liked this guardian. He certainly made more sense than Nanabozho, and he handed out diamond rings, though I still didn’t know what I was going to do with it. I needed blood. But he/she/it had to know this … well, it would be another interesting night.