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My name is Naomi McLeroy, and I'm part of the county's CSI department. I'm a vixen therian, a creature whose mere existence is a mixed blessing in the world of humans. I can perform a special service that few humans can do: I can see and speak to spirits left behind at the scene of a violent crime. For me, the talent comes through as scent; some of my kind have other means of feeling such spirits, and many crime scene departments have a therian on call when needed, usually after murders have occurred. The technical term is "disencorporiation syndrome," which is a scientist's attempt to label something that science can't understand. They can't measure a soul, yet when a soul is forced out of its body through traumatic death, it does linger, mostly out of confusion. That's where I come in. The grisly among the police force refer to it as part of "crime scene clean-up." It's an impersonal description, but it's not entirely inaccurate.

I'm not the only one who can sense these spirits. If you'll pardon a little tit-for-tat, even some mere humans can do it. It's more common among my kind; our senses are, by our nature, more sensitive at every level. It's not a statement of superiority, believe me; there are times when we'd rather not know as much as we know. It can be embarrassing to realize that your human boss may have thought he'd showered off the scent of his assignation with a female co-worker, but enough lingers for me to know who it was. My own sense of ethics prevents me from telling his wife; it's neither my job nor my business.

My current situation had nothing to do with my job either, at least not directly. A friend of a friend had asked if I could confirm or deny his experience with what he called his "rooftop muse." I couldn't refuse Lillian anything; she's one of the few humans in the CSI department who accepted me from the first, and she helped me a lot after Philip died. I telephoned the young feline, explained who I was, and he asked me to meet him at his apartment building that night. He buzzed me in and met me on the third floor landing, introducing himself and explaining that the roof would be the best place to start.

I followed the tom out onto the roof of the building, still a little wary; I'm not nearly as good at heights as most folks, felines especially. He walked calmly, confidently, to the edge of the rooftop and sat down on the low wall façade, his hind paws dangling over the edge. His guitar was slung over his shoulder, held by a wide strap that appeared to have been made of paw-crafted needlework; the design was intricate and made to look like stitchery from the Middle Ages. He looked back over his shoulder and smiled sympathetically. "Nice view, huh?"

"It's fine," I said. And in truth, it was amazing. This part of the city was older than most. Many of the humans of the city would have called this area "the slums" not that long ago. These were the original tenements, built decades ago, and still standing. When therians began moving in, more prejudiced people started moving out, but that turned out to be a blessing in disguise. For most of us, smell is perhaps the most powerful of our senses, so the first thing that had to happen was a massive clean-up campaign. Despite the comparative poverty of the residents, soap, cleaning utensils, elbow grease, and olfactory motivation were plentiful. Within half a year, so much had changed that the city actually appropriated funds for infrastructure, street repair, public sidewalk and building-front support. Thanks to "those bleeding heart liberals," parts of the area actually gained status as being "of historical importance to the city."

Along these few blocks, the artists, musicians, and performers found homes, as did coffee house venues, co-op art galleries, and a small live theater. One thing about the arts: You're not usually judged by your species. (In one production of_A Midsummer Night's Dream,_ the actor playing Bottom was actually replaced halfway through with a donkey therian. Perhaps the Bard never dreamt so well, so many years ago.) The tom who had asked me to come see him up here was one such. Related to the domesticated cats, the tall, lanky gray tabby was a guitarist and singer/songwriter who went by the nickname of Rennie, since he was so often part of the Renaissance festivals in the surrounding areas. Even now, he was togged in baggy troubadour pants of dark red and an open-fronted vest to match, the color setting off his striped gray fur to good advantage.

I gazed at the general vista, from the night skies down to carefully placed streetlamps and modest neon or other lit signage. To my recollection, there was a five-storey limit on the buildings and housing units in this area, and this one stood its full height above a few shorter neighbors across the street. I saw evidence of clotheslines, largely disused since washers and dryers were installed in the basements of most buildings, but sometimes still used when the sun was high and the air pollution low. To one side of this rooftop, someone had started a what looked like a small herb garden (one of the herbs not necessarily entirely legal, according to my nose - again, not my business or my job). The summer night was cooling nicely, a breeze coming up from the bay visible just past the last of the buildings. Grandmother Moon looked down upon us softly, some clouds scudding along, seeming almost low enough to touch.

The tom began to tune his guitar, its sounds blending gently on the air. "Your neighbors don't mind the lateness of the hour?"

"It's not too late. I usually don't play after midnight." He smiled a little. "I think they like it."

I moved a little closer to him, still not daring to stand too close to the edge. "How often do you see her?"

"It started a few weeks ago. Thereabouts. I wasn't sure, at first, but I know she's been here."

"Do you think she'll come to you tonight?"

"I hope so." He looked up at me, his eyes deep and filled with something like longing. "Thank you for coming up here, Ms. McLeroy. For believing me."

"Call me Naomi, please, and not to worry - I've heard of stranger things." I looked around the rooftop area and found an old crate that looked reasonably sturdy. I pulled it as near to the edge as I dared, sitting gently on it and leaning on the low balustrade, now just a little below shoulder height. "As Lillian told you, it's my job, ordinarily. This just sounded... different."

"Yes." He moved his forepaws across the instrument, strumming, picking, coaxing notes until they blended and began to form music. "There's a song she likes. I'm not sure..." He paused, looked back at me. "I'm not sure I should play it first. I mean, maybe I should warm up a bit, or..."

I smiled encouragingly at him. "You know best. You can feel it."

His soft yellow eyes widened a little, and then he too smiled, his tail making a slightly embarrassed but happy twitch. He strummed some chords, hummed along, his voice softer, perhaps a little higher than I had expected. The moonlight turned his ash gray fur into silver with mercury highlights. He sang one song, another, a third, all tunes I recognized from the singer-songwriters of a few decades before, soft and bluesy numbers that I could remember from my kithood and early years of college. The tom may have been nearly twenty years my junior, but he sure knew how to make this vixen happy. Each song was like a greeting from an old friend, and he sang each one very well. As I looked out over the rooftop, to look at other windows in other buildings, I could see that darkened windows held admiring faces, mostly anthromorphs in this part of town, but some humans also. Some of the neighbors came out onto their fire escape landings, some with a drink in hand, some with a hindpaw or foot patting in time to the music, and some leaning back, a look on their muzzles something like bliss. The tom had an audience.

He played without singing for a short time. I could feel something about him change. His ears perked forward, his tail stilled itself, stayed put, only its tip sometimes flicking just the slightest bit. A calm seemed to come over him, the guitar both softer and more resonant, more moving. He began a song that I didn't know, something like a ballad, a very old ballad that was still sung in the old tongue. I could make out the words well enough - I am a scholar, among many other things - to know that the song was a tender lament, of deep love not so much lost as somehow in waiting. Lovers separated, but not forever; uncaring forces could not triumph over their bond, not as long as both knew that the other was not gone but only waiting.

That's when I saw her.

I was confused at first, for two reasons. The first was that I couldn't determine her species. She didn't seem to be feline, nor canine, nor human, nor any other species that I could recognize immediately. The sense of her gender was unmistakable, but her form itself was spirit-like, ill-defined, perhaps invisible to anyone other than the young tom or someone like myself, who can sense the spirits of those who have passed. But you see, that was the second thing that I confused me. Whatever or whoever she was, the apparition before me had nothing to do with a displaced or wandering spirit. She was no ghost. She wasn't dead. I knew it with every fiber of my being. Whoever she was, she was alive... somewhere.

Slowly, I stood, padding softly toward the wraith. Rennie didn't stop his playing for a moment, yet I knew that he sensed her just as I did. As I approached, she turned a face toward me, again more internal sensation than visual. I still could not make out specifics, despite every instinct telling me that she was looking at me.

"Let me help you," I said quietly. Behind me, the tom kept playing.

"I need to listen."

"Why do you not come in person?"

"I cannot hear him there."

"Where is there? Where are you?"

A long pause. "Lost."

"Have you a name?"

An even longer pause. "Christabel."

She vanished.

I breathed slowly, clearing my head as I listened to Rennie finishing off his song. On the light breeze, I heard a spattering of applause from up and down the street, softened by distance but clear in the summer night. Rennie had come back onto the roof proper, now standing behind me, which I supposed was his way of signaling the end of the evening's concert.

"Gone?"

I nodded, hearing the pain of resignation in his voice.

"She is a spirit, then. My muse is someone gone and haunting this place. Perhaps someone who died here a long time ago?"

"No, Rennie," I said, turning toward him. "She's not dead. She's alive. I'm sure of it."

The tom's yellow eyes grew large as saucers. "Then how can her spirit be here?"

"Because she's looking for a way home."

* * * * * * * * * *

I'd been at my job for six months before I began to understand just where I stood in the estimation of many of my coworkers. To some, I was a necessary evil; to others, an unnecessary evil; to still others, just plain evil, perhaps for my being a fox or for my conversations with the dead. It made little difference; when it comes to haters, any prejudice will suffice. As any good Shaman would tell you, Fox Medicine is about camouflage and blending in. Since I couldn't do so physically amid so many humans, I took my refuge in the one place where even humans fear to tread: Bureaucracy.

When needed, I brought out the rule book to defend my job or perform it, and I learned how and where to find allies to bypass the rulebook altogether. Since humans have prejudices within their own species, I usually found non-white-skinned coworkers to have one of two reactions. On the one paw, there were those who were happy to prove the adage that water - and whatever else may be in the sewer - travels downhill, and they were delighted to feel that they were holding the umbrella for a change. T'other paw, there were those who remembered (or were well-schooled about) the painful realities of prejudice, and I got a kind of "right on, sister" respect, usually on what they called "the down low." That was different, I learned, from getting "the low down" on someone. I have to say that the vulpine tongue is nowhere near that convoluted.

Lillian was my first such contact, although she was quite out in the open about her friendship with me. A self-described "tough old broad," she accepted me from Day One. I forged most of my work contacts through her, and between us, we got done what needed to be done, above board or not. Since the purpose of a bureaucracy appeared (to me, at least) to be the allocation of blame upon the uninvolved and the alleviation of accountability from those directly involved, it was pretty easy for a fox to catch on. We're clever buggers that way.

I'm pretty good with a computer, but the files that I needed were reasonably well-secured. Happily, my best contact in the Records department worked what humans called "the graveyard shift," perhaps because ocelots are nocturnal. Ren was the very best - clever, quick, and never left any tracks. Therian evolution tended to leave the best parts of the beast untouched.

The Records department itself was empty, but just to be sure, we were using the computer in Ren's boss' office. She already had the "plausible deniability" scenario figured out, so we went directly to work. "What am I looking for?" she asked me.

"A grain of sand in a sand pile, but I'm hoping we can narrow it down. Start with the name Christabel." I spelled it for her before she could ask, and she grinned. "Female, but unknown species. I'm going to have to guess at an age; let's start with wide and narrow down - 20 to 30 years old is my guess."

"Identifying marks? Features? Anything?"

"The best I can tell you is that she's not dead."

Ren turned her golden eyes on me with the most supremely sarcastic stare imaginable. "Are you serious?"

"Yes. For once, this isn't about a crime scene, or at least I think it isn't."

"And she's a ghost?"

"Spirit, yes, but I feel positive that she's alive."

The ocelot leaned back in her chair, her tail flicking about with generally amiable imitation. "And this is possible, how?"

"Coma."

She considered, moving her bottom lip in a very human expression that I usually took to mean something like_this could be true._ I thought that the shifting of her ears forward, with one flicking slightly side to side, was more easily understood. "Hospitals it is. How wide a radius?"

"Theoretically, she could be anywhere on the globe, but she seems to have some sort of tie to Rennie," I suggested, "so let's have a look at, say, 50 kilometers. That's near enough for someone to travel to the Ren Faire when it's in season."

Ren's fingers flew across the keyboard, the spots on her forepaws a complete blur of motion. I'd swear that she typed faster than the screen refresh could keep up with. After several seconds, she announced, "Fifty-seven that are close - Chris, Christina, Chrissie, even one Christabella, but no Christabel."

It amazed me that so many people could be classified as being in a coma in so localized an area. "Can we expand to a hundred kilometers?"

"You're getting way beyond suburbia, foxy." After more prestidigitation, Ren announced, "Up to eighty-two, but again, no exact matches. Is there anything you can do to narrow this a little?"

"She's not very talkative, this one." I sighed, brows furrowed. "What kind of hits do you get from search engines on that name?"

The very first hit reminded me why I thought that name was so familiar. "Bring that up," I said. Scanning down the page a ways, I finally hit the reference I was looking for. "Change search," I said, just as if I knew what I was doing. "Female, 20-30 years of age, coma due to injury or trauma, from an attack by multiple assailants. And change the name to Geraldine..."

* * * * * * * * * *

There are lots of reasons why I don't like hospitals, but today, I had the feeling that I might not mind so much. Room 317 of Mercy General was for two patients, but only one bed was occupied. I walked in with the tom and introduced him to the comatose female. "Rennie, please meet Geraldine Braxton."

The tom, guitar case in paw, stood by the bed and gazed down at the young puma who lay before him. She was terribly thin, but her fur showed that someone on staff here knew how to take proper care of a bedridden therian. Her long blonde headfur had been recently brushed using a waterless soap - not ideal, but it helped. She had an oxygen mask for her muzzle, but she had not been intubated because her vital signs were strong.

"I don't understand," Rennie said softly.

"Geraldine was attacked seventeen days ago by three men. It appears to have been robbery with violence."

I caught the flick of Rennie's eyes and tail, and I nodded slightly, to confirm his fears. He looked back at the young female, his lips trembling with questions he couldn't form.

"The reports from the doctors indicate that there are no medical reasons for her to be comatose; physically, she seems intact. It's as if she simply doesn't want to wake up." I swallowed. "I'm not sure I would, either."

"Why did she come to me?"

"Your voice. Her spirit wanders, Rennie, and it wandered until it heard something that it needed to hear. She needed to hear you." I paused before asking softly, "When did you lose her?"

"Who?"

"The girl you wrote that song for."

The tom's ears flattened, his eyes shot wide, tail lashing. I'll give him credit: He didn't ask how I knew. Instead, he let his shoulders fall, not relaxed so much as resigned. "Three years ago. Car accident. I've never forgotten. Couldn't forget. I tried to write a song about her, and instead, it was about us. The us that we couldn't be anymore."

I nodded to Geraldine. "She reached out to you through that loss. She heard the pain in your voice, and she felt what you did. And she didn't want to wake up, because she was afraid that she wouldn't be able to find you again."

"How did you find her?"

"The spirit used the name Christabel, and I finally remembered that it's the name of an epic poem by Coleridge. In the early stanzas, Christabel finds the Lady Geraldine. The lady tells her tale of being taken by five warriors, not attacked perhaps, but taken away nonetheless. Young Geraldine here is 24 years old and is working on a Masters degree in literature. Something in her spirit remembered the allusion enough to give me the clue to finding her."

I jutted a chin to the guitar case. "Play. I'll close the door."

Rennie pulled up a chair and prepared himself. He looked at Geraldine's still form, then leaned over to speak softly into her ear. "I'm called Rennie," he began. "I think we've met. I'd like to play something for you. Something familiar."

He strummed quietly, sang gently, and the air in the room seemed transformed. The she-puma did not stir, did not waken magically to the sound of her prince's voice, but I hadn't really expected that. Perhaps Rennie had, for as he brought his song to a close, he turned tear-filled eyes to me.

"Wait here," I told him softly. "Stay right where you are."

At the nurse's station, I found a male human with smooth dark skin who smiled at me and asked how he could help.

"The she-puma in 317," I said. "I'm not a doctor, but I've made a guess and want to see if it's true."

"Are you a relative or other representative? The HIPAA rules.."

I held up a forestalling paw. "I understand. I'm with the CSI, but this isn't an official matter. Let me ask you this: You don't have to give me any information about her condition, but I wonder if you'd be good enough to check her EEG monitoring for the past ten minutes or so."

"Guitar?" he questioned simply. I nodded. "Thought I heard music. Wait here a moment."

After several minutes, he returned and looked around as if to see if he were being watched. "Ma'am," he temporized for some unseen audience, "I'm not a specialist, and I couldn't say anything about the patient's condition without violating the HIPAA rules. But I read something interesting just a little bit ago. Something about providing sensory stimulation to comatose patients. It might prove beneficial in cases where the coma is otherwise unexplained. Some reports tend to show increased activity in the brain, especially if they hear something that is familiar to them."

I smiled at him. "You'd make a good fox."

He grinned in return. "I'll take that as a compliment, ma'am."

Returning to the room, I explained the coded message to Rennie. Geraldine's EEG had shown greater activity when the tom had sung to her. "Remember when I said she was lost? It's what she said, actually - she hasn't yet found a reason to return. That reason might be you. Her spirit can hear you here in this room, and so can she." I smiled softly. "Not as quick as a fairy-tale kiss, but I think you'll be helping her. Sing, talk, tell her jokes, read to her. Let her know she's not alone, and that she's wanted back."

Reaching into my large canvas bag, I brought out a somewhat battered but still serviceable edition of_The Norton Anthology of Poetry._ "I'm not sure how familiar you are with various poets. I've bookmarked a few that you might like to try. My card is in there. I'll check back, but if something changes before then, call me. Day or night."

The tom set aside his guitar, stood, and hugged me. "Thank you," he whispered.

"Thank her," I said, returning the hug. "It's not often that I get to find a spirit who can have a second chance."

He released me and went back to his chair. He strummed softly, beginning a ballad that any ren-faire performer worth his salt would know by heart. "Alas, my love, you do me wrong, to cast me off discourteously, for I have loved you well and long, delighting in your company..."

I left them, closing the door behind me. As I passed the nurses' station, the dark-skinned human smiled at me. "Thank you again," I said. "A most interesting report."

"Pays to be well-read, ma'am."

"Or well-versed."

He chuckled in agreement. I left for home, wondering how long it would be before I got a phone call from Rennie. Soon, perhaps. Soon.