Driven by the evening's events, Leo found himself falling down the rabbit hole of the internet's paranormal underworld.
With his parents gone and Milo sleeping the deep, satisfied sleep of a hero who had been handsomely rewarded, Leo sat in the blue glow of his laptop.
His search started simply.
"Cat with super reflexes."
The results were a predictable mix of cute cat videos and articles about feline agility. Normal. Reassuring.
He refined his search.
"Impossible animal feats."
The rabbit hole began to open.
He found forums buzzing with hushed, excited whispers. Message boards filled with stories that were both outlandish and eerily familiar.
"My Dog Can Find My Lost Keys - Every Time!" one thread title proclaimed.
"Is My Hamster a Weather Forecaster?" another asked, complete with a blurry photo of a hamster staring intently at a barometer.
He clicked on a link to a video titled, "WATCH: Poodle in Pasadena GLOWS IN THE DARK! (REAL FOOTAGE)."
The video was shaky, filmed at night, but the image was unmistakable. A standard white poodle, trotting along a suburban street, was emitting a faint, ethereal, pearlescent glow. The owner, a frantic-sounding woman, could be heard whispering, "See? I told you! It's the new organic shampoo! It has... bioluminescent algae in it!"
Leo snorted. Bioluminescent algae. A classic.
He kept digging, a strange mix of dread and validation growing in his gut.
He found a forum dedicated to "Anomalous Animal Intelligence." Here, the theories were wilder, the posters more fervent. They spoke of alien energy, secret government experiments, and mass hysteria.
One user, "SpiritSeeker88," had a detailed theory that cosmic rays were activating junk DNA in pets, turning them into low-level psychics.
Another, "GovtIsWatching," was convinced it was a secret program to create animal spies, and that every stray cat was a potential agent of the deep state.
Leo found it all highly amusing. And deeply useful. He mentally filed away "cosmic ray activation" as a potential excuse for the future. It had a nice, scientific ring to it.
He stumbled upon a recurring acronym: UPS.
The Urban Paranormal Society.
It seemed to be a loose coalition of believers, a digital gathering of the city's strange and curious. Their private forum was a treasure trove of local "paranormal" hotspots and eyewitness accounts.
There was a thread about the "Miracle Park," where flowers bloomed out of season and the fountain water tasted like "liquid joy." Leo felt a pang of secondhand stress on behalf of Goldie.
Another user, whose handle was "EctoElara," had posted a dramatic, all-caps warning about a flickering streetlight in a downtown alleyway, claiming it was a "Class 2 Poltergeist attempting to communicate via Morse code."
Leo remembered that alleyway. He and Milo had fixed that "poltergeist" with a single, contemptuous spiritual nudge.
He was beginning to realize that the city was teeming with these minor spiritual incidents, and a small, passionate community was diligently misinterpreting every single one of them.
As he scrolled through a list of "haunted" locations, he pulled up a video linked in one of the posts. It was security footage from an old antique shop. The video was time-lapsed, showing the empty shop overnight.
Suddenly, a rocking chair in the corner began to move, slowly at first, then more insistently, rocking back and forth with no one in it.
Leo leaned closer to the screen.
Next to him on the desk, the Lesser Spirit Codex, disguised as a boring textbook on accounting, began to vibrate.
A soft, low hum, identical to the one he'd heard when it first activated, filled the air.
He picked up the book. The cover was warm to the touch.
He focused on the video playing on his laptop. The book's vibration intensified.
The "Spirit Resonance Map" flickered to life on its disguised pages, showing a tiny, pulsing blob of orange light originating from the location of the antique shop.
The Codex could recognize spiritual energy from a video recording.
The implications of that sent a fresh wave of anxiety through him. The age of digital evidence was a terrifying prospect for a man trying to keep magic a secret.
He spent the next hour cross-referencing UPS posts with online videos.
A "haunted" vending machine that dispensed random snacks? The Codex showed a faint signature of a playful spirit wisp.
A viral clip of a dog that seemed to walk on water for a split second across a puddle? A powerful, though uncontrolled, burst of spiritual energy.
A local news story about a flock of pigeons that flew in a perfect, geometric spiral? The Codex registered a collective, low-level hive-mind consciousness.
The world was not just waking up. It was humming with a secret, chaotic energy.
He was just one of the few who had a translator.
He closed the laptop, the glow of a hundred conspiracy theories still dancing in his vision. The sheer volume of it was overwhelming. Aliens, ghosts, government plots... the mundane explanations for the supernatural were far more creative than the simple, absurd truth.
The truth was just a cat who wanted more snacks, a dog who liked to take things apart, and a goldfish with a cleaning obsession.
He felt a sudden, desperate need for something solid, something real and predictable.
Maybe a visit to Alex was in order. A dose of his friend's unshakable, scientific rationalism was just what he needed to ground himself.
After all, what could possibly be supernatural about Alex's new puppy?