-Ruarc Brennan-

This job is going to kill me, again. I only accepted this job because it was Candice who asked, along with the fact that working for the police seemed like it would be fun. I ignored the other reasons, which I wasn't ready to face, and took the job without a second thought. A fact which I came to highly regret.

This should be an easy job, for a vampire at least, I would just need to make sure that a witch didn't get too injured. I was one of the strongest creatures on the planet, and I knew the weaknesses to every other creature. This should be a walk in the park, and that's what annoyed me.

I was throwing a white baseball in the air and catching it. The ball didn't have a pink sticky note with 'EVIDANCE' written across it, so I took my chances and used it for my sole entertainment. It was beginning to lose its appeal, after catching it for the eight hundredth time.

A movement from the other side of the room caught my eye. Quan stood from his seat and grabbed his coat and gloves. "Do you have shifts?" he asked. His voice was flat and disinterested.

I was surprised that he even acknowledged my existence at all. "Not that I know of, I don't really need to eat or sleep or anything." I probably shouldn't have mentioned sleep, because I certainly was not going to be stalking this man outside of office hours, that would be immensely creepy.

I couldn't help the surprise which appeared on my face. It was the first time that he'd talked to me. "Not that I know of, I don't really need to eat."

He huffed, which was admittedly adorable. He had been tense since we were introduced, and the coffee which he had earlier only seemed to help a small amount. I had tried not to disturb him too much whilst he was working, but that was a test of my patience as well.

He moved around his desk, grabbed his cane, and left the office. I took the open door as a sign to follow him, which I did gladly. Maybe something interesting was finally happening.

We didn't even go further than a street away from the police station before Quan entered a building. It was a very small café, which would be my first visit to a café in a little over ten years. The sickly-sweet smell of sugar and coffee was suffocating, along with the heat which came directly from the kitchen. I still wasn't used to experiencing different temperatures as a vampire, no matter how long I've been one.

"Can I get the usual please?" Quan asked politely. It didn't at all suite the persona I had met a few hours before. "Thank you." He handed over the correct amount of change, which I hadn't even realised he already had in his hand.

I shook my head towards the person behind the counter and pointed towards Quan. He had already found himself in a spot by the window, which brought in the bright sunlight which I had been grateful to avoid when we actually arrived in the building.

I sighed and put my sunglasses back on, getting the hint that Quan was wanting to avoid me at all costs. I sat opposite him and crossed my arms. The chairs in the café were even smaller than the ones in his office, which made me feel like I was crushing the metal. Quan, however, looked tiny in the seat. The sides of his legs weren't even touching the sides. He was also at least a foot smaller than me, which made him look almost like a teenager, if not a child.

"You're staring," he stated. He turned away from the window, his white eyes staring into my soul. "Why?"

"I'm meant to be keeping an eye on you," I replied. "Which means that staring is allowed." I was also very intrigued by his unusual appearance. He was handsome, too, which gave me an even better excuse.

Quan had pitch black hair, which was tied back in a ponytail, yet it still hung down his back as though it had never been cut. It was a style I hadn't seen in years on a man, save for the very rare exceptions. Strands of hair framed his face almost thoughtlessly, apart from a fringe which covers a proportion of his right eye. His skin was a soft cream colour, but it seemed like he didn't spend a lot of time in the sun. His entire being was small and skinny, especially in comparison to the clothes he was wearing. His coat consumed him like a quilt.

His eyes were the star of the show.

They were the most peculiar milky white I had ever seen. I could only describe them as pearls. It was as though his eyes had been completely replaced by shiny and shimmery pearls.

I hadn't met a clairvoyant witch before, they were very rare, and not very popular. The very act of being a clairvoyant witch was frowned upon by many in the supernatural world. Most thought that it was considered cheating. Angels were especially against such witchcraft.

"I can feel you staring, I'm usually used to stares, but yours is irritating me."

I appreciated how blunt he was, but at the same time, I couldn't help but feel a little insulted. I felt that way whenever he talked directly to me. He had a sense of displeasure; one I couldn't blame him for. I was still waiting for the moment that I understood why I was hired.

"I can't do much about that, now can I?" I asked rhetorically. "It's not my fault you're uncomfortable with someone watching you." That sounded awful. I cringed silently to myself as soon as the words left my mouth.

"You could perhaps learn to blink, or at the very least, look away." He crossed one leg over the other, wrapped an arm around himself and picked his coffee cup up. He looked like someone you'd see on a magazine, in his black turtleneck and trench coat draped over the back of the chair.

His first suggestion caught me off guard. I looked down and closed my eyes, pinching the bridge of my nose. I scrunched my eyes shut and sighed. I always forgot to blink; it was incredibly annoying. I didn't really need to blink, I had grown used to the irritation of dust on my eyeballs, as the smallest of dust starts to cause irritation. If I didn't want to be irritated, I'd be blinking a million times a minute.

"Thank you," Quan said quietly and sipped at his coffee with a sigh. He looked out the window, though I wasn't sure how much he could see. I noticed that people avoided looking into the window, even some children pointed and stared in wonder at the spectacle they were witnessing.

"Do they always react like this?" I asked before I could stop myself. My lips always worked quicker than my brain.

"Like what?" Quan asked in his usual snappy tone. I was starting to really get on his nerves, I think. It was very tricky to tell what he was feeling or thinking, that was one thing I noticed in the past few hours.

"Do people usually avoid you like the plague?" My wording could've been better, I wasn't going to deny that. It got the point across. "Strangers on the street. That's not how people usually act."

Quan hummed and took another sip of his coffee, seemingly stalling. I thought that he wasn't going to answer me, until he said, "not where I live. Strangers around here ignore me because I'm strange. The very few people I've interacted with believe that I'm wearing contact lenses."

I furrowed my eyebrows. "Where do you live?" I asked. I admit that the question was creepy. At least I was asking instead of following him home, which was considerably creepier. I was sure that would be part of my job description as well, I didn't quite get all the details.

"I live in the North district, along Trifork road," Quan informed before setting his cup down and standing up. "Break's over."

I was frozen in my seat. He lived in one of the most dangerous places in the entire city. Why didn't Candice tell me about this? Did she expect me to follow him home and guard him there? A shiver went down my spine as I thought of the copious number of demons and vampires which lived near Quan, who could attack him at any point.

I wasn't attached, I was just trying to do my job as well as I could.

It felt wrong to cheat Candice out of her money by not doing what I was hired for, even if that woman could afford to lose it. Candice had helped me a lot when it came to understanding my abilities. I owed her my life, and I would've done this even without payment.

"Ruarc," Quan said from above me. He had a gloved hand on my shoulder and stared down at me with coldness. I didn't understand how someone without an iris or pupil could manage to look so cold.

"Yes," I said with an awkward cough as I rose to my feet. I followed him out of the cafe and back to the building, which I was starting to hate the sight of. I had seen it throughout most of my life, as it was an incredibly old building, but I didn't have this agitation before.

We were back in his tiny office again. I doubted that the room would be fit for a toddler's bedroom, considering the size. It had a row of shelves against one wall and a desk in the middle of the room. I spent most of the day memorising the random objects which were scattered around, such as the torn teddy bear which used to hold a heart in its paws, or the baseball bat with a dent in it.

It was obvious what they were, after Quan told me what his job was. They were all leads to solving crimes. I didn't really want to think about what each of them could mean, but my mind tried to imagine it anyway.

I picked up the ball that I had been messing with earlier and started to throw it around again. Of course, the ball never hit the ground or knocked anything off. It was boring. Sometimes I missed that part of being human, the possibility of doing things wrong. At least when it came to physical abilities.

My saviour knocked on the door and entered when Quan answered. Jade strode in with a wide grin on her face. "We got another one," she declared happily. "Come on, we leave in ten." If that meant what I thought it meant, I wondered why on earth she seemed so happy.

Before now, I thought that anyone who worked in this kind of building or career would be miserable, or at least not joyful or happy. It was probably me clutching at stereotypes, but William was more accurate when it came to my own depiction of police officers and investigators. I didn't understand how people surrounded by death could be happy because I wasn't.

Quan sighed and stood up, grabbing his gloves and coat. "Let's hope this one is better than the last one."

"The last one?" I asked him, but I received no answer. So, I turned my attention back to Jade. "We have another what?"

Jade sent me a sympathetic look, a stark difference to the grin which was on her face a few moments ago. "Crime scene. We think that this one is linked to the letter you got." What letter? Did she expect Quan to say more than two sentences to me?

Quan raised an eyebrow, and his actions quickened. It was only now that I realised how stressed he had been about the piece of paper he had discarded a few too many times. Candice had mentioned that they had been dealing with a pretty difficult case at the moment, maybe that was why Quan was so snappy.

"I'm not waiting for you," Quan told me before he rushed out of the door, his white cane barely touching the ground as Jade led him away.

I could smell the blood before we arrived in the building. It wasn't much of a crime scene, in my opinion. We had travelled to the nearest library, via William's abysmal driving skills. I was a vampire and yet I feared for my life. The amount of curses which flowed from William's mouth was enough to make even me want to clean his mouth out with soap.

We were led to a back room, various officers sending us glares and nods of acknowledgement as we passed. I got a few strange looks, but I shrugged them off. I was usually with the patrol team of the organisation, dealing with issues on the streets and any miscellaneous calls which needed an extra man. I preferred to get my hands dirty and play to my strengths, which was strength.

"Lucas, Roberts, Leung," a man, whose name tag read 'sergeant Knox'. "What are you doing here?"

Quan's scowl deepened. "If you need to ask that, I'm afraid you need another job." He moved past the chubby man with thin ginger hair and fierce brown eyes, nobody tried to stop him.

"Why didn't they succeed in killing him last time?" Knox muttered under his breath. I wondered if he knew about the supernatural. It was pretty common for most of the police force to know, but regular humans were unpredictable. If he knew about the supernatural, he mustn't have noticed that there were three right in front of him.

I chuckled at the frustration on Knox's face before following Quan. People tried to stop me, but I ignored them and quickened my pace like the good guard dog I was.

I clamped my mouth shut as I felt my fangs growing in. I really hated that part of being a vampire. It was akin to wisdom teeth coming through, but it was just a coating around my canine, sharpening them to an uncomfortable point. The smell of blood usually caused my fangs to grow, I couldn't control it. I was still new to all this; I had still only met one vampire who could control when their fangs showed.

"Jade, what do you see?" Quan asked the angel who was standing behind us.

She moved between Quan and I, stepping around the body which was on the floor. The body was of a woman, but her face was down on the floor. I would've assumed that it was a mannequin if I didn't know any better. Her skin was white, slowly turning an unnatural colour. There were dots of blood on the floor by her neck, and her arms were bent, as though she had been crawling when she was killed.

"There's a dead woman on the floor to your left. There's shelves of books, obvious I know, there is a desk to your right, on top of that is a computer, a pencil-holder, a typewriter, a phone. -"

"There's a typewriter?" Quan interrupted. His cane made a sharp noise as he trailed it across the wooden floor, before it bashed into the wooden desk. Quan marched for the desk, narrowly missing the arm of the chair impaling his side.

"Yes, a typewriter, you know." Jade made typing motions with her hands and clicking noises. "You type letters with it, it's in the name."

I chuckled at her, but Quan otherwise ignored her. He took his gloves off and placed his fingers on the correct keys. The grey typewriter looked ordinary enough, there was a drop of blood on the 'R' key though. The woman was probably killed whilst she was working.

"A face, why can't I get a face?" Quan muttered to himself as he concentrated.

I didn't know what he was doing, but it was very similar to what he was doing back at the police station. It made the situation both incredibly boring, and rather fascinating to me. I had only ever heard of the possibilities that a witch could possess, never really believing that they were much help.

I put my hand over my mouth to hide my fangs, "Maybe the typewriter never saw a face?" I joked. I was expecting some snickers, but Quan nodded his head absentmindedly.

"They might have worn a mask or something," he muttered under his breath. His hands delicately ran over the typewriter, stopping at the paper which was still in the machine. He slowly held it in one hand before setting it free with the other. He held it close to his nose, sniffed it once, and nodded. "It's the same person."

"How do you know that?" Jade asked, crossing her arms.

"They smell the same, and they have the same bag," Quan answered.

I suddenly felt very out of place. This wasn't the first crime scene I had been to, but I felt very uneducated listening to the conversation, and actually being a part of it.

"Let's not dwell on that," William grumbled as he examined the woman on the floor. "She was taken by surprise; her throat was cut. How did she get over here?"

Quan sighed and stood, placing his hands on the desk as he did. "She was pushed off the chair," he informed. "They looked like a shadow, a tall and broad shadow."

"So, it was a man?" William asked bluntly.

"No, they were tall and broad. I never said that they were a man," Quan said and crossed his arms. I supposed that William had hit a sensitive spot. "Do I look tall and broad to you?"

"Gentleman, please." Jade stepped between the two men. "We can discuss gender and sex when we get back to the office on our lunch break. Not here."

I hid a laugh with a cough.

"Alright then," William said begrudgingly as he turned away from us and over to the bookshelves. He had his hands clasped behind his back as he scanned the titles of books.

I moved closer to Quan, the whites of his eyes seemed to have gotten even brighter. I swore that if he did any more of that work, his eyeballs would become translucent.

"What are you staring at?" Quan asked me. "You seem to enjoy doing it."

I huffed. "Just doing my job, as stated earlier." I crossed my own arms. "Penny for your thoughts?"

He held up a finger. "For one, my thoughts are worth far more than a penny." He held up another finger. "For two, I doubt you'd give it to me anyway."

I took a penny out of my pocket and touched it to his hand. He froze for a moment before sighing and taking it, throwing it in the air and catching it again before handing it back to me.

"No."

That was all he said before he moved around me and walked to Jade and William, discussing the blood on the typewriter and the collection of books that the woman had kept on her shelf.

I looked down at the coin and thought to myself, well then, what is a coin worth?