Harold smacked the other guy. “Come on Jay, we’re supposed to get his shrouded memories of the event.”

George brushed the smack away. “I did! You heard the question I asked and everything.”

Harold sighed, “Then how did he recall an aether damned werewolf!? He even remembers the blighted beast turning back after being knocked out!”

George threw his hands up, “I don’t blighted know!”

And he turned back towards me. “Tell us that last bit as you remember it from a mundane perspective.”

I tried to shrug but yeah, still restrained. Good thing I didn’t have control as I suspect they would have been a lot rougher if I had been able to throw in some backtalk.

“I was driving up the ridge when a werewolf was thro-“

George cut my body off at that point. “Enough! How do you remember that? You don’t have a bloody iota of magic in you! If you did, our hypno-egg wouldn’t work on you!”

My body starts to answer using my eyes, but is shushed again. This time by Jay. “He’s clearly not privy to magic so anything he says will be nonsense. There must be some kind of loophole or local phenomenon. We need to call this in.”

From behind him, a voice then spoke up, “No, you should have called it in the moment you two found out that one of the veiled was involved in a contagious curse holder.”

George jumped a little while Harold gritted his teeth and turned around. “Well, hello Countess Ann. May I know what another CCH is doing at our crime scene?”

Ann laughed, “While I am sure using my family’s title burns you up inside, we both know how you should really be referring to me. I am on the so please, use my work title.”

Through his tightly clenched teeth, Harold repeats himself. “Investigator Ann, why are you, another cursed b... Being doing on the site of a crime involving a veiled?”

Ann sighed, “I will never understand why me being an investigator causes you so much grief. I have personally been in the position since before your father’s time, even with the extra years magic gives. By the blood, my family has been in the business since the time of the Pharaohs.

“I know it is not my skin color. While my Egyptian heritage is clear, they use forbidden mind magic to root out such nonsense. The veiled police can get away with being trash, but on this side of the veil you never know who might have power greater than even the most fearsome nuke.”

Harold growled, “Drop the act. We both know the reason and you’re just dragging it out so I have to say it myself. You want everyone in my precinct to know, don’t you?

“Since you want me to say, then I will! You’re a thrice damned bloodsucker! Dead enough, the heavens and earth don’t want you, but alive enough none of the hells will take you. Screw your culture for accepting you and your cursed kin!”

While Harold was ranting, George was slowly backing away from him with his radio behind his back and broadcasting. “Uh, Jeff, that’s a little toxic. You should have gotten the same lessons I did. She isn’t one of the vampire strains classified as fully dead. Investigator Ann is just as alive as you or me.”

Harold spits at George’s feet. “Making such pissant distinctions is for the weak! My grandfather made his name hunting vampires. All this political correctness went and destroyed my family’s business! A wooden stake to the heart kills them all the same.”

Ann shakes her head, “Just like it would kill you as well. I do not have any bad blood with your family. Everyone else moved on. And it is not like they even had to close the business, anyway.

“Hunting down the restless dead is still making the rest of your family a lot of money. You are just angered that you do not get to relive your ancestors’ glory of killing peaceful villages.”

Harold doubled up on giving her the middle finger. “We scrubbed out your kind from this continent and kept it that way for a couple hundred years! The rest of my family is just brainwashed. One of my nieces is even friends with a fleabag! She should be hunting that beast down with silver and holy lead.”

Ann looked at George who could only shrug. Well, not only. He also pressed a button on his radio.

Seeing this interaction Harold pulled out what I could only describe as a magic wand. With an aggressive jab, Harold tried to do something to George. Except nothing happened.

George shook his head in disappointment, “You think they trust someone new to the force with your history to have one of our signature wands and no strings attached?”

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Harold rages, “What do you mean new to the force? I’ve been on this god damn force for over a decade! And besides, you just joined up a few years ago.”

Ann laughed at this. “Just a decade? You are still a newbie until the second. This is not even a secret. If you had paid attention at all to those around you instead of focusing on your stupid grudge, it would have been obvious. As obvious as that grudge was to those in charge. Why do you think you bump into me so often and yet no other vampires?”

Harold pointed at her and yelled, “It was your fault! I was supposed to be bringing in scum like you left and right. Enough so that the others would come around to my side. And that doesn’t explain the baby face over there. He’s younger than me and just joined. Why would he have control of my wand?”

George sighed at this. “Baby faced is a good description of it. I’m over twice your age and have been on the force over ten times as long. Like seriously? You’re going to judge age by my looks? Some of the oldest beings around regularly go out looking like kids to mess with people.

“The precinct paired me up with you after sustained contact with Investigator Ann didn’t blunt the edges of your insanity. Normally we would catch someone like you but your ancestors were just too damned clever.

“I’ve read over the transcript of your tests and if I wasn’t looking for it, I wouldn’t have noticed how you skimmed around the speciesism questions. Now I hate to do this, but I have to bring you in.”

Harold barked out a mad laugh and drew an old-fashioned revolver. “You think I would trust the traitorous equipment you scum kludged together? I know you used her people’s magic in it. No, I’ve always had my grand pappy’s old faithful on me! Now back away or he gets it!” And of course he pointed that big fuck off gun directly at me.

Ann sighed, “Do you want to tell him or me?”

Harold shakes the gun at me. “Do you think I’m not serious?!”

George rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Before we were just going to kick you off the force. Now you’ve gone and threatened a veiled mortal.”

Ann butted in, “And with a gun! At least the wand would be forgotten.”

Harold pulled the trigger while saying, “Screw you!”

If I could have flinched, I am not ashamed to say my flinch would have flinched. Good thing George wasn’t a slouch when it came to his job or my story might have ended early.

George shakes his head as a deafening silence descended over the area. “Did you really think I missed your gun? You hid it in an unguarded extra dimensional space! What were you even thinking? Any half competent mage could spot the thing from across a football field, let alone when I’m sitting next to you every day for years.

“Now give up. Your family never had true magic in your veins to begin with so you can’t cast without a focus. You know what the punishment will be and you’re probably stoked for it.”

After that, besides a bunch of nasty insults, the excitement wrapped up. Harold was handcuffed and put in the back of what had just moments before been his own cop car. Ann asked if she could ride along because she was going to need to do some paperwork back at the precinct.

And when I was half certain they had forgotten about me, George turned towards me. “Well, you’ve seen and heard a bit too much so I guess you get to come with.”

The next thing I knew, I was waking up with another damn bright light in my face. This time, I was allowed to notice my surroundings. Though there wasn’t much to see. Just imagine any of the interrogation you see in the cop dramas and then let someone with a fetish for old school magic circles decorate.

Of course, by that point, I was willing to believe they were for more than artistic expression. This was only confirmed after they let me chill for a bit. Once they had decided I was cowed enough by being unable to move while alone in a room, those magic circles lit up and lifted off the walls. It was at that point that I was detached from my body again.

With that, they didn’t make me wait long. After the circles had cycled up to full power going by how they stopped getting brighter, George entered through the door across from me with someone who is best described as a medieval scribe. The guy had a roll of vellum, a feather quill, and so on.

George let him set up, but then the questions began. It started with what were obviously calibration questions. Why yes, my name is Alvin Smithson and I do live with my dad. Simple stuff, which I assumed caused something behind my head to glow green. Not that I saw what it was, I wasn’t really allowed to look around.

The questions didn’t get interesting for me until after they had me recount my entire previous day in excruciating detail. Then it was asked, almost as an afterthought. A question I could tell they had asked a thousand times before and that they always got the same answer for. “Do you believe in magic?”

So, of course, my answer was yes. That got a nice reaction out of them. The look of bafflement as George stumbled over his word. The scratch noise when the scribe reflexively tried to write no, but his training had him also attempt to write yes. I really wish I had been able to laugh. Though the solid green light behind my head mocking them would have to do.

George then tried to figure out a way to ask so my answer wasn’t yes. Do you believe in actual magic and not just stage magic or church miracles? Did you believe in magic before last night’s incident? And so on. Of course, my answer didn’t change. Then he asked the important question, why?

My answer was simple. “Because magic is real. Though I guess it started with dragons. They’re real too and the belief in magic only developed once I knew enough to realize a real dragon wouldn’t work without it. I don’t really have any proof.”

The scribe puts his quill down on its stand and groans. “This isn’t a matter of catch and release anymore. Even if we overwrite his memory of the last few days, it will just make him a ticking time bomb. The fact we found him is almost a miracle in and of itself.”

George nodded in agreement. “Since he believes in magic, he is technically on our side of the veil. If I had to guess, this is the first time that he interacted directly with the supernatural. Before now, he was skimming along between the two sides. Now that he has been touched, even wiping his memory of it wouldn’t undo the awakening.”