Sophie just sighs and buries her face into her desk, too tired to try to figure out her partners seemingly double nature.

It’s almost afternoon when Lieutenant Motley pulls them from their desks to the briefing room. There’s a total of six of them in the room sitting at the single long table.

Andrew is the one who leads the meeting, “So I got us two surveillance vans, Peter and I will each take one and we’ll be trailing our two undercover groups. One will be Andrea, who I’ll be following and the other will be Sophie and Caleb who Peter will be trailing. All three of you will be on wires and your phone GPS’s will be turned on. We’ll be able to track your movements from the vans and we’ll be recording everything you say and hear. Any questions?”

“Feels like a spy movie.” Andrea pops in, “Is the gear like super high tech and cool?”

“It’s twenty years old and barely works.” Andrew informs her to her disappointment.

“Why didn’t you ask my mom for some tech?” Caleb asks like that had been an obvious option. At everyone’s blank stares he adds on, “She runs a global multi-billion dollar corporation you guys have both her son and her familiar working on this. You could have just called her up.”

“Why didn’t you ‘just call her up?’” Andrew glares across the room at him.

“I’m not really on speaking terms with her. I really only talk to her when it’s necessary. It’s kinda part of the whole I hate my family thing that I have going on.”

Andrew scowls, “Moving on, Sophie will be telling us about the spots we’ll be hitting.”

“Oh, hi,” Sophie introduces herself to the people she hasn’t really met before, “so I spent yesterday and this morning combing through our victims’ social medias. Now I didn’t get an ID off of everyone, but from the few I did get I managed to connect other familiars together so at

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this point we have about over half of the victims identified. I dug through their photos and posts and managed to make a list of places like clubs that they went to on a regular basis or the places that were mentioned repeatedly by others on their social medias. From all that I managed to make a list of ten clubs and I printed off the list so we can all have copies.” Sophie smiles and passes around her yellow folder so everyone can take a copy of her list.

“Okay, now if Caleb would like to add anything helpful…”

“Sure.” Caleb glances around the room till his eyes stop on Andrea, “I’m assuming you know how to spot a halfling?”

“Yah, been around them long enough to spot the differences.”

“Wait, what are the differences? How do you spot them?” Sophie immediately speaks up.

“It’s a bit… like a gaydar.” Andrea muses, “There aren’t any physical differences, but you can still just tell. You know what I mean?”

“Wow.” Andrew stares at her really not knowing what to say to that. He massages his forehead as he considers their chances of success.

“Umm, I don’t think…” Sophie trails off not knowing what to say either.

“The biggest difference is that halfbreeds are dead and don’t have a heartbeat.” Caleb jumps in with actual information. “You don’t have to worry about trying to pick them out though Sophie because I’ll be with you. They light up like neon signs for me.”

This comparison is not an exaggeration either, halfbreeds do light up compared humans for purebreds. Because they don’t have heartbeats pumping blood throughout the body their body temperature is always lower than everyone else’s in the room and in Caleb’s infrared vision the colder something is the brighter it becomes.

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“Hey Leech,” Matthew barges into their meeting without knocking, “there’s some guy looking for you in the lobby.” He directs at Caleb.

“Say that again?” Captain Batting commands him with a raised eyebrow.

“Oh, Captain, I, uh, didn’t know you were in here…” Matthew tries to look sheepish and embarrassed instead of pissed, “There’s a visitor for Caleb in the front.” Matthew rewords his statement before hurriedly slinking off.

Caleb rolls his eyes and gets up to see who he’s talking about. His heart sinks though when he sees Alejandro leaning up against the wall by the front desk.

He quickly goes up to him and yanks him into a semi-private corner, “What are you doing here Alé?”

“I want to help.” Alejandro pleads with him, “I can help.”

“No, you need to go back home where it’s safe.”

“Caleb,” Alejandro sighs, “I live above a nightclub in one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in the city. It’s not nearly as safe as you want to think it is.”

“I… know that.” Caleb readjusts his grip on Alejandro’s wrist so he’s no longer squeezing it so tightly. “It’s safer there, though, then out here where there’s a murderer targeting familiars.”

“And how likely are you to succeed in catching this murder with your plan?”

“Somewhat likely.”

“Caleb.” Alejandro shakes his head.

“Alejandro,” Caleb desperately begs his familiar, “you know I can’t stop you, but please just listen to me and go back home.”

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“I don’t think I can.” Alejandro says quietly, “I don’t want to.” He admits like it’s a guilty secret. This is the first time Alejandro has gone outside of his home in five years and all the unfamiliar sights and sounds make his heart race in excitement. The idea of locking himself back up in his tiny apartment fills him with dread.

“If you do this… you know what that means.”

Alejandro nods and lets out a long sigh, “You knew this couldn’t last forever.”

“I had hoped that it’d last longer.”

Alejandro smiles sadly, “Isn’t that the story of your life?”

“Yeah.” Caleb admits, “Come on then.” He lets his hand fall so his fingers can twist together with Alejandro’s and he pulls him along to the briefing room. “Everyone, Alejandro, he’s volunteered to help. Alejandro, Everyone.” Caleb gives a half-hearted introduction.

“Ah, it’s nice to meet you. You must be Caleb’s familiar.” Captain Batting extends his hand out in greeting.

“Uh-huh. You’re Fredrick right?” Alejandro takes Fredrick’s hand.

“That’s right.” Captain Batting smiles.

“Huh, I thought you’d be hotter and not so chubby.” Alejandro blatantly says after he takes an overlook at the older gentleman.

Silence fills the room only broken up by Andrea’s attempts to not burst out laughing as she covers her mouth with her hand. “Fucking savage.” She mumbles under her breath.

“Anyway,” Lieutenant Motley tries to ignore the awkwardness, “take a seat, we were just going over the clubs we were going to be staking out.”