The chat with Clay had given me the idea to try and talk with the other members of the crew here. I had a distinct feeling I'd be seeing them a lot in the coming days.

The woman from the van, Sand, was back downstairs on the couch. She had removed her armour and was now playing around with a smooth piece of dark stone with an indent on its widest side. Somehow at the same time, the remote control for the TV was suspended in mid-air at her eye-level, twisting every now and then which would cause the channel to change.

She glanced at me for just a split second, only moving her eyes and not stopping what she was doing.

“What's on the news?” Smooth way to open a conversation. I sat myself on the arm of the sofa.

“Nothing new yet.” She gave the stone a toss into the air, it held up at the peak of its arc and Sand leaned forward to catch the TV remote before it could fall.

“That's a nice trick.” I watched the thing turn in graceful slow motion in the air. “How does that work?”

“Telekinesis.” She said that like it was the most normal thing in the world.

“You're psychic?” Now I was interested. Sand held out a hand and it dropped from the air neatly into the middle of her palm. In the same motion, she threw the TV remote back up to its original spot a little above her eye-level.

“Yup.” Sand didn't seem to talk much. There was a long gap in the conversation where neither of us could think of what to say. “Hey, uh...” Sand finally turned to look at me. “I didn't break anything earlier, did I?”

The sentiment surprised me, considering. “No, don't think so.” I shrugged, looking down to see if anything was wrong.

“Okay, good.” She nodded, spinning her revolver around her hand without touching it. “I was worried I had got a little...y'know.” I knew.

“Where did you learn to do that?”

“Deployment in Iraq.” Sand's eyes seemed to glaze over, she was looking past me at something that wasn't there. “Our Jeep got trashed, I got thrown into the road, OpFor truck almost ran me down. But I stopped it dead.” She blinked suddenly and shook her head, the remote dropping and leaving a dent in the carpet.

“You okay?”

“Yeah, don't quite have control over all this yet.” She cleared her throat awkwardly, making a little gesture with her hand that made the TV remote shoot upward and toward her, hitting her across the knee and coming to a bouncing halt on the sofa beside her.

Something moved behind us, a man wearing a white dress shirt with the top two buttons undone and baggy black slacks. He was younger than all the others, probably the same age as me. The guy had pitch black hair with a fairly large bald spot showing a scar that cut into his temple and dangerously thin features that made him look like he hadn't eaten in days as well as the kind of face you see on somebody about to start a massive rant.

“Surprised to see you around so soon.” A small hint of a smirk broke the murder-face he was sporting.

“Well, I've got a feeling I'll be stuck here for a while. Figured I'd introduce myself.”

The man shrugged and offered a hand out to me. “Flint.”

I accepted his hand and shook it. “Okay, I really have to ask. What's with the codenames?”

“It's a sort of alter-ego thing.” Sand explained, giving up on the TV and turning it down so she wouldn't have to shout. “Our whole job is to keep normal humans and magic apart. So we have codenames to keep our own lives separate from our work.”

I nodded slowly, not wanting to think too hard about the implications there.

“So what's your deal?” I turned back to Flint. He reverted to his murder-face. “Copper's the boss, Sand's the heavy and Clay's tech. What does that make you?”

“Oh, intel and scouting.”

“So why are you dressed like you stepped on a landmine?”

“You like what you see?” I wasn't going to answer a question that obviously loaded. “Don't lie to yourself, embrace it.” He tried to make his voice into a sexy whisper that lasted all of a second before he choked laughing. “Sorry! I had to!”

“You really didn't.” Sand cut in. “He does this all the time.” Flint gave an exaggerated chuckle.

“Real reason is that I'm a Were-crow, so clothes don't last long around me.”

“Crow?” I looked over to Sand, expecting her to roll her eyes to indicate that it was another joke. But apparently, he was serious. “I thought you guys stuck to the countryside.” I quickly parroted from Jason.

“There's no good bars in the countryside.” Couldn't argue with that.

Sand tapped me on the shoulder and indicated loosely with her phone. All I could really make out was the fact that there was a message and Sand turned it away before I could properly read it.

“Copper wants to talk to you upstairs.”

I half expected Flint to make some remark about being sent to talk to the headmaster. He probably would have if not for the fact that Sand was right there to glare at him.

Copper's office was nice, way better than any retail office I had sat in over the years. There was actually space enough to stand up and walk around the desk instead of the typical broom-cupboard affair. You could tell this office had been used for quite a while. The faint yet rich smell of cigar smoke hung over everything despite the smoke detector sitting passively on the ceiling, white plastic having turned a sickly yellow from the smoke it had failed to detect. A small hint of frayed electrical wire poked out one side of the frame, telling of how Copper could still smoke indoors.

“Ah, Mitchell. Can I call you Mitchell?” Copper didn't take nearly as stern a tone with me as I expected him to.

“I usually answer to Mac.”

“Mac. I'm going to cut to the chase. I'd like to know what led to you getting here.” He sat at his desk, impressively relaxed in his chair with one leg crossed over the other.

“I thought you knew that already.” Didn't he have a massive case file on me?

“I do, but it's all written in legalese. I'd like to hear it in your own words.” I took the chair on the other side of the desk, suddenly feeling like I was in some kind of job interview.

“Okay...Where do you want me to start?”

“Wherever you feel comfortable.” That wasn't helpful.

“I dunno...School was okay, high-to-middle grades. Never really knew what I wanted to do as a career, finished secondary, just sorta floated from job to job after that.” It felt weird to rattle off my whole life story like that. Especially since it sounded so, well, boring. Copper, on the other hand, just nodded slowly. But not in the way when somebody is only pretending to listen.

“And what about the incident that started all this?” My breath caught in my throat, almost making me choke. I had managed to push that out of my mind for a while. But now it was back, and it was back something fierce.

“It was an accident.” I didn't dare look Copper in the eye when I said that.

“You don't have to answer. I never ask questions that I wouldn't answer myself.” I shook my head, flexing my hand to try and get rid of the fizzing feeling in my fingertips.

“I was just coming home from work. He grabbed me and stuffed a knife in my face. I freaked out and-” I felt a cold shudder run up my spine. “-I don't know after that.”

Copper nodded again, sitting forward. “And you never knew about your heritage before then?”

“No. Dad always had an explanation.” It was always something. Hereditary skin conditions for the sunlight burns. Poor job market for how he was always working nights and sleeping through the days. I now felt like I owed him an apology for all those arguments we had over the years.

All through this talking, Copper looked me over, gauging my reactions. I could see his eyes taking in every detail of the way I sat, the way I moved my hands. I wasn't sure what to make of it. He wasn't exactly making it clear on how he was interpreting the information.

If anything it just made me feel self-conscious.

“Go get some rest.” Copper instructed me, sitting back in his chair and picking one of the miniature cigars out of the box on the corner of his desk. “If you've got questions about anything, Clay's door is always open. And as cliché as it sounds, we are all in this together. So if you're having trouble, let one of us know.”

I automatically stood up from the table, nodding awkwardly and suddenly feeling like a schoolboy again.

As I was leaving, I heard the distinct sound of a phone ringing. Copper was probably going to be getting a lot of them for a while.