Sunlight glared through the window, mocking me. I'd gotten so distracted last night I forgot to close the curtains.

Rolling over, I stretched and tried to get out of the light, but it wasn't working. I glanced at the clock, 9:00 A.M. That was early for me. So not a morning person. Oh well, I needed to get up and turn in my official statement at the station, minus the overwhelming sex scenes. Didn't think I could handle another round of those images or emotions. But it didn't matter what I wanted or could handle, Malone would probably try to drag every little detail out of me like he always did.

Shambling into the bathroom like a zombie, I turned on the shower and let it warm up for a few seconds before stepping in. The hot water sluiced over my skin reviving me a little.

Even though exhilarated by the shower, I still didn't look forward to donning my official role as Preternatural Investigator and Liaison today. I just wanted to be simply Anwyn Rose, witch unextraordinaire. Instead, I had to help the Flint police find a vampire killing innocent human women.

Sounds crazy right? Yeah, it is. Over half of the human population didn't believe in vampires, witches, or anything else that tended to go bump in the night. Of course, that was partially our fault. After The Hysteria event in the late twentieth century killed many humans and Others, the remaining Others put together a powerful longrange spell that made humans forget. It was sent out over satellite, through television and radio signals, and telephone lines. Mundane humans all went back to believing Others were nothing but stories and fairy tales. Humans not affected by the spell had enough Other blood inside them the spell didn't take or they were connected to Others by some kind of relationship, either personal, professional, or political. Many with high rankings in human politics that supported "our side" were spared from the spell.

The spelling spanned the globe and did the job far more successfully than Others ever intended. So much so, werewolves could wolf out in the middle of the park and some humans may just be like, "Cool, dude, where's the movie crew."

To make matters worse here in Flint, there might actually be a movie crew somewhere close by. Flint had become a cheap and sad Hollywood type destination for filmmakers. The empty streets, abandoned buildings, and people needing jobs made for good filming conditions. Who knew?

So now, Others like me an empathic, clairsentient, sometimes psychic witch helped protect the humans from the bad guys that most didn't even believe in.

It was all part of my job as a Preternatural Investigator and special forensics consultant for P.I.T. to become Preternatural Liaison for the state of Michigan. To those who don't know about Others, I'm simply known as Detective Anwyn Rose for the FPD's Special Unit.

I went through the academy, took all the necessary classes, took the test to get my detective's shield, and I have my concealed weapons permit to carry a gun just like a normal cop. Well, most of the time I carried my gun but preferred knives. A gun seemed worthless for most of the things I helped the police track. I could use silver bullets but those only worked for the werecreatures and vampires. Not that it would kill them but a silver bullet put a hurt on them if one couldn't get a kill shot. At least it slowed them down.

The Preternatural Liaison position was relatively new, created several years ago when the government officially decided the things that go bump in the night really did exist and those monsters were committing crimes. Then the enlightened law enforcement agencies realized not all the monsters were bad guys, and they needed Others to help find the bad guys. Kinda like back in the day when they used Native Americans to track other Native Americans. Only we weren't turning on our own kind, we were trying to keep the peace.

While the majority of humans still didn't believe in or just chose to ignore the existence of Others, the US government along with a select few governmental members of many other countries made it mandatory to have a Preternatural Liaison on staff in all major cities. This helped create an understanding between the humans and the Others and offered a mediator so no one got hurt.

I never thought Flint was a large enough city to have a Liaison, but we've had an extraordinary amount of crime in the past several years and most of it involved supernatural qualities. Even the human crimes seemed to be spurred on by supernatural means, we were just not sure why. Experts thought Flint sat right in the middle of a preternatural hotbedwhich could be causing the humans to act erratically.

I was just a little witchling before getting this job. Most people still saw me as such, in both the human and supernatural communities. Some of the Others on the P.I.T. Crew didn't see me as a valuable member of the team. Sometimes I questioned it myself. I rarely used my fancy college degrees or forensic knowledge, mainly using my visionswhich got the job done. But it didn't feel like my real skills were being put to the test. I still needed to prove myself to everyone...including me. It made the job very exhausting.

Malone didn't treat me like the rest of the force did. He seemed to trust my skills and he always had my back, even if he was staring at my backside in the process. But he didn't know about Galen.

Malone hated vampires with a vengeance. I couldn't let his feelings or mine get in the way of the job. I wanted to make my dad proud and follow in his footsteps.

I worked my ass off to go above and beyond being just a beat cop out of the Academy. I attended the paranormal forensics university where I graduated head of my class. I became the youngest female cop to get my Detective shield in Michigan. Then my name was one of the first to come up when the Liaison position opened. But, most of the guys on the force made it clear I got the job and my shield because of my dad. He was the head of The Preternatural Task Force during The Hysteria, the twentiethcentury one. He died during the final battle that ended that war but his skills, and kills, were legendary.

The oldtimers knew me as Sloane Tremaine's kid, the witchy one, what's she called, oh yeah, She Who Knows.