"You are not serious. I'm not doing that." I protested instantly. Mary-Anne seemed to be shocked. Heck, I was shocked. But dad's smile had vanished.
"May we know the reason?" sis quickly snapped back to her normal, logical self. Dad nodded.
"Have both of you seen the news about the serial killer?" he sounded tired. That case was really getting to him.
We did. It was the talk of the month. An elusive killer walked the streets of the capital. Their method of murder was so refined, combining magic and weapons, that the BBPD was completely powerless. Hunters are used to dealing with magically enhanced madmen, but our scouts found nothing. They had no intel, no witnesses and no suspects. There was nearly nothing to connect the victims to each other - sex, race or ethnicity, the normal patterns of a serial killer - only the strange way they were killed. The murderer would fire a gun three times – supposedly into the air – to catch the attention of the police, and then leave their victim in a state of dreamlike stasis, but physically unharmed. When the victims were touched by the arriving medics or policemen their hearts would stop with complete brain death following soon after. It was physically and biologically impossible according to our experts.
Yet it kept happening over and over, with nearly a dozen confirmed deaths already.
Mary-Anne's face lit up. "Do you have a lead?" She spent the last month running around with our scouts and visiting coroners. She was no doubt the brains of our family. No mystery, no puzzle, no case was too hard for her. Except for this one. 'There's nothing to go on. This isn't a hunt for clues or a murder riddle. This is a nightmare.' She'd often say.
I'd never thought they'd put me on this case with so many Hunters already working on it. I did follow the news about possible jobs in the last weeks, and I found a couple that would fit me perfectly for a first mission, like solving the frost trolls' territory dispute up north, or aiding the BBPD in training their new hounds for fairy hunt… why this?
"If the complete lack of leads can be considered a lead, then yes," said dad cryptically.
"What's that supposed to mean?" I chimed in.
"What are the Laws of the Hunt, Ava?" dad asked. His face was unreadable. In the cold lighting of this room he looked much older than he is. This case took more out of him than he realized.
"Us, Hunters can do whatever we want wherever we want," I answered somewhat confused. What are those have to do with the case? Is the murderer a Hunter?
Mary-Anne frowned at me. "Did you really just sum up a five-hundred-page treaty between us and the other ruling factions of the world in ten words?"
"I'm sure I could do it in less than five if I really tried." I smiled at her. She shook her head with disappointment, then looked at dad. "Are you hinting at the privacy clause?"
"That's our best bet."
"But we already did a complete house search…" I could nearly see the cogs in her head turning to come up with the right answer. Her face suddenly lit up." The school!" her face suddenly turned happy. Which was good? Honestly, I couldn't understand half of this conversation.
"What's with the school? And the clause?" I butted in.
Sis looked at me like I was a dog that suddenly asked for the weather. She normally goes into this state of thinking meditation, and she's always confused when we wake her, but I really had to know what the heck was going on. It was my mission after all.
"Have you even read the Laws?"
"I've read the excerpt," I said quietly.
Sis frowned. "Why am I not surprised?"
I shrugged. I had no good reason of not reading it other than the fact that it was written in 'fancy lawyer' - which is the worst if you ask me - and it was as thick as lasagna.
"The Laws have an exception, the privacy clause. It's a paragraph that lists the places we can't control. Any area that belongs to the ruling class is off limit, basically. This includes their homes and any and all workspaces they frequent. Like the school."
Dad, who was patiently listening until now, handed me a paper. I ran through what it said, but it was just a long and complicated way of saying 'You have to go to school.'
I got up from my seat. "Just amazing." I looked at dad who still kept his poker face up. "I wanted to do something cool and interesting." I pouted.
Mary-Anne snatched the paper. She read it more carefully than I did. Then she looked at me. "This is basically infiltration or espionage." I must have looked confused, because she continued, waving the paper before my face. "You're going to be a spy! That sounds good, doesn't it?"
That did sound somewhat better. "Sure." I caught the paper and put it back on dad's desk.
"What's my position, boss?" sis calling dad boss was strange, but I guess it was according to protocol…I never cared much about that stuff.
"You are going to be the link between her and us. Sending detailed info can come off as strange if you address the wrong person. Between you two, it could be written off as gossip. Try to make your reports sound as vague as possible. You must not reveal yourself unless it's an extreme emergency. Got it?"
I nodded. Dad got up from his desk and started to herd us out from the room.
"That's all. Go now and enjoy your party. Your mother worked so very hard on it. If you need more info, ask your sister. She has access to our database. I have to file a couple records but I'll be joining you soon."
I started stumbling out the door, still slightly shocked from this turn of events, but sis caught my wrist and pulled me back.
"Aren't you forgetting something?" she asked dad. His forehead wrinkled from thinking.
"Oh, you're right," he said as he stepped back to the desk and took a small package from one of the drawers. He came back to me, still standing in the doorway, and handed it over.
"From the vampires, with love," he said sarcastically, then in a more serious tone, he added "I am really proud of you Avalynn."
"Thanks, pop," I smiled.
After leaving dad's office, I opened up the package. Just as I thought, it contained my Hunter badge on its black leather holder with a small chain. It looked like a police badge, but it was made entirely of titanium, due to the fact that Hunters used to ruin the old silver ones in days while on a difficult mission, and the cost of repairs just got way too high at one point. A tiger's head was etched into the middle, with my name at the top and bottom. It was very pretty. I took a good look at it, then stuffed it deep in my pocket. Let's hope it never has to see the light again.