"Such a small world. What the hell!?" when Aimee and Thomas found a table and sat down with Caroline and Jason, Aimee still couldn't get over the fact that they would meet at the Grant Academy.
"Man, you gotta tell us what you're doing here." Thomas was still smiling.
"We'll tell you, when you tell us." Caroline chuckled.
"Wait, it's Josephine Wong isn't it?" Jason slammed his hand on the table and said, attracting the attention of a few other students and staff walking by.
"Well yeah!" Thomas laughed happily: "How'd you know? "
"Well, I just put the dots together." Jason shook his head and was slightly embarrassed by the attention he attracted: "Remember that piece of paper flower you asked us about? Wondering whose flower it was? The color was purple."
"And you pieced it together just with that? " Aimee smiled and placed her mug on the table: "I don't suppose a person can actually own a color, can they?"
"Well, not just that." Jason explained: "When we went to the Christmas fair, the bar owner, what's his name? Fernando? He mentioned that Josephine Wong was taking her students along to buy preparations for the school. And as far as I know, your only connection to this world is through our inn. And if our boss did not bring you in, the next best guess is Josephine Wong."
"Okay, okay, that's a lot of information." Aimee waved both her hands: "Your boss, Mr. Yu, is the one who brought you into this world?"
"Oooh, maybe not the best idea to utter his name right now." Caroline immediately did a "shhh" gesture: "But yes."
"Holy … and please tell me this… he does speak English, right?" Aimee laid low and asked Caroline and Jason in a low voice: "The whole 'I no speak English' stuff is just an act right?"
"He speaks it well. And he can also speak Spanish." Jason chuckled.
The lunch took four of them much longer than they previously expected, due entirely to the nice surprise of them meeting at the most unexpected place. Through their conversation, Caroline and Jason heard about the story of Aimee and Thomas, about how they were responding to two officers in distress and were attacked by what they assumed to be vampires; then Aimee got a magical paper flow put into her hand when she was still in coma; and when they came out of the hospital, they were greeted by Garret and Josephine Wong in a dark purple SUV.
And everything just went from there - Josephine Wong told them about the magical underworld, and offered to bring them into it, as her students. They considered long and hard, and when they finally decided to hand in their resignation, and in effect leaving the civilian world behind, they were hit with a resurfaced murder case, evidence to which actually quite fit what they learned about vampires and other night dwellers from Josephine Wong. They did not consider vampires in the past for obvious reasons, but now that they heard about it, they started looking into that direction.
Though they still had much doubt and somewhat in denial, they decided to take the case before they officially resigned. And after spending only a few days, they were able to obtain quite a lot of information when they decided to think outside the box. One of the main breakthroughs was that they decided to take a frantic and scared man seriously enough when he was mumbling about vampires and a potential blood farm in a poor, run down and high crime rate neighborhood. The other, was that right before they decided to ask Josephine Wong and Garret for help, the crisis at San Francisco happened.
Aimee and Thomas were beyond shocked to learn, that Caroline and Jason were present when San Francisco happened. And to their further shock, they learned about the root cause of it - a stitched up human corpse comprising two half bodies.
After San Francisco, everything was in chaos, they tried to contact Josephine Wong and Garret but they were not responding. It was around one and a half weeks later, that Josephine Wong gave them a callback.
"I'm telling you, it was the second most shocking conversation I had with her." Thomas said while cutting his steak: "She said, thanks for our input, she was very busy because of San Francisco. But people will handle it, and a semi governmental department called the Division will handle the investigation. She told us to stay on the side for a bit and try not to get into trouble."
"And I assumed that you did not do as she told you, isn't it?" Caroline asked with a smile.
"Well, no." Aimee sighed: "I don't wanna just give up the case - the killer of this case, we called him 'the Drainer', was sort of like an archenemy of ours. He first appeared a few years back, killing young girls and leaving them almost completely dry."
"So Aimee insisted we still do the police work like we're supposed to." Thomas said: "Which actually got us in a great deal of trouble, and quite a lot of danger if we're honest. But luckily we figured out something that could help us - our blood."
"Yeah. Apparently, our blood was really like - a tasty and poisonous lava for vampires." Aimee laughed, with a bit of tears in her eyes: "We decided to drain some of our blood and store them in small vials. Then we tried patrolling the neighborhood where our latest victim was found with it."
"Yikes. Bad idea." Jason inhaled through his teeth, "Vampires have better noses than dogs. They could smell you from afar."
"Yeah, which kinda worked out." Aimee looked at Jason with a felicitated smile: "One day when we waited by the street, pretending to be lost tourists, one guy found us, all… drugged out vampire-like. Oh, did I mention that vampires had a special smell?"
"Do they?" Caroline and Jason exchanged looks: "Interesting..."