“Worst birthday ever,” I thought morosely as I looked around the waiting room waiting for some kind of news from the doctors. I hated hospitals. They especially suck when you’re scared for the life of a family member and the doctors won’t tell you a damn thing. All I could do was sit and wait and hold Jessica’s hand as we waited for some kind of news. Jessica is sort of like a sister to me and she looked even more uncomfortable than I was, but that was to be expected. Being in disguise around the normies always made her uncomfortable, both physically and mentally.

She hated having to wear her contacts, but with so many normies around we couldn’t be too careful, and red eyes tend to get attention. For the same reason, her white hair and large fluffy ears were stuffed carefully into a beanie and hidden under the hood of her hoodie for good measure. She also had a jacket wrapped around her waist by the sleeves to hide the slight bulge in the back of her jeans from her cute little cottontail. Even though we seemed to be the only people in this waiting room at the moment, it was still better to be safe than sorry because the doctors would be normies and Jessica didn’t need them trying to dissect her or something.

I sighed as I gripped Jessica’s hand tightly in mine and looked once again down the hallway from the waiting area and toward the operating room where they had taken Dad. Realistically I knew that this was always a possibility, I mean Dad’s job was hunting down dangerous Paranormals. Dad worked for the Paranormal Defense Agency, or PDA for short, a covert government agency that polices Paranormals, helps them live normal lives, and covers up any paranormal incidents so that the normies, or regular humans, don’t know that we exist. That’s kind of why Jessica had to hide her more unique features, because Dad had been taken to a regular hospital.

The doctors wouldn’t tell us anything when I asked for like the twentieth time, just that he was still in the ER. We didn’t even know why he had been brought here in the first place. You’d think that they’d tell the family of the person something when they call them to say a family member is in the hospital, but they had told me nothing on the phone and not much more since we got there. All we knew so far was that there had been some sort of accident. Finally, I turned back to Jessica and tried to give her a reassuring smile, though I doubt that I was all that convincing. “He’ll be okay, Dad’s pretty tough.”

“Yeah I know,” she replied in a hushed tone, her eyes drifting down the hall this time. “Why’d they have to send him to Vancouver General? Sure Dad can pass as fully human, but the normies could suspect something if he stays here long. Couldn’t the clinic at PDA headquarters handle it?” She was looking over my shoulder as she asked, but not upward so I thought that she was just trying to see if anything was happening down the hall.

“I asked for him to be moved to a private facility, one specifically for Paranormals, but the trauma was pretty severe and the doctors don’t want to risk moving him again until he’s out of surgery and has had some time to recover,” a new voice quietly explained from behind me. I turned around to see a four-foot-tall muscular man with a full head of grey hair and a well-kempt beard. He was wearing a dark suit and had a badge hanging from his belt, almost hidden by his suit jacket.

“You must be Seth and Jessica,” the Dwarf continued. “I’m Edward Little, chief of the PDA policing division. I’m doing what I can to see that he gets the care he needs, but unfortunately, it’s out of my hands for now and I can’t force the issue without far too many questions being asked.”

Under normal circumstances, I would have probably laughed at meeting a Dwarf with the last name Little, but I didn’t feel much like laughing at the moment. Besides, this was my dad’s Boss, so maybe he could tell us something. “What happened?” I asked.

“The incident happened publicly in broad daylight and was caught on quite a few videos, damn cell phones make it harder to do our job every day. That and the human paramedics being on the scene before we even found out about the incident is making it difficult to cover this up and take control of what happens from here on out,” Chief Little began to explain.

“So what did happen?” I pressed, needing to know how bad it was.

“The media seem to be under the impression that it was an accident or suicide attempt, so we’ll let them keep thinking that,” the Dwarf told us quietly before letting out a long sigh. “Your father was meeting with an informant on the 13th floor of a building downtown. We found the informant dead, but we can’t be certain if he was the target. Your father was shot six times in the back.”

“So they’re taking care of the bullet wounds then? How bad is it?” Jessica asked with a horrified expression on her face.

The Dwarf shook his head sadly. “The bullets didn’t seem to hit any vital organs, the worst of the damage is from what happened after. He was thrown out the window and we have a good idea what happened after that since that’s where all of that damn cell phone video footage comes in. It’s all over YouTube as we speak.”

“Wait, it’s on YouTube?!” I sputtered. That couldn’t have been a good thing.

Chief Little nodded, looking especially perturbed. “He fell thirteen stories but managed to grab onto a flag to slow his fall, bounced off three awnings, and landed in the street. He seemed mostly unharmed aside from the bullet wounds and was getting up to try to escape his would-be killer when he was hit by the crosstown bus. He’s out of surgery now but still in serious condition. They’re going to allow visitors once he’s stable and has regained consciousness.”

Since there hadn’t been much that we could do at the hospital, aside from worrying, Jessica and I headed home for the evening. The cold chill of a dreary mid-December rain seemed appropriate given our mood, and our outer clothes were soaked from riding Dad’s old Kawasaki ZX-10R by the time we got home. Chief Little had promised to have the hospital call if Dad’s condition had changed and he would have guards from the agency outside his hospital room 24/7 until this was resolved. He would also be having agents watching the apartment building in case we needed anything.

Since neither of us felt like talking we just changed out of our wet clothes and ate a late dinner in silence. Both of us ate quietly, lost in our own thoughts and fears. I didn’t even make the usual jokes about Jessica eating rabbit food as she ate her salad and I had a few microwaved chicken burritos. As worried as I was about Dad I was worried about Jess too. Her ears were twitching, and that was a sure sign that she was stressed and trying really hard not to lose it.

You’ve probably figured out by now that Jessica isn’t my real sister, or even human. Congratulations, you get a cookie. I wasn’t even sure how old she really was for certain since it can be hard to tell with Fey and their various cousins, such as Púca, Nymphs, Satyrs, Fauns, and a few other species. I think we’re around the same age because she looked around twelve or thirteen and had recently Manifested when we found her living alone in the forest when I was twelve. We couldn’t be sure because there were no birth records or anything to identify her in the cabin where Dad and I found her.

Jessica is something called a Púca, a type of Paranormal shapeshifter and distant cousin to the Fey. Like a lot of humanoid Paranormals, or those with the ability to take on a human form, Púca start their lives as humans and then Manifest during puberty to become their new Paranormal selves, inheriting the form or abilities from one or more of their parents. One of her forms was a white rabbit with red eyes and the other was human, sort-of. She could never seem to get rid of her tail, change her eye color, or get the ears right, but Dad told us that that’s a common problem for her kind.

Anyway, we had found Jessica while going camping in some of the densest rainforest that British Columbia could provide since as a Fey, or rather half-Fey, my dad was big on communing with nature whenever possible. Jessica never knew who her father was, and she had been raised by her Púca mother in that cabin in the woods, just the two of them and some bunnies, until one day her mother didn’t come back from gathering food. We had found her a few months later, or that was Dad’s best guess.

Since she had nobody else Dad used his connections with the PDA to get Jessica registered, put in his care, and even got some money to help with her special needs. Dad practically adopted her and we moved into a bigger apartment so she could have the privacy of her own room. She even usually used our last name of Woodward for just about everything, but that wasn’t the name on her birth certificate or other legal documents. There’s actually a funny story about that.

When Dad took her to the PDA office to get registered, Jessica was still kind of new to living among humans. They were filling out her paperwork and the guy behind the desk asked for her surname. Jess had no idea what a surname was because her mother only ever called her Jessica and with just the two of them and the bunnies there was no need for last names. So there she was, staring at the guy in confusion when he tried to clarify by asking, “What family are you from?” And that’s when Jess told him proudly, “Oh! I’m a rabbit!” So now her ID and all other important documents were under the name Jessica Rabbit.

Dad had her birthday recorded as the day we had found her, my twelfth birthday. From the time she came to live with us, we did just about everything together and I tried to watch out for her like a good brother should. Now we were both officially eighteen, a big day for any teenager, but neither of us felt much like celebrating. Jess didn’t feel like opening our gifts without Dad there and we didn’t even touch our birthday cake in the freezer. It was ice cream so we figured that it would keep until Dad got home from the hospital and we would feel like celebrating. I was hoping that he’d be home, or at least showing improvement by Christmas, in a week and a half.

Once we had finished eating we got straight to our schoolwork. It made for a good distraction for both of us. Jessica couldn’t really go to any of the local public schools without a lot of awkward questions from the normies so we were both homeschooled. Jess was actually very smart and her mother had given her a decent education before she had died so she managed to catch up to me quickly and we usually did our schoolwork together. Homeschooling wasn’t all that hard for us, we learned quickly by comparing notes and working on problems together, and it gave us plenty of time to pursue our other interests.

I was really into cars and bikes and I was working part-time doing odd jobs to save up for a more practical vehicle. Riding a crotch-rocket in Vancouver without decent riding leathers really sucked with all the rain we got but Dad had given it to me as an early birthday gift this year after we got it back to proper driving condition. It would serve to get me around, and Jessica too if needed, until we could afford a car. I had heard rumors that there was some kind of Paranormal street racing circuit in town. I would have loved to get into something like that someday if Dad wouldn’t have killed me for illegal street racing.

Jessica wanted to be an actress, but until she could get the trick of making herself look completely human she couldn’t audition for many roles. She did have a brief recurring stint in a television show called “The Peels”, a family comedy. She played the daughter’s mischievous pet rabbit, Jingles.

She also managed to land a movie part last year in a romantic comedy called “Chemistry”. It was about a quirky and awkward scientist who meets the girl of his dreams and tries to win her heart through science. She played lab bunny number seven. The movie bombed at the box office but she couldn’t really be blamed since she didn’t have a speaking role and even if she did, even the best actors can’t make a shitty script stink less.

Alas, until she could master looking completely human her role opportunities were mostly limited to those of the rabbit variety. I was sort of acting as her agent for now. Mostly that consisted of driving her to animal casting calls and pretending to be her trainer/handler on set. It took up quite a bit of my time, but we did split the take and I didn’t mind doing it to help Jess pursue her dream. We were close like that and I knew that she’d do anything for me too.

Jess was worried about being typecast though and really wanted to pursue something more human, preferably with lines. Sometimes she took her acting way too seriously though. She was so moody off-set while filming the movie. From the sounds of it, she and one of the other lab bunnies didn’t get along well.

Most days she’d come home complaining about Rose, calling her a diva, or things like “a scene-stealing hack with no artistic integrity.” She still complained about Rose sometimes, especially since she had heard that she had gotten a coveted role in a new slasher flick. I was afraid that Jess was going to go all Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog on the animal casting director’s ass when she found out that Rose had been chosen over her.

With our schoolwork finished Jessica was busy practicing her shapeshifting while I surfed the net. You know, people are assholes. The videos of Dad’s incident were really racking up the views on YouTube and the general consensus was that it was hilarious. I angrily posted that he was a father and might die from his injuries and that they should all be ashamed of themselves for laughing at someone else’s misfortune.

After my rage-post I turned off my laptop in a huff, not wanting Jessica to see it. She was upset enough already if her ears were twitching as bad as they were and she was focusing so much on practicing with her abilities. She usually only got that intense about it when she was trying to take her mind off something else. In the hospital, she had been upset and frustrated that we couldn’t do anything for Dad but wait for him to get better, and her mood hadn’t improved any from waiting at home instead of the hospital. I couldn’t really blame her though since I was feeling the same way.

Jessica changed again from her rabbit form to human, but she still couldn’t shake the bunny ears, tail, or eye color. Clothes were always a problem when she shifted too so she was naked as well, but I had gotten used to that a long time ago. Hell, she’d been naked when we met for the first time and after living together for almost six years she was too much like a sister to me for me to feel anything sexual for her when I saw her like that. "Dammit! At this rate, the only jobs I'll get offered are in Playboy!" she snapped angrily.

I knew that the shifting problem wasn’t what was really frustrating her, she just didn’t want to talk about the situation with Dad so she was finding something else to blame her frustration on. Ever since she had come to live with us, Jess hated feeling helpless more than anything. I knew that trying to get her to talk before she was ready wasn’t going to do any good and I was a guy, talking about feelings and shit wasn’t really my thing anyway. The easiest, and probably the wisest thing for both of us was for me to just play along. "Um… Jess, you do know they stopped having centerfolds, right?"

“Of course they have! I mean, it was my only logical career choice since I can’t shake these damn ears and tail!” She just couldn’t seem to keep the act up and all of that misdirected rage just fell apart as she wiped her glistening eyes with her bare arm. She gave it her best try though as she sniffled, “How’d you know they stopped having centerfolds, perv?”

“Well… ummm… you know…” I started to stammer before finally just giving up. Nope, hit the brakes. There was no way I was going to discuss my sexual fantasy material with my sister while she was standing there naked. Some lines you just don’t cross, especially if they lead to a hole you’ll never be able to climb out of. A person has to know when to read the signs and police tape is bright yellow for a reason. Besides, she was already an emotional hand grenade. She didn’t need someone to exchange barbs with right now, she needed her brother and friend.

I picked up her lavender silk bathrobe from the floor and hung it over her shoulders to cover her and not make this awkward for both of us. Then I hugged her, holding her tightly in my arms, as I whispered. “It’ll be okay, we’re going to get through this, Jess.” She just buried her head into my shoulder and started to sob until my shirt was soaked through and her voice had gone hoarse.

The insistent and extremely annoying ring tone of my phone awoke me. I kept meaning to change the stupid standard ringtone for something cooler and less nails-on-chalkboard annoying, but it had been like eight months since I had gotten it and I just kept forgetting. “One of these days,” I promised myself as I sat up in bed and fumbled around for the offensive-sounding device. My room was still dark and I looked blearily at my alarm clock as I snatched up the phone. “Who the fuck calls at four in the morning?”

I suddenly had a very bad feeling in the pit of my stomach as I swiped the green phone icon to accept the call. “H-hello?” That bad feeling didn’t lie. It was Chief Little, calling to tell me that he was coming over. If he was coming over in person at this time of the morning then it couldn’t possibly be good news. I quickly got dressed in a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt and went to wake up Jessica. Once she was dressed enough for company we went to the living room to await our guest.

We were so anxious while waiting that when the door buzzer finally did ring, both of us just about jumped off the couch. The look on Chief Little’s face when we answered the door a few minutes later said it all. Dad was dead. He sat us down and explained what happened while Jessica sobbed and I held her and tried not to break down in tears myself. My sister needed me to be strong for her and I wasn’t going to fail her.

Dad had woken briefly but was in a lot of pain so the nurses had to sedate him. Had he been under the care of people who knew about the existence of Paranormals and were familiar with the biology of Fey and other related offshoots they could have had someone with Divine magic speed up his recovery and given him care properly tailored for a Fey. They certainly would have known better than to give him a barbiturate, let alone a standard human dose. But he wasn’t, they didn’t, and now he was dead from a severe overdose.

“I’ll be pursuing this through official government channels,” the chief said with a grimace. “If the hospital administrator had listened to me and allowed us to move him to another facility or at least bring in one of our own doctors then this wouldn’t have happened. I know that nothing can replace your father, but I’ll make sure that you’re both compensated for this.”

I wondered what kind of compensation they could offer for taking away the only parent of two kids because of their arrogance and refusal to listen. I was pretty sure they didn’t have a bunch of backup parents hidden in a supply closet somewhere. I almost said that I didn’t want anything from those bastards, but I was well aware that Jessica and I were on our own now and, with no real job, any money that Dad and the two of us had saved up wasn’t going to last long.

Paying the bills and rent was going to be hard enough as it was. No, I didn’t have the luxury of refusing, just as I didn’t have the luxury of breaking down right now. Jess needed me too much. So instead of refusing, I focused on asking the important question. “What happens to us now?”

Chief Little gave me a grim nod of understanding. “I’ve contacted your mother, Seth. She’s willing to take you in until you graduate.”

My mother. A woman who I knew absolutely nothing about and I was going to be sent to live with her? She obviously didn’t want anything to do with me or she’d already have been involved in my life. “We don’t need her. Jess and I are both eighteen now and we’ll be graduating in six months, we’ll manage something.”

“You can’t stay in Vancouver, Seth,” the Dwarf said with a shake of his head. “She can keep you safe and your father only ever gave her contact information to me so nobody else will know about her or where to look for you. Besides, your father left implicit instructions with me that if anything ever happened to him, or if you Manifested, then you were to be sent to live with her.”

“She takes in Jessica too or it isn’t going to happen,” I demanded stubbornly as I wondered why he was being so pushy about it. I wasn’t going to leave my sister when she needed me most. Then the other stuff that he said started to register, “What, she’s a Paranormal? And what do you mean I can’t stay here?”

“We’re fairly certain that your father’s death was a targeted hit. His informant had called him to warn him. We found this while searching the office.” He pulled a plastic evidence bag out of his pocket and inside was something that looked like poorly tanned hide. Written on it in dark red lettering was a list of eight names. Most of the names looked Fey to me, but two names really stood out, my Dad’s name and mine.

There was one name that I didn’t recognize, but the strange symbol and description beside it drew my attention. “Raven Demarco,” I read aloud. That one and a few others, like my Dad’s name, even had rough descriptions. I had to wonder how a person with large black feathered wings and claws could fit in with the normies though. It sounded like she’d be easy to find.

“Yes, she’s the only one that they want alive, if possible,” the chief muttered before going on to explain, “This is Demon hit list. Demons have been very active in the area recently and we believe that they’re trying to kill off anyone who could possibly stop whatever it is that they have planned. Except for the one name that you mentioned, all of these names are descendants of a Fey clan that people once referred to as Demonsbane. They were gifted magic-users who were aligned with not only the Wood element like other Fey but also with the Divine element. They used that Divine magic to hunt Demons.”

“But why would our names be on there? Dad’s only half Fey and can barely use Wood magic and I’m practically a normie,” I argued in disbelief. My Dad was only half-Fey and he could pass for human since he didn’t have the Fey eyes and his ears were only a little longer and pointier than those of a regular human. Me, I didn’t seem to get any of the Fey traits and I was fairly generic-looking. Yup, that’s me, Mr. Invisible. I could fit in anywhere on the Material Plane, or Earth as the locals call it, which was a good thing since we lived there. Vancouver, Canada if you want to be precise about it.

“Most of the lineage died out and very few who are left still possess a strong enough Divine alignment to do more than basic seals or light spells. Even if you’re not one of them, you have that potential and they don’t want you to realize that potential or pass it on to anyone else. Now they have every Paranormal lowlife in the city trying to collect these bounties,” the Dwarf explained grimly.

He shook his head and added sadly, “We need to get their attention off you and you’ll need to leave the city for your own safety. We can’t have someone send you to the Forest Plane to stay with other Fey, that’s the first place they’ll start looking if they realize that you’ve left the city. We’ll have to create a new identity for you. Pack what you need, both of you. We’ll have to move you to a safe house until I can make arrangements with your mother. I have someone waiting downstairs.”

My heart was racing and Jessica clung tighter to me in fear. At least my name hadn’t had a description, though they’d have a hard time finding me with my generic looks. That or they’d start killing off every teenage guy of average height with brown hair and eyes in the city. That could take a while, unless they tried to find me through Dad.

Until now I’d never minded not being completely human, I never thought anything would come of it, but I actually thought that it was kind of cool. There had never been Demons wanting to kill me before though and between that and finding out that I was being sent to live with a Paranormal stranger who also happened to be my mother, I was understandably freaking out a bit. Chief Little seemed deadly serious about this though, so we had to take it seriously as well.

We each packed all the luggage that we had with as much of our clothes and personal effects as we could stuff in them. Aside from the clothes, photos, and a few small personal items though we only packed up the still-wrapped birthday gifts that Dad had gotten us and that we had gotten for one another. I wanted to take my laptop but Chief Little was afraid that things like that or our phones could be used to track us, so those would have to be destroyed.

He had promised that the PDA would clean out the apartment and send any larger personal items, like my Dad’s old bike, to us discretely once we were safe with my mother. Those personal items would be stored safely at PDA headquarters until being sent and everything else would be sold. They were also going to empty our bank accounts and place that money, and any monetary compensation from the hospital administration, in new accounts for me and Jess once we were on our way to wherever it was that my mother lived.

I didn’t have as much to pack as Jessica so once I was all packed I started carrying the luggage downstairs while Chief Little was helping Jess finish packing and talking to her. He was probably trying to calm her down. Between Dad’s death and the news that I might be next, Jess was in bad shape. I hefted my two suitcases out the front door of the apartment complex, to where a PDA agent was waiting in a black SUV with tinted windows.

It was a cool morning and the sun wouldn’t be rising for close to another hour but there was already traffic from people headed to work and the streetlights provided plenty of light. The agent was nice enough to get out of the vehicle to help me with my bags, though they weren’t all that heavy. He was a big guy and he looked human, though it can be hard to really tell with some Paranormals. For all I knew, he could have been a Mage or a Cursed or any number of other Paranormals that look perfectly human. I was relieved by that since we didn’t need anyone drawing attention to us from the early morning traffic and passers-by.

As the agent opened the rear hatch to the SUV for me I caught a whiff of sulfur as someone suddenly appeared between us. She was a smallish skinny woman with dark blue skin, black hair, orange glowing eyes, and black horns atop her head and she was dressed completely in black leather. Before I even had time to react to her sudden appearance she had tossed the agent like he weighed nothing at all. He landed on the other side of the street, nearly colliding with a jogger as the woman grabbed me by the throat.

She lifted me off the ground one-handed, which for a woman of her small stature was pretty damned impressive, and then she smiled, showing off a set of very pronounced fangs. “You’re dead, Seth Woodward,” she hissed as she made a thrusting motion with her other hand too quick for me to follow and my world erupted in pain. Then she tossed me to the ground and vanished once again.

I couldn’t move, and for a moment I just laid there in the street as my brain tried to catch up with what had just happened. I was still clutching a hand to my midsection where the pain had lanced through me and my hand felt sticky and warm. That feeling was quickly fading though, replaced with a numbness that spread through my whole body as I raised my hand and saw it covered in my blood. I thought I could hear Jessica screaming, but that was when everything faded to black.