Office of Supernatural Affairs

2219, the era of the great unveiling. Roughly considered to be the time in which humanity's technological levels had stagnated for so long, that some "outside" entities decided we would never progress without their help. Turned out, beings and forces of a magical or spiritual nature, had always existed on our planet, and had hidden themselves in the hopes that we would surpass them, and that magic would become largely unnecessary. The "great unveiling," then, came at the time that those beings and forces were tired of the masquerade. We were never going to discover them properly, so they might as well just come out and say hello.

But of course, like all things good on their faces, this was not completely a good thing. For all of those that wanted to help improve society by the means that technology could not accomplish, there were those who sought to destroy it by those same means. It gave rise to terrorist factions and warlords, whose methods and techniques we could not predict or prepare for. No matter how fortified the location or how secure the cargo, it could be breached, it could be taken, it could be destroyed. The gold reserves at Fort Knox, vanished overnight? The Pentagon's greatest secrets, now a matter of public record? No longer as impossible as our staff thought. And that was why we existed: the Office of Supernatural Affairs.

I was the last one into the meeting room, with two carriers of "penalty coffee" in hand. I was late as a habit. There was no way I could beat Stefania here, since she teleported everywhere, but for everybody else that came in to the office normally, I often lagged by five minutes or more. Frequently more, when the coffee orders came in. But I didn't care all that much. I was as essential as the rest of the OSA, since we consisted of about four people and one…thing, so they couldn't start the meeting without me, but getting to know everybody's drink orders by heart was my way of forging friendships and learning what made everybody tick.

I set the two drink carriers on the board room table, then gestured a ward on the door as it closed. "Here we are, folks," I greeted, slipping a paper cup out of the carrier carton. "Soy latte, non-dairy cream…that one's yours, boss?"

The muscular, but round, OSA Chief raised his hand affirmatively. "Aye, slide it over."

I did so, somehow managing not to knock the paper cup over in the process. I got the next one out, in a bright red cup. "Egg nog latte, extra whip, dash of cinnamon… Stefania?" The long-haired, glasses-wearing nymph simply nodded in my direction. I handed it to her with both hands, as if presenting a gift, then grabbed the next out of its carrier. "London Fog, that one's…Ewan?"

"Just hand it," replied a very tired and grumpy man opposite the table. I didn't think I'd ever seen his face before, he always had his head down on the desk. I'd been told he photosynthesized, so he would only really be awake in direct sunlight. I wondered why he even needed the coffee.

The next drink to come out of the carton was in a transparent cup, the likes of which I thought they stopped making a hundred years ago. The liquid inside was thick and somewhat green colored, and the cup was cold to the touch. "Oh, this one's got to be George's." The imp-like, duck-like being at the corner of the table gurgled excitedly. He did like things that tasted of cucumber. Half of us suspected he was a kappa, like the Japanese myth, but nobody could really say one way or the other.

"Which makes the last one mine," I declared, taking the last seat at the back corner of the table, next to Stefania, and retrieving the last cup from the carrier, an extra-tall hot chai in a cup bearing the letter H. "Now, what's the thread this time, boss?"

The Chief, a Dwarven man in a suit that, despite being tailored specifically for him, seemed a bit too tight around the waist, punched a large green button on his side of the table. The board room lights all died in an instant and a tiny projector rose from the table, aiming at the wall on my side of the table. It was the image of a man in a suit, with an immaculate coif of hair, and bloodshot eyes in a sickly shade of bright orange. He was not showing his teeth, but I figured he'd have fangs. In the photo, he was getting into the back seat of a car, assisted by a taller bald man wearing sunglasses. The Chief let us stare at him for a few seconds, then cleared his throat. "This man is Thorsten Heimdallsson. He is the owner of the second-richest holdings company in Europe. And, until recently, that was all that OSA considered noteworthy about him."

Stefania adjusted her glasses, and then her plant-fiber vest. "Implying that we've discovered more since then?" Her speech had a German brusqueness to it, augmented by her always-neutral, near monotone voice. I suspected that she was an Alraune, but I never could figure out how to broach the question politely. "Or has something changed?"

"We don't know how to answer that, yet. You will notice the eyes--" The Chief shone a bright laser around the man's face on screen, "--are not a natural human color, and his skin has gone rather pale. Both of them are strong indicators to him being vampiric in nature."

The grumpy man raised a hand, but not his head, from the table. "We don't have anything on file that says that," he rasped and grumbled.

"Which is precisely the problem." The Chief's eyes narrowed. "The Great Unveiling Act, article three, stipulates that potentially viral beings such as vampires and zombies must be documented. Mr. Heimdallsson does not exist in any of our registries. We have reason to believe he is trying to hide his status from us, which in itself would not be a problem, if not for what else he could be hiding beneath that."