Scott walked through the door of his building with a vigor less stride. Without missing a step he continued over to Elysifs door and began banging on it loudly. A few seconds later the door was opened by Elysif who wasn’t looking very pleased to be awake.

“What do you want? It’s far too early for you to even be awake. Where is Lou?” She said while crossing her arms and leaning against the doorway.

“Do I look like I want to be awake this early? Anyways there was a murder and I need you to go check it out. You know what to look for. Also Lou is running to Iscarat’s to get something for Mama Louise.”

“Okay, I can take a look. Though what are you going to do?”

“Well I am going to look for the culprit of course.” He replied nonchalantly. She then gave him an unconvinced scowl. “I am, really.”

“Okay, but if I find out that while Lou and I have been out working while you drank and slept then I am going to remove your right nipple.” She threatened.

“Hey! You know that I already lost my left nipple. I would rather not lose the other one.” he said in a panicked but angry tone.

“Then don’t make me remove it.” she said shutting the door.

“Sometimes that woman scares me.” he said while shaking his head before turning and going up the stairs to his own abode. Once inside he grabbed a freshly opened bottle of rum that had rolled underneath the couch and began to drink it. “I should probably go look for the changeling… or maybe not. I don’t even know where to start looking. They can live in any environment so their nearly impossible to track.”

With no more grace than an overweight bear he walked over to the bookshelf and pulled a book from the bookshelf. “Creatures of the night” the cover read. Scott flipped through the contents for a moment before landing on the section he wanted. It read:

Changelings

These creatures can alter their appearance to match any person they wish. To protect themselves after doing so they will kill the person they have changed into and assume their identity. Many changelings will go their entire lives without being discovered.

Rather than raise their own young they will steal a newborn child in the night and replace it with their own. They will then have their child change into the form of the newborn and will live their lives as a human. Many of these changelings will never know that they aren’t actually human for the entirety of their lives but the ones that do will continue this cycle.

Changelings can live anywhere from fifty years to two thousand years depending on whether or not they keep a continued diet of human flesh. However these creatures cannot procreate. They must instead remove the organs of a young woman and combine it with their own blood in order to create their offspring. changelings do not have any reproductive organs to speak of but have a high sex drive when assuming the identity of a human. This could be caused by the creation of genitalia when assuming a human's identity.

Like most creatures of the night they can be killed with silver and can be spotted due to a small purple spot on the inside of their wrist. This purple spot resembles that of a bruise but lacks the blackish outline a real bruise creates. These creatures are one of the few you are recommended to kill on sight, however do not kill one after just seeing the spot as it could be a human with a real but fresh bruise.

“Well now I know why she was cut open. This thing is trying to create more of the little buggers. He failed once and so he’s going to try again soon.” He said reading over the text again and again, hoping that it would reveal something he may have missed. However no such secret knowledge presented itself.

“This doesn’t tell me anything about where it could be hiding. Guess there's nothing else I can do until those two get back.” he said, placing the book back on the shelf. With a swig of his bottle he straddled over to the couch and plopped himself down. “Nap time.” he said as he closed the lid on the bottle and took a lite nap.

* * *

I stood in front of a big burly man several centimetres taller than myself. The man wasn’t clean shaven and smelled heavily of fish. It didn’t help that he was wearing no shirt and that he was standing in the doorway that led to Iscarat’s place. He was the father of the family that lived there and although it sounded like they were having a very good family breakfast before I arrived I was too loud coming up the stairs. He opened the door as I was pulling my key out and wasn’t happy to see me.

“We don’t have the money for any kind of services so leave you twat.” He said in a slight German accent.

“Well, I can’t actually.” I replied.

“And why is that? You want to get chucked out the window?” he threatened. I didn’t want that to happen so I just told the truth.

“There is a wizard that lives in your door that I need to speak to.” I replied. He gave me a funny look before slamming the door in my face. “What a loony.” I heard him say from the other side.