When tested, it turned out most of the “gut instinct” was latent psychic ability. Smith could sense the monsters once they used some sort of ability. When a lycanthropy suspect started to shapeshift, Smith would sense it and warn everyone, or warn the suspect not to do it. He could sense vampires once they went all vampire-wiles on your ass. He was better with the furry than the undead. He could sense when someone was using certain psychic abilities, like when I searched for the undead. As psychics went, Smith was pretty mild, or they hadn’t found his true ability. It was sort of a wait and see.

Zerbrowski and I weren’t officially partners. U.S. Marshals didn’t usually have official partners, and Preternatural Branch, never. But I’d probably worked with Zerbrowski more than any other single cop over the years. We knew each other. I’d been invited over to his house for dinners with his wife and kids, and last cookout he’d let me bring my two wereleopard live-in sweeties. Two men who were “monsters,” and I was living in sin with both of them, and he let me bring them to his house with his family and a bunch of other cops and their families; yeah, Zerbrowski and I were friends. We might never confide our deepest darkest secrets in each other, but we were cop-friends. It’s like work-friends, but you get each other’s blood on you, and keep each other alive. But when I went out with RPIT they did try to pair me with normals. Zerbrowski had gut instinct, but not enough to score on the tests.

We checked the two cars, found them empty, and I just said it: “We have to assume that the officers are hurt, so I’m invoking.” Invoking the Preternatural Endangerment Act, that is; it was a loophole in the new, more vampire-friendly laws that allowed Marshals of the Preternatural Branch to use lethal force if they thought human lives were endangered and would be lost waiting for a warrant of execution. At least two officers missing from their cars, maybe more if either ride had two officers apiece, they were either hurt or dead, and there was still the missing girl. If we wanted anyone left alive, we needed to be able to shoot the vampires.