Twilight Family

Prologue Jack Nightmare was one of those quietly happy men who secretly drive less happy men insane with jealousy. In his thirties, looking eternally youthful, with hair the color of coffee and eyes like tanzanites, he was envied by men and women alike by default anyway; to be content on top of that was simply unforgivable. He loved his job. In one world he was a police officer by choice, Detective Nightmare of the New York police force; in the other one, the hidden one, he was born an angel—savior of humans, slayer of creatures of the dark. Being a cop was equally his passion as being an angel. It allowed him to bring order and justice to the world, the mundane as well as the hidden one. And he managed to keep both sides balanced; even though a lot of creatures didn’t forgive him for upholding justice in two worlds; even though no human was ever to know they were not alone in life—a secret that sometimes weighed heavily on his shoulders. He loved his private life; he was, after a few bumps in the road, in a blissful relationship. He even liked the greasy donuts his partner, Detective Theo Butterman, sometimes brought with him and the watery, sickly sweet coffee from the precinct’s vending machine. Jack Nightmare was, to synopsize, walking on his personal ray of sunshine. Which was probably why his life was about to turn inside out and upside down in the equivalent of a cosmic heartbeat. The universe despises quietly happy people—or maybe just witches do; sometimes it’s hard to distinguish between the two forces. In any case, to put it metaphorically, Jack was about to fall headfirst into the abyss he had no idea was gaping right in front of him.