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Ward sighed heavily.
“Ms. Oldham is… upset,” he reported. Doc rolled his eyes.
“About?” I asked.
Ward made a gesture that effectively explained that Faith Oldham was likely worked up about being dead, about the fact that she’d been summoned, about the fact that her death was being investigated by a whole collection of magical people… Probably even about the state of her floor, if the overall cleanliness of the condo was any indication of her customary standards.
I was jealous of people who kept their houses this clean. I wasn’t a total pig, but my apartment had its share of dust in the corners and long white hairs everywhere. At least Taavi didn’t shed.
“Can she tell us anything that’s at all useful?” I asked Ward.
I watched him concentrate, but then he shook his head. “She was getting a glass of water, and then—”
I turned to look at the window on the other wall—her unit was on the end, or she wouldn’t have had windows in this room. I let out a sharp whistle, and Mays stuck his head in to see what I wanted.
“Can someone try to figure out a bullet trajectory through this window?” I gestured at it.
“On it,” Mays replied, then disappeared again.
Thanks to Doc, we at least understood now how the disappearing bullets worked. Not that we knew who was shooting the damn things.
Victor Picton, who had been the Ordo’s previous go-to sniper, was very much dead, thanks to Ward and his utterly terrifying ability to weaponize ghosts. Unfortunately, that meant that now we had to figure out who else in the Ordo had the weapons training necessary to make the hole in Faith Oldham’s head from somewhere that presumably wasn’t inside the room.
“Hey, Doc.”
“Yes?”
“What are the chances that somebody besides the Ordo has those bullets?”
“Unless they were stolenfromthe Ordo, I would put those chances very, very low. The magic involved is difficult and finicky. While another practitioner could learn it, I suppose, they would probably need to do so from the original caster or risk—well, I’d guess the result of doing this wrong would be blowing their hand off.”
“Well, that sounds fun. Remind me not to learn how to magically inscribe bullets.”
Doc’s lips twisted. “I do not expect that will be an issue.”
I snorted a breath through my nose. Tierney was measuring the hole in Oldham’s forehead.
“Caliber guess, Tierney?” I asked.
“Probably a nine millimeter,” came the answer.
Sonota sniper rifle. Annoyingly, that did not help us narrow our suspect pool nearly as much as if they’d been using Picton’s rifle.
“Mays!” I yelled. Doc’s eyebrows went up, but I spoke first. “Their fucking bullet guy—or woman—is still out there running around.”
“That seems likely,” the orc confirmed.
“Fuck.”
“Rather,” he agreed.
Another CSI tech stepped into the doorway, her brown hair pulled back in a ponytail and a fingerprint brush in her hands. “Mays is on his way back in,” she reported.
“Thanks, Quincy.”
She bobbed her head, then went back into the other room. I frowned.
“Quincy!”
