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What can I say? I’m pretty cheap when it comes to everyday wear. I also own some middle-of the road suits and dress pants, and oneverynice custom tailored suit in a dove grey that makes me look really fucking hot.
I’d worn it for Doc and Ward’s wedding—I’d had to. For the first time in my goddamn life, someone had wanted meintheir fucking wedding, rather than just inviting me out of a sense of familial or professional courtesy. I had no idea when the fuck I was ever going to wear the suit again, but at least my elven metabolism was likely to keep me in the same size pants until I fucking died, so I wouldn’t have to buy another one. That shit’s expensive.
“So to what do we owe the pleasure of this family meeting?” Beck purred, having selected her donut and found her strawberry vanilla latte. I did not understand her love of fruit-flavored coffee, but I didn’t have to drink it, so whatever.
“The Ordo,” I answered, completely nuking the cheerful mood that had been filling the room. Go me.
Doc’s scowl was thunder, but Ward was the first one to speak. “The Oldham case.” It wasn’t a question.
“Oldham, Whitehead, and Bazan,” I replied. “Here’s what we know.”
I told them what I’d gotten from Dan, everything I had from Mays, and some speculation about how the RPD was covering up whatever had been taken from both scenes.
“So we summon them,” Beck said.
I nodded. “If Ward is willing.”
“If it stops this fucking bullshit, hell, yes, I’m willing.”
Doc didn’t say anything, but he reached out and put one big green palm on Ward’s back in between his shoulder blades. I won’t say that Ward relaxed, but he looked a little less like he was going to try to magically pull my spine out through my throat, so I appreciated it.
* * *
Doc had insistedthat we do this therightway, which meant chalk and the big conference room table, which reminded me that Elliot was going to come out in a handful of months with a new one so that he could do the engraving on site, and that made me both excited and nervous. Excited, because I hadn’t seen El in a couple years and he’d never been to Richmond, and nervous because it also meant that Elliot Crane was going to judge the fuck out of what I’d done with my life.
My new job. My boyfriend. Assuming, of course, that Taavi hadn’t dumped my ass by then.
I distracted myself with another donut.
By the time Doc, Ward, and Beck were all satisfied—and Rayn had returned to his post at the front desk—I’d given up watching them and taken yet another donut back to my office to get some actual work done. There had been a query about some missing jewelry, and I’d sent back the questionnaire I’d put together for missing object cases.
Where had they last seen it. Who had been in their house since then. What was the value of it. Had they noticed anyone admiring or staring at it.
Missing jewelry was always one of three things—they genuinely lost it somewhere, like a broken chain or a ring that slipped off a finger; someone in the house had pawned it for money; or someone in the family thought that grandma’s brooch should be theirs because they fed her cat or some shit.
I ended the email with a link to schedule an in-person appointment at the location of their choosing—either BTV or their house or office—and sent it with a small sigh. It seemed stupid to waste time on somebody’s damn earrings or whatever when there were murders going on and a weird neo-Aztec cult was trying to bring about fucking the end of days.
But the person with the lost jewelry didn’t know that. They just wanted their thingy back, and I was conveniently located early in the alphabet when you googled private investigators. Or maybe they were Arc-human or Nid and wanted a guarantee that someone would actually fucking listen to them. That happened a lot, too.
Either way, I didn’t much care what had brought them to us—I didn’t really appreciate the distraction, although part of me recognized that this kind of thing was how I earned my keep, so at least there was that. If I found this person’s stupid whatever, maybe I could make up for a fraction of the cost I was incurring with this Ordo shit.
“Okay, gorgeous,” Beck called from my doorway. “We’re ready to summon up some dead people.”
I stood and followed her back into the conference room-turned-summoning room, sitting down in the chair next to Doc.
“Who are we starting with?” Ward asked, his grey eyes focused on me.
I’d been thinking about this.
“Whitehead. We already know Oldham is a complete twit, and Bazan is a lawyer, so he’s probably going to be a pain in the ass.” He’d been standoffish with Ward at the scene of his death, although he hadn’t been rude, but I was willing to bet he was going to be a lot less inclined to be helpful when I started asking him about his work.
Ward nodded once, and the air over his shoulder shimmered and took form. I’d been expecting Lady Randolph, Ward’s Victorian Lady ghost-assistant, but the shape that congealed was a short, older man wearing suspenders and squishy slippers.
His face was sporting a shit-eating grin.
“Hey, there, Puck! Beautiful. Big guy.”
I snorted. I did like Archie—better than Sylvia, anyway—but I tried not to encourage him too much. “Dead man,” I greeted him.
