AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“And if I asked you to nip over to your house and tell me if anything was taken from your office?”
I didn’t think it was possible for a ghost to go any more pale, but Whitehead did.Fuckin’ bingo.
But before I could press the point, Ward interrupted. “What are you afraid they might steal, Mr. Whitehead?” he asked, and I could tell from the edge to his voice that he wasn’t just asking politely.
I approved. Not that I was going to say that out loud in front of Whitehead.
“I—”
Then I saw his eyes get wide, probably because Ward started putting on some more serious pressure.
“There—There was a—”I could see him fighting Ward’s compulsion, not that I felt even a little bad for him.“A box that came in a few months ago. Labeled as beige marble. It was, but also… There was this bone knife inside. I—It wasn’t on the manifest. I didn’t want—You can’t bring that in without—”He trailed off.
I finished it for him. “So you thought you’d pull it out of the box and sell it to a collector, make some side cash, since the actual shipper wasn’t going to be able to claim it was lost or stolen.”
The ghost had the good grace to at least look embarrassed about it.
I texted Mays under the table:Was there a bone knife found at the Whitehead scene?
Then I sent the same question to Dan.
“Just one more question, Mr. Whitehead,” I drawled.
He looked at me expectantly. So did everyone else at the table.
“Ever heard of Victor Picton?”
I could feel the burning pairs of eyes on me—gold and black, steely grey, coffee brown, and terrified and dead.
“He—he’s dead,”the ghost all but whimpered.
And then the eyes of the living left me and went back to him.
“You know Picton?” Doc growled.
“I—did.”
Even I could tell he didn’t approve. Which meant that our dear Mr. Whitehead probably knew exactly why he’d fallen afoul of the Ordo.
“So how’d you piss them off?” I asked him.
“The—The Ordo did this?”
Ward rolled his eyes.
I sympathized.
“No shit, the Ordo did this. You know anybody else who can shoot invisible bullets through windows?” I asked him.
Beck made a small snorting noise, although she quickly turned it into a cough when Ward shot a mild glare in her direction.
“I—can they do that?”
Even Doc looked pained.
We tried, but Whitehead was mostly useless—he might have knownaboutthe Ordo, but only because he’d been hired once or twice to import what sounded to me like magical artifacts, mostly from Europe. But he hadn’t been a member and knew jack shit. Not quite completely useless, but pretty fucking close.
Good thing we had more than one dead guy to work on.
