Page 64 of The Dog in the Alley

“It should have blown out the back of her head. It didn’t. So either she’s got a metal plate on the back of her skull—which I very much doubt—or the bullet ceased to exist when it entered her cranium.” He looked up at me, his blue eyes obscured by thick glasses, making him look like a snowy owl.

“So this is an Ordo kill,” I remarked.

Tierney shrugged. “That part’s not my job,” he replied.

“Anybody ID her?” I asked the room.

“Yeah,” came Mays’s voice from behind me, and I turned to find him holding out a woman’s wallet. I pulled a pair of gloves out of my pocket—because I never go to a crime scene without at least three pairs—and took it.

“Faith Oldham,” I read.

“You havegotto be kidding,” Doc muttered.

I looked at him, arching an eyebrow. “Who the fuck is Faith Oldham?”

“Ugh,” Ward said, wrinkling his nose, scowling at the corpse.

“She’s one of the central figureheads for the Magic-Free Movement,” Doc answered me. “Or was, apparently.”

“They have a couple shows—radio and cable tv,” Ward supplied. “Exactly the hate-filled bullshit you’d expect for anti-magic religious types.”

I stared down at the body of the woman, the perfectly smooth makeup, carefully lined and painted lips, understated eyeshadow in a pinkish color only a few shades darker than her skin. She looked like she belonged on tv—or thought she did, anyway. The attempt at flawlessness was somewhat ruined by the hole in the middle of her forehead, a single drip having made its way to one side.

“Was her head turned?” I asked Tierney.

He nodded. “She was on her back, but yes, she was looking your direction.”

“How likely is she to be able to tell us anything?” Ward asked, and I could hear the stress in his voice. Not that I blamed him. The last person—that we knew of, anyway—to be shot by the Ordo had been Doc, who had survived because Ward and Doc’s nephew, Jackson, had been there.

So had I, mind you, but I can’t do shit to stop a bullet from killing you if I don’t happen to see it coming. Which I hadn’t. But a death witch and a warlock, well, let’s just say that magic can go quite a ways in keeping people alive.

As far as we know, Doc is the only person to ever survive an Ordo assassination.

Faith Oldham certainly hadn’t, and I imagine staring down at her corpse wasn’t helping Ward’s mental state. Honestly, it wasn’t doing much for mine, either, and I wasn’t married to the guy who’d taken the last bullet.

“Who the fuck knows,” I answered Ward’s question. Most of our other assassination victims hadn’t been able to tell us anything—they’d been minding their business, thenbam, dead. Judging from the glass on the floor, that had been true here, as well.

“There is also the possibility that she won’t be interested in speaking to us,” Doc observed. “Given her… political affiliations.”

I made a face. “She can kiss my ass,” I muttered, earning a snort from Doc and raised eyebrows from Tierney.

“Am I summoning her?” Ward wanted to know.

I sighed, running a hand over my ponytail. “Fuck it. Yeah.”

He nodded once, although his face was tight, big grey eyes a little glassy. I recognized the expression—shut down, keep the emotions somewhere safe, get the job done. God knows I’ve done it often enough.

I felt a little guilty about it, but we had a dead woman who, no matter how bigoted her politics, had just had her life taken from her. And making sure that people stopped doing that shit to each other was the reason we did what we did. Even if she didn’t think we deserved to be able to.

I watched Ward take a deep breath, and Doc moved to stand beside him, avoiding stepping on Taavi, who had sat down beside Ward’s chair. Doc rested one big green hand on Ward’s shoulder, and the medium reached up, probably unconsciously, to put his smaller hand over Doc’s.

And then he focused on the empty space between us, and I knew he’d summoned the dead woman.

A pained expression crossed his face.

I met Doc’s eyes over his head, and Doc’s features mirrored mine—we both knew where this was headed. The dead woman was probably freaking out, possibly insulting Ward, and probably also me and Doc, and was generally making a pain in the ass out of herself.

Taavi was watching Ward curiously, as though by staring at the man, he’d be able to figure out what was going on.

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