分卷阅读3（1 / 2）

“Was this a magical creature attack?” Felix turned to Stramitz. “In the middle of downtown Edinburgh?”

“Multiple bite marks in the ceiling,” Stramitz repeated. She turned away from the scorched wall and its bite marks and focused on the man—half the man—on the bed. The wound pattern looked familiar. He wasn’t torn—“That man was bitten in half.”

Felix bit his lip. “What does this? A spell? A…dragon?”

“They have a witness,” Phillips offered when he came back into the suite.

“Oh yeah?” Felix arched a brow. “How big are his teeth?”

The witness—Archie Eversworn—was a porter who had been late to work and had taken his precious time making his rounds to check on the penthouse earlier that morning. And he’d also misplaced his employee master spell key that allowed him into any room in the hotel. Felix took point on the interview and came down on Eversworn hard. The porter was innocent, Igora was certain, but he was definitely hiding something.

“This doesn’t look good, Archie,” Felix repeated for maybe the fifth time. “You were late to work, late to check on the suite in question, and your spell key is missing? It all seems very—”

“Confluent,” Stramitz narrowed her eyes and the porter’s green eyes widened.

“Yeah,” Felix continued. “A lot of pieces coming together and pointing to you.” Eversworn stared at his feet. Felix met Igora’s eyes and waited for her approval before mentioning the spell log. “Now, the security spell log got scrambled in the minutes before you say you entered the penthouse. Any reason you can think of, Archie, that the security system would malfunction like that?”

“What?” the porter breathed. “No, of course not.”

Stramitz took a step forward. “So you didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary on your way up to the penthouse?”

The porter gulped, and Stramitz thought he looked oddly familiar when he stared back at her. She made a note to send out inquiries on him to all the other DMLE offices before the end of the day. Eversworn took a breath and asked, “Did you have the log for the fourteenth floor?”

“I just told you the logs were scrambled. Now, did something happen on the fourteenth floor, Archie?”

“Yes,” he said, then shook his head. “No,” he rushed. “I mean, er…maybe?”

Igora stopped herself from smiling. “You do realize you stated every possible response to the question?”

“So which is it?” Felix said.

Eversworn huffed. “No, I didn’t see anything.”

“Don’t leave town, Mr. Eversworn.” Igora raised her brows.

“I—I won’t.”

On their way out of the hotel, Phillips asked if they’d got anything out of the witness. Igora brushed him off, but he persisted. “You didn’t tell me how your case was connected to this—this incident,” Phillips stuttered.