The PRISM minivan shamelessly doused people standing at the crosswalk with mud. Rem apologized to the passersby, but they couldn’t hear him anyway.

All the passengers’ attention was focused on the projection at the car control panel. Takeshi rewound the recording from the CCTV again. At 02:05 am the video quality deteriorated significantly. A minute later, an Asian woman in a gray hooded cloak entered one of the apartments. She left ten minutes later, carrying a tightly packed bag with her.

The recording itself was extremely bad: from broken pixels to whole frames gone missing. The investigator rewound it once more and paused at the moment when the Sister went out the door and was right in front of the camera. Izumi peered at the image.

“Do you recognize her?” Rem asked.

Shadow gave a sharp laugh. “You can’t tell one Gray Sister from another. They all look the same, except Hecate.”

Takeshi wanted to add something, but failed—the navigation app reported that they had reached their destination. The investigator parked the van, and, without their umbrellas, the public servants scurried across the street to a small Georgian-style building. The house was very old—the middle of the last century or so—and had not seen repairs for a long time. The three officers climbed the narrow stairs to the right floor.

“Oswaldt-kun, I need you to check the camera and the surroundings. Report every magical trail you find.”

“Understood, sensei.” The Lackluster was eager to put his skills in use.

The local police were already at the scene. They let Izumi and Shadow enter Edward’s two-room apartment. It was a bit cramped, with a pile of furniture that had clearly gone through hard times, and several bookcases were sagging from the heavy weight of books, papers and three layers of dust. The healer, an ardent fan of e-readers, snorted contemptuously.

In the back room there was a corpse of a man in his PJs lying on the floor next to an overturned chair and the book titled “Real-life Usage of Elemental Magic” from the series “Top Arcane Practices.” A large brooch in the form of the Light of the Goddess was sticking out from his head—the sharp end of the cross had been blasted deep into his right temple.

The healer put on his gloves, took the brooch from the victim’s body and turned it in his hands. When moved, the magical item vibrated slightly. Shadow hissed, “A trademark left by the Gray Sisters. I hate it when they use the sacramental symbol in that way.”

“Apparently, Edward was sitting at the table when she sneaked behind him and struck. We must examine the contents of his laptop. It has no charge now.”

“It doesn’t look like he resisted at all.”

“The Gray Sisters are very silent and—if I may say it—graceful assassins. However, this whole scene looks kind of… nasty. Something feels odd.”

In a few minutes Rem joined them and looked carefully into every corner of the apartment while Shadow was busy inspecting the victim and Takeshi observed the crime scene. Stopping by the dusty bookshelves, he mentioned there were some clean spots.

“I believe a few books have been taken,” he commented. “Judging by the books around it, they might have been dedicated to enchantments. I will request the corresponding data from the Department of Magic Items registry to check what kind of assets Mister Shell could have possessed… Oswaldt-kun, anything to report?”

“Cursed magic. A Violet was here.”

Takeshi nodded. “Good job. It is quite a start… anything else?”

“Not in the apartment,” Rem said, shaking his head. “There are no arcane remnants from the victim—which is understandable since he had gone Lackluster a long time ago.”

“What about the outside?”

“I was able to follow the trail to the street, but the rain erased the energy. The camera had obviously been manipulated, though. The magic impact was brutal but kind of effective.”

“Such a lousy job for professional assassins…” Takeshi moved the window shutters. “I wonder how many Violets the cult might have.”

“Officially, zero,” Shadow said. “But if there’s even a single one… then Hecate is asking for trouble. Hiring the most dangerous criminals is too much even for them.”

Looking out the window and checking the entrance, Takeshi noticed that Dasnor and Sacred were approaching the house. The investigator ordered his subordinates to return to the headquarters. The officers and enforcers crossed paths at the front door, not uttering a word and looking at each other with suspicion.