Magic Shifts

CHAPTER 7

LONG RIPS SCOURED the Tahoe’s front passenger seat, the edges of the fabric frayed, ripped by claws rather than cut. A much smoother cut scarred the dashboard and the far edge of the passenger seat. Dents potholed the dashboard, some with pieces of bone and clumps of dark red tissue stuck to the surface. Several dark smears, thick, the color of reddish tar, stained the inside of the Tahoe, all except for the driver’s seat, which meant Eduardo was in it when the fight happened. I sat in the driver’s seat—my feet could barely touch the pedals—and swung my hand out. Yep. Eduardo had some sort of a short blade in his hand, probably a machete judging by the cut in the dashboard, and he’d hacked at something with it. Then the blade was ripped out of his hand, and he started bashing his attackers into the dash.

I pulled a small plastic bag out of my pocket on my belt, got a pinch of powder, and sprinkled it on the blood. The dark green powder turned white.

“Ironweed,” I explained to Curran. “Ghouls don’t like it. Not sure if it hurts them, but it reacts with their blood.”

Curran examined the dash. “For being pinned by the seat belt and swarmed, he put up a hell of a fight.”

“And that’s what puzzles me.” I reached over and touched the remains of Eduardo’s seat belt. About eight inches of it hung from the top bracket, the end of the section rough and frayed.

“Gnawed through,” Curran said.

“Yes. He was wearing the seat belt when they jumped him. You’re a ghoul. This guy’s hacking at you with a blade and crushing your buddies’ skulls left and right, and instead of killing him right here, while he is trapped by his seat belt, you take the time to chew through it and pull him out.”

“They wanted Eduardo alive,” Curran said.

“But why?”

We searched the rest of the Tahoe. I found Eduardo’s backpack with his lunch and his wallet in it with a hundred bucks in cash. The cache of weapons in the back of the Tahoe was intact. Any human predator would’ve taken the guns and the tactical blades. Whoever took Eduardo had no interest in his weapons or his money, which probably meant our ghoul theory was correct. Not only had the ghouls kidnapped Eduardo, they pushed his car into a hole to hide it. They weren’t that devious under normal circumstances. Some sort of malevolent intelligence was controlling the ghouls, and it clearly had a plan. If only we could figure out what that plan was.

I sat on a rock. Curran stretched out next to me. He looked like hell. Some time ago the ichor covering us had begun to smell like rotten fish, and while we crawled around underground, loose dirt had mixed with it to form a cement-like substance on his skin and mine, in my case no doubt tainted by whatever blood seeped through the bandages. My shoulder hurt. My back hurt, too. Neither of us had eaten since morning. Curran had to be starving. Some pair we made.

He noticed me studying him. “Here we are in a filthy hole.”

“Yep. Looking like two ghouls who rolled in some rotting corpses.”

He flashed a grin at me. “Hey, baby. Want to fool around?”

I laughed at him.

“If I were planning to kidnap Eduardo,” Curran said, “and I knew where he was going, the easiest thing would be to station some shapeshifters near his destination so they could ambush him as he arrived. Except that destination happens to be in a residential neighborhood, which meant if my people jumped Eduardo there, they would have to drag him through the streets kicking and screaming.”

“Yes. Too risky. Too exposed, and too many potential witnesses,” I agreed.

“I would want to grab my victim off the street fast and quiet, so I would scout the possible routes to his destination, find good places to jump him, and put a group of shapeshifters at each route and one final group near the destination itself, just as insurance.”

“Makes sense.” That was exactly what the ghouls did.

“So what is so special about Eduardo?”

“I don’t know.” I sighed. “Maybe he’s a secret ghoul prince.”

I wanted to climb out of the hole and kill something to make Eduardo be okay. Instead I had to sit here, twiddling my thumbs. I reached over to Curran and squeezed his hand.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “We’ll find him. They took him alive, so they want something from him.”

“It’s not finding him. It’s finding him in time.”

“He knows help is coming,” Curran said. “George loves him. He knows she’s searching for him and she’d make the Pack look for him.”

“I keep wondering how I missed it,” I murmured.

“What?”

“George and Eduardo.”

“They were very careful,” Curran said. “George loves her father. She didn’t want him and Eduardo fighting. Mahon is the Pack’s executioner and has more experience, but Eduardo is younger, five hundred pounds heavier in beast form, and he would be very motivated. It wouldn’t matter who won. When they were done, one of them would be dead and the other one dying.”

“Would he really fight Eduardo?”

“Depends on the circumstances. Martha can pull Mahon back most of the time, but sometimes his brakes malfunction.”

“But why? What would that accomplish except makes everyone involved miserable?”

Curran sighed. “Mahon’s problem is that he has some very definite ideas about what a man’s supposed to be and what a male werebear should be. It sounds great in his head and he gets carried away with it. He isn’t shy about sharing his bear wisdom. Then his views collide with reality and they mostly don’t survive. At the core Mahon isn’t evil. He means well and he wants to be seen as a good person, so when people react badly to the nonsense coming out of his mouth, he gets shocked and has to readjust. For example, the first time Aunt B came to the Pack Council, he took it upon himself to lecture her about how men should be men and women should be women, and Clan alphas should be men with women helping them, not the other way around.”

I laughed. “What did she do?”

“She petted his shoulder and said, ‘Bless your heart, you must be awful in bed.’”

Ha!

“Then she turned to Martha and told her that if she ever was in need of a man who respected women enough to think they were human beings, she had several available in her clan.”

That sounded like Aunt B.

“Mahon turned purple and didn’t say another word through the whole Council meeting.” Curran grinned. “Never brought it up again. I left him in charge once for about a month, because I had to travel out of our territory, and came back to a full revolt. It wasn’t what he did—he actually governed well while I was gone—it was what he said at the Pack Council. He said he was trying to give the other alphas guidance and he was mystified why everyone wanted to tear his throat out. It would be the same with Eduardo. His initial reaction would be to rage and probably goad Eduardo into attacking him, because he loves George and he wants to be a good father, and in his mind the best thing to do, the proper thing to do, is to steer her away from what he sees as a terrible match. He’s probably convinced that if George only saw things from his point of view, she would agree with him.”

“I’m pretty sure he thinks that about everybody.” I’d been on the receiving end of Mahon’s wisdom. It made me fantasize about violence.

Curran sighed. “Mahon adores his daughters. If George went to her dad right now and cried and said that she was miserable without Eduardo and she felt awful, Mahon would drop everything and run to look for Eduardo.”

I blinked. “Seriously?”

Curran nodded. “But she won’t do it and I agree with her. From her point of view, why should she have to manipulate her father? She isn’t asking him for a puppy. She’s telling him that this is the man she loves, and she expects him to deal with it like a loving parent should. She’s his daughter and she’s just like him. They’ve butted heads for as long as I’ve known them. She always loves him, but sometimes she also hates him. This is one of those times.”

It must’ve been an interesting family to grow up in. “Do you manipulate him?”

“I know what Mahon’s version of the Beast Lord should say and do. When I want him to do something, I frame it in that light. With Mahon sometimes it’s enough to growl and declare that he will do this because I’m the Beast Lord. He expects occasional dictatorship, because in his head that’s what a capable Beast Lord would do. If I tried the same tactic with Jim, he’d tell me he’d come back later after I had my head examined.”

“Mahon’s Beast Lord is a hard man who makes hard decisions, huh?”

“Mm-hm. And who doesn’t have time for foolishness.” Curran looked up. “A car.”

A moment later I heard it too, the dull roar of water engines. It sputtered and died. Julie’s blond head poked through the hole. “Hello.”

“Hi,” I said.

Julie’s head disappeared, replaced by her foot in the loop of a rope. The rope moved down, lowering Julie to the floor of the cavern. She wore her work clothes: old jeans, a black turtleneck, and boots. A tactical tomahawk rested in a loop on her belt. Thirteen inches long, the Kestrel tomahawk weighed eighteen ounces. Its wide bearded blade tapered down to a wicked spike that curved downward, sharpened to a narrow point. It was meant as a tool that occasionally could be thrown at rotten logs for fun. Julie had decided to make it her weapon of choice. None of my explanations about the versatility and lightness of swords made any dent in her.

I sighed. I had plenty of perfectly good swords, balanced and made specifically for her. When she first started carrying the axe, I tried to push her toward the sword and she resisted until I finally asked her why she dragged it with her everywhere. She said, “Because I can make a hole in anything.” I decided that was good enough for me.

If the dead could judge the living, Voron, my adoptive father, was probably spinning in his grave over the axe. He’d dedicated his life to teaching me how to use a sword. He viewed it as the perfect weapon. But then Voron was long dead and I had exorcised his ghost out of my memory. He still spoke to me once in a while, but his voice no longer ruled my life.

Julie winced. “Is that Eduardo’s car?”

I nodded. Derek slid down the rope.

“Okay.” She turned to the half-crushed Tahoe. “Ugly yellowish orange . . . Ghouls. A lot of them.”

She circled the car, moving slowly, and looked up, her gaze fixed on a point about six feet above the car. Her eyes widened. She smiled slightly, as if she were looking at something beautiful.

“It’s like a flame,” she murmured. “Beautiful flame. Not orange or yellow. More like copper.”

“Copper?” What the hell registered copper?

“A goldish, silverish kind of copper,” she said. “There was an explosion of it right there.” She pointed above the Tahoe. “Like rose gold. Very pretty. I’ve never seen this before.”

Blue meant human, silver meant divine, weak yellow meant animal . . . I had never run across goldish-silverish copper before. What the hell was I supposed to do with that? It didn’t even sound right. The creature registered a rose gold color . . . I’d get laughed at.

Julie tilted her head. “It’s not that variable.”

“What do you mean?” Curran asked.

“Magic isn’t usually one color,” she said.

“The m-scanners print it as one color because they’re not really that precise,” I said.

“Real magic shifts and changes shades,” Julie said. “Ghoul magic looks yellow-orange but it’s more like streaks of olive and orange mixing together with some really light brown. Even the vampires have traces of red and blue in their purple.” She glanced up. “Whatever that is, it’s very uniform. There are very light flecks of gold and silver in it, but most of it is one color.”

A uniform magic signature meant whatever made it emitted very concentrated specific magic. “Any blue?”

Julie shook her head.

Blue stood for human magic. Any sort of human derivative, like a ghoul’s or a shapeshifter’s, showed blue in their magic signature. They could never completely get rid of the traces of their humanity. Whatever this was didn’t start out as a human.

I rubbed my face. It didn’t give me any new insights. “Whereabout is this copper?”

Julie frowned. “About four feet above the car.”

I stepped onto the Tahoe’s hood and climbed onto its roof.

“What are you doing?” Curran asked.

“I don’t know. I’m just trying to get a sense of things.” I stood up.

“Okay, you’re in it,” Julie said.

I didn’t feel anything. I stared up at the sky, waiting for a clue to fall out of the heavens and land on my head. At this point, I’d welcome the hit.

From here I could see the whole cave, the two tunnels, the whole area from which we had come, the dirt floor against which the Tahoe had impacted, the loose soil churned by the ghouls as they scrambled across it. A glint caught my eye to the right. Something shiny reflected the light among the dirt. An identical spark glowed to the left, exactly the same distance. Hmm. I turned slowly. More sparks, buried under the dirt.

I slid off the Tahoe. From here the glint was invisible. I pulled some gauze out of my pocket, knelt in the spot I thought I saw it, and brushed at the dirt. The loose soil slid aside, revealing a narrow ribbon of translucent shiny sand. It looked brittle, but held together as if some great heat had touched the sand and half fused it into glass.

Julie knelt next to me and reached to brush more dirt off.

“Don’t touch it.” I passed her the gauze. The first rule of staying alive in Atlanta: if you see something weird, stay the hell away from it.

We began brushing the dirt aside, Julie and I from one side, Curran and Derek from the other. In twenty minutes we had it cleared and I climbed the Tahoe again. A perfectly round ribbon of glass sand, about eight inches wide, circled the vehicle, lying on top of the dirt like a thin crust of dirty ice on the surface of a pond after the first frost. Someone, probably the ghouls, had tried to cover it, but there it was.

“Copper?” I asked Julie.

She nodded.

“What does it mean?” Curran asked.

“I think there was a burst of magic up there.” I pointed to the area above the car. “It’s probably the teleportation footprint. The group of ghouls from the Oswalds’ neighborhood came here and were teleported to wherever the rest of the ghouls have gathered. And this glasslike ring is the physical evidence of it.” At least it was something. “Teleportation usually requires an anchor, some substance from the place you are teleporting to. Hugh carried water. This glass thing is probably an anchor. I definitely want a sample of it.”

Maybe if we got this analyzed, we could figure out what it was and where it came from. And then we would go there and ask the ghouls to give us Eduardo back. Pretty please with sugar on top.

“If it occurred as they teleported, who covered it?” Curran asked.

“Maybe they covered it before they teleported,” Julie said.

I jumped down from the Tahoe, pulled a ziplock bag from my pocket, and unsheathed Sarrat. “You might want to give me some space.”

They backed away.

I quickly sliced with Sarrat. The thin crust of glass broke into sections. I waited to see if it would sprout needles or deliver some other lovely surprise. It lay in the dirt, looking inert. I used the gauze to pick up a piece, about four inches wide and three inches long, and slid the translucent chunk into the ziplock evidence bag.

Julie squinted at us and wrinkled her nose. “You smell horrible. Did you guys crawl through a Dumpster?”

What would my life be without teenage sass?

“Long story,” Curran told her. “Can you see anything else?”

She shook her head. “Lots of ghouls and the copper explosion. That’s it.”

“We’re done here, then,” he said.

Eduardo had been missing for well over forty-eight hours. Every minute made finding him less likely, and I had no idea where to look next.

WE SENT DEREK and Julie back to the house, instructing them to swing by the Oswalds’ place to pick up George’s car, and drove to Eduardo’s house. The idea of Julie driving still gave me nightmares, but I had driven at her age, so I had no room to talk.

We drove with the windows down despite the cold wind. We were both too fragrant otherwise. I considered a brief detour to Cutting Edge for a quick shower, but it would be easier to just go and get the home search over with.

Eduardo lived in a nice place in Sandy Springs, a sturdy two-story brick home built post-Shift sitting on a half-acre lot. The walls of the first story looked reinforced, their windows narrow and shielded by steel bars. The second-story windows ran larger, but the steel bars on them were just as well made. No fence. Any shapeshifter gone loup or a loose vampire would scale the tallest fence in the blink of an eye, and razor wire didn’t give them much pause either. In post-Shift Atlanta fences didn’t keep monsters out. They kept people in for convenient snacking.

Curran unlocked the steel security door and then the solid inner door with the keys George left for us. Hardwood floors. Clean house, airy despite the narrow windows. Neat. Curran inhaled. “I’m getting Eduardo and George, nobody else. I’m going to walk around outside.”

I went into the kitchen. Granite countertops, clean and polished. Nice oak cabinets. Happy kitchen towels with bright red apples sewn on them. A big solid table, no frills, and only two chairs. This place must’ve cost a small fortune to rent. No signs of struggle. No blood. I kept walking. Family room. Bookshelves stood against the left wall, mostly empty. A couple of comfortable shapeshifter-sized couches, each lined with a knitted afghan, offered a soft place to sit. A stack of books lay on the coffee table, the top one half-closed because someone had stuck a pencil into it, probably to hold their place. A teacup, a little bit of tea still in the bottom, waited by the books for its owner. This wasn’t some pristine house. This was Eduardo’s home, a place where he hoped George would live with him, and I felt odd moving through this space, as if I were invading their privacy without their permission. I could picture George and Eduardo sitting here on the couch, each with their own cup of tea, reading together under the knitted blankets on the oversized couch.

No pictures on the walls. George was right. Eduardo probably didn’t keep in contact with his family. In fact, the house was barely furnished. They probably hadn’t had a chance to get all the furniture or couldn’t afford it.

The living room ended. Another room, a rectangular, relatively narrow space, lay across the hallway. Probably a formal dining room at one point, now it had been turned into an office, with a lone square window, large enough for a person to squeeze through, but too small for anything larger. A desk stood against one wall, supporting a phone and a yellow book. Weapons hung on the walls, mostly tactical blades. Most shapeshifters used their claws. A few, especially those trained specifically for combat, armed themselves with knives. Eduardo didn’t grow claws. His arsenal consisted of various short swords. Two massive weapons hung on the wall: a big steel maul with a wooden handle and an equally heavy axe. If I tried to fight with either, it would require two hands and take me ages to swing them. Eduardo could probably swing them about as easily as I swung my sword.

I paused by a pair of Iberian steel falcatas, twenty inches overall, with fourteen-inch blades, single-edged, slightly curved, and convex near the point but concave near the hilt. The swords that surprised the Romans in the Second Punic war.

I had a pair of falcatas from the same smithy—they bore the same small mark on the hilt. These were hand forged from 5160 high-carbon steel and marquenched in a molten salt bath to minimize flaws, distortions, and cracking. There was a great deal of difference between a sword and a swordlike object. I had seen very pretty blades made from stainless steel that looked great until someone actually tried to use them and they snapped in half from stress. Battle-ready swords required fatigue-resistant spring steel like 5160. Pre-Shift, people used it for truck springs. It contained chrome and silicon and was expensive, but 5160 took a hell of a lot of punishment before it broke. Eduardo had good taste.

I moved on to the desk. The corkboard held scraps of paper. Most looked like merc notes, the numbers of clients with small notations by them. 1728 Maple Drive, winged snake in a tree. 345 Calwood, feral dog. Call Guild about Walters, 5 days late on payment. I plucked the corkboard off the wall. I would go through it tonight. Unlike the fictional detectives who solved crimes in a burst of brilliance, I’ve slogged my way through investigations and I’ve learned that being thorough pays off.

A stack of open mail lay on the corner of the desk, pinned in place by a large smooth rock. I moved it aside and flipped through the stack of mail. Bills. All current, no past-due balances. A bank statement. Eduardo had a total of six thousand dollars in savings and two thousand in checking. A page was pinned to the bank statement, detailing a list of expenses, utilities, insurance, and so on, each with a notation by it written in a bold, wide hand. The amounts on some notations were multiplied by two. He was doing the budget for him and George. Underneath in big letters Eduardo had written, Need more money, and underlined it twice.

I checked the desk drawer. Paper, pens, sticky notes, a stack of gig tickets . . . I leafed through it. The most recent one was from a week ago. He must’ve filed them weekly. Some days had three gigs, sometimes six, seven hours apart. He was working himself into the ground. He would take a job, finish it, return to the Guild, and sleep there until another gig came up, and he did it day after day. George couldn’t have known. She would’ve made him stop.

I moved the gig stubs aside. A small wooden box . . . I picked it up and flicked the latch. A ring rested on the cushion of velvet. A big round sapphire set in a framework of triangular petals, resembling a lotus flower studded with tiny diamonds. The metal of the ring was solid black. Fourteen-karat gold plated with black rhodium. It would’ve been expensive before the Shift; now, with technology suffering, the price was crazy. Shapeshifters didn’t like the feel of precious metals. Silver was poison and gold was only slightly better. Rhodium insulated them against gold. Raphael had given a black rhodium ring to Andrea for her birthday, starting a craze. The Pack wouldn’t shut up about it for days.

I was looking at more than seven thousand dollars in this tiny box. George was way too practical to ever expect a black rhodium ring. If I asked her, she would tell me stainless steel was just fine. But he’d bought it for her anyway. He wanted her to have the best there was, and if she ever found out how much he worked to get it, she would probably kill him.

The sapphire caught the light from the window, the fire within sparkling, as if a drop of pure seawater had somehow crystallized, retaining all of the color and depth of the ocean inside it. The future of two people sitting here on a velvet pillow. George’s words came back to me. He could be dead in a ditch somewhere . . . Worry gnawed at me. I packed it away, into the deep place inside me, and snapped the box closed. Eduardo didn’t need my emotions. He needed my help.

I reached for the wastebasket. Sometimes the things people threw away said more than the things they chose to keep. A hilt protruded about an inch from the papers inside the basket. The pommel had the unmistakable pale softness of bone. Hmm. Odd.

I pulled the weapon out. A slightly curved dagger in a sheath, about twenty-five and a half inches long overall. The sheath was wood wrapped in black leather. Silver leaf covered the tip of the sheath and about two inches at the top, twisting into a complex ornate pattern with plaited silver wire, gilt filigree, and niello. I counted the braided strands: one, two, five total. The handle had been painstakingly carved to give the bone just enough texture so if the grip became bloodied, it wouldn’t slip from your hand. A bright blue-green turquoise stone the size of my thumbnail decorated the grip and an even larger bright-red carnelian graced the pommel, like a drop of opaque blood. Wow.

I wrapped my fingers around the grip. The bone was warm, soft, and slightly rough. Like shaking hands.

The blade came free of the scabbard with a soft whisper. The seventeen-inch double-edged blade shimmered, a ray of sun caught and bound into steel. Silver script, delicate and elegant, ran the length of the grooved blade. I didn’t speak Arabic, but I’ve learned to recognize some verses. It was often used by Muslims against evil spirits. Hasbiya Allahu la ilaha illa huwa àlayhi tawakkaltu wahuwa rabbu al-àrshi al-àzhim. Allah suffices me; there is no god but He; in Him I place my sole trust; He is the Lord of the mighty Throne.

A kindjal dagger. Not one of Russian make. The profile was too curved. This was a kindjal with an Arabic spin on it. I balanced the dagger on my finger. Perfect. Full tang, sharp but not brittle-edged, and the kind of weight distribution that let the dagger sink into the body almost on its own. This wasn’t a weapon. It was a masterpiece. The kind of blade you treasure and pass on to your children.

So the falcatas were on the wall, but the kindjal got thrown into the wastebasket. Why? If Eduardo didn’t like it, why not sell it? He needed the money.

The tiny hairs on the back of my neck rose. My shoulders tensed. Someone was watching me.

I looked up slowly. Outside the window, the sun was beginning to set. Someone stood in the shadow of a tree about fifty yards away, half hidden by a low branch. I could barely make out a dark silhouette by the darker trunk.

Three seconds to the door, five seconds to cover the distance. Too long. If the watcher wasn’t completely human, he’d be gone before I’d get out the door.

I leaned forward, focusing on the watcher. My body tensed.

The shadow was still there, by the trunk. Definitely human.

Come out, come out, whoever you are.

The human shape moved.

That’s it. Come forward. Come out to play.

The branch slid out of the way.

I reached for my sword.

Curran stepped into the open.

Damn it.

I grabbed a canvas sack from a shelf, slid the dagger, the corkboard, and the bills into it, and marched outside. He was still standing by the tree.

“Quit scaring me.”

“Eduardo was being watched.” He nodded at the trunk of the tree. A barely perceptible scrape marked the bark about three feet up. I grabbed a thick bottom branch, put my foot against the scrape, and pushed up into the tree, into the spot where the thick trunk split into twin branches. If I crouched, I could still see the window and the desk by it. If the light was on, I could see inside the office.

“It’s a layered scent,” Curran said. “Human. Male. He came here several times. Last time a couple of days ago.”

“A stalker?” I jumped out of the tree.

“Looks that way.”

“Did he do anything while here?”

Curran shook his head. “No. He didn’t jerk off, didn’t spit, and didn’t sweat. Occasionally he was in the tree.” Curran crouched by the dry leaves and mulch at the roots. “Most people move around while they wait. They shift foot to foot.” He pointed at the mulch with his hand.

“Doesn’t look disturbed,” I said.

He nodded. “The scent is old but dense. He came here often and stayed for some time in one spot without fidgeting. This is a guy who knows how to not be seen. He wasn’t indecisive. He wasn’t worried about being caught. He just stood and watched. When he was done, he walked to the end of the street. The trail ends there. Likely he had gotten into a car.”

Disciplined and patient. Good for him, bad for us.

“Would Eduardo know he was being watched?”

“Hard to say.” Curran frowned. “If he were a cat or a wolf, he would’ve patrolled his territory, so he would notice the scent immediately. Eduardo is a bison. Hell if I know.”

“Is it possible he could’ve missed the scent?”

“This time of year, the wind usually blows southeast. I didn’t smell him until I was right up on the tree. Eduardo wouldn’t have any reason to come out here, unless he was mowing the yard, which he probably won’t do for another couple of months. So yes, it is possible he missed it. But bison have good hearing and an acute sense of smell. So he may have known about it.”

“If he had known about it, wouldn’t he have ruffled the mulch or something to put his territorial stamp on it?”

“I don’t know. I have no idea what bison do besides charging intruders.”

“Could we ask somebody?”

Curran stared at me helplessly. “The Pack has one werebison and he’s missing.”

Ugh. Every clue we found led to a dead end. “You’re no help.”

“Why am I the expert all of a sudden?”

“Of the two of us, you have more stalking experience.”

He leaned back. “Really?”

“Yes. When you let yourself into my apartment before we were dating, did you fidget while you watched me?”

“Will you let it go?” he growled.

“No.”

“I didn’t fidget. I checked on you to make sure you hadn’t gotten yourself killed. I wanted to know that you weren’t dying slowly of your wounds, because you have no sense and half of the time you couldn’t afford a medmage. I didn’t stand there and watch you. I came in, made sure you were okay, and left. It wasn’t creepy.”

“It was a little creepy.”

“It worked, didn’t it?”

“Worked how?”

“You’re still alive.”

“Yes, of course, take all the credit.”

We looked at the mulch some more. We were both irritated. Eduardo had been missing for far too long.

“No ghouls?” I asked.

“No ghouls. I walked the entire perimeter of the property. You find out anything?”

“He was making a budget for him and George. He needed money.”

Curran stared at the tree, frustration clear on his face.

“Also this.” I showed him the dagger.

“Nice,” Curran said.

“I found it in the trash can in his office. It was made for a man.”

“How do you know?”

“Because this cost a very solid chunk of money. If someone was willing to spend that much on a gift for a woman, it would have gold on it somewhere. In Islam the wearing of gold and silk for men is haram, forbidden. Muslim men are supposed to be determined, steadfast, and resolute, dedicated to their faith and the protection of their family. Gold and silk are signs of luxury, which are fine for women but frowned upon for men.” I stroked the silver on the scabbard. “This is a dagger made for a male. It has a protective supplication on it, and it’s decorated with feruz, turquoise, which helps obtain divine help and victory in battle, and aqiq, carnelian, which protects against evil and misfortune.”

I realized he was staring at me.

“What?”

“How do you even remember all this?”

“It’s my job to remember.” Blades were the tools of my trade. If it cut a human body, and it cut it well, I knew something about it.

He took the blade from me and smelled it. “It’s been soaked in something that kills the scent and then polished with clove oil. Smells like one of your swords.”

“This is not Eduardo’s usual fare,” I said. “He tends to wider blades or heavy weapons. This is a precision self-defense dagger. Ghouls originate in Arabia. Wolf griffins are geographically close. Was Eduardo a Muslim, by any chance?”

“No. We would’ve seen him pray while on the ship, and he and I talked before and he mentioned he wasn’t religious. Maybe he beat up his stalker and took the dagger away. But then why not sell it? Why throw it away?”

“I have no idea. I can take the dagger to a smith tomorrow.”

“If it was given to him, I’m wondering about the thinking behind giving a shapeshifter something decorated with silver,” Curran said. “Either the dagger was made for someone else originally or the gift giver is clueless.”

“Or he might have thought that Eduardo may have to attack something that doesn’t like silver.” I sighed.

In any investigation there comes a time when you run out of things to do. We had just hit that point. Nothing else could be done until the morning.

“Let’s go home,” Curran said.