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.