I moved toward Freya without a single word. As near as I could tell, no one had marked my arrival, so entranced were most with the story that Isolde was telling. My friend seemed paralyzed with fear, and I couldn't help but notice her casual business attire did not blend in. Had she been taken straight from work? What had they done to her?

I said not a word, and the first notice she took of me was when I stepped past her and struck the tall young man standing to her left in the nose. The man hadn't had a hold of her, but clearly he was the flunky who was there to make sure she didn't leave.

Well, he wasn't anymore. So hard did I strike the fellow that he was dead before he hit the floor. I looked at Freya, gently touched her shoulder, and gave her my full regard. There were no bruises, no hint of blood, so she hadn't been harmed.

Bringing her here was a warning to me and nothing more.

A cold fury grew inside of me, the kind that does not often beset me. "It'll be alright," I whispered. Then I moved between Freya and anyone who might do her harm.

The collapse of the guard had made an unpleasant thud, but it took a few moments for those assembled in the room to realize something had transpired. It was only then that Isolde turned and saw me. There was a look of triumph on her face that soon was replaced by a look of shock and fear.

Had she truly imagined I would take this outrage meekly? Did she know nothing of me at all? Others had tried to do thus in the past. My thoughts turned to my friend, Ben. And then they turned ....

I knew what I had to do. Nothing in my world would be safe or stable if Whitefarrow and his fools could walk all over me, scuttling everything I touched. Something cold and nasty gripped my ugly black little heart as I laid my hand on my knife.

For the haziest of moments my two manias collided in full, my deep yearning for revenge and my desperate affection for Freya-Lynn. For just that faint instant, every imaginable wickedness ran through my heart, thoughts of which I never imagined myself capable. Half of me wanted to grab my friend and flee, to protect her at all costs. Another half of me screamed that I should dash out her brains myself to prove that I couldn't be intimidated.

I'd never felt so much like a monster, and a brief shutter ran through me. Then I turned to look into Freya's eyes. The fear on her face had eased, and it now was joined with a look of trust and hope. And I remembered that I'd promised this woman I'd never harm her.

I often lie to myself—I wish that weren't true—but I strive never to break my word to another, especially to her.

"It'll be okay," I again whispered to her. And then I sprang.

I'm not above boasting. I'd never moved so fast, and I cleared the 50 feet to the far side of the room in a single bound, my left foot coming to rest on the newel post of a metal staircase, and I launched myself at Isolde on the balcony above.

Before anyone could stop me, my hand had found its way to her pretty little neck, and the razor edge of my knife was against her throat. For a tiny moment, something stayed my hand. The blade was sharp, but it wouldn't kill her, at least not right away, and she was strong. Not so strong as me, but if I hacked enough times before her bodyguards ....

"Please stop."

I didn't remember Isolde's voice being so deep.

"Please stop," I heard again.

There was something calm and insistent in the voice, and something familiar. The hairs on the back of my neck went up. From the corner of my eye, I saw him, my old boyfriend, Rohan. The fellow I'd been hoping to avoid.

"Could we not do this?" he said, as if someone hadn't just kidnapped and threatened my girlfriend.

"This has nothing to do with you," I said.

"I want you to live," he said. "And I want Isolde to live."

I hesitated. I couldn't think of a single reason to relent. But he'd always been so insistent, so persuasive. Why had he and I parted ways?

"Could you give us the room please."

To my surprise, those in the room almost immediately began to leave, even those people I presumed to be bodyguards—pathetic ones at that. Soon it was just Isolde, Rohan, and me. Freya had collapsed onto a small couch near where she stood and fought to hold back tears. Someone even had dragged off the body of the flunky.

I turned to place Isolde between Rohan and myself, and chanced to look into her eyes. She'd said not a word, clearly was terrified, but there was something else in her eyes I could not define.

In the end, it wasn't any words, but another flurry of butterflies hitting my stomach that caused me to relent. Why I should feel nostalgia for Isolde, I did not know. But I took the knife from her throat.

It always was a marvel how elegant she was, and she now regained her bearing in a heartbeat. What am I saying? She never really lost it, even with my blade against her. I'd always admired that about her.

"Can we talk now?" asked Rohan from below.

Isolde took a careful breath and began to descend the stairs. I followed. We had again reverted to our little pidgin, a mix of languages old and new, that we flitted between as expression required.

My first stop was to see Freya, and I assured her that there was a misunderstanding, and I soon would have her home. She sniffled several times and nodded her agreement. She still was terrified, but none the worse for wear.

And she'd seen me vault 50 feet across a room and ascend a wall in a single hop. Well, I never lied about what I was.

When I returned to the others, Rohan was leaning against a heavy library table. There was something comfortable in the posture of the big handsome Rajput bastard. And then it hit me why Isolde had flinched when I asked about her love life. Rohan and I had been together for nearly 40 years, but that had been ages ago.

"So let's talk," I said.

"You didn't have to kill Rolph," Isolde snapped.

"Really? You kidnapped a friend of mine to intimidate me."

"That never should have happened," said Rohan. His eyes flitted toward Isolde. "It was a terrible, terrible mistake. Please accept our apologies."

I looked to Isolde, who had begun to pace. Her bearing finally had cracked. I'd never seen her agitated before, not once. And it was a surprise now.

"One friend of yours dies," she spat. "One friend! And you spend the next 30 years waging a war against all of us. You killed someone in my house. How dare you!"

Imagine my astonishment when tears sprang to Isolde's eyes. Something in me crumbled a little bit.

Rohan gently caressed her arm. "Can Adia and I speak alone for a time?" he asked her. His voice was gentle, and I was fully aware of how persuasive his arm caresses could be.

Isolde pressed the palm of her hand against her mouth and nodded once before retiring through a set of double doors across the room. She walked some paces down a hallway before settling on a settee along the way. I still could see her profile from where I stood, and it was a picture of stress and anxiety.

"You scare the hell out of her."

"Good."

"No, not good. Am I not still your friend?"

I said nothing, but took up a seat opposite him. I still could see Isolde in the distance.

"Is Isolde not still your friend? Has she done something to forfeit that right?"

"I know who she does business with."

"So what?" he said. "A lot of people do. Adia, 30 years ago, there was enormous sympathy for you. We all get attached to people in this world sometimes. And when they die, it's painful. What Whitefarrow did was bullshit, and everyone knew it."

"But you still do business with him."

"We have been working for 20 years to disentangle ourselves from that asshole, but, yes, we still do some business with him. Look ... Adia, you've been picking away at his affairs for years, and you occasionally will hurt him. Marion, that really hurt him. But do you imagine he's been sitting around with his thumb up his ass for all this time?"

"What do you mean?" Okay, maybe I didn't know everything I thought I knew.

"He's been ingratiating himself, making himself indispensable to people like us. Half the folks I know have their hands in his pocket in some way."

I made a derisive snort, but the things Rohan was saying made perfect sense. I was an outlier, and my enemy was at the center of all things.

"Adia, no one likes that guy, but everyone fears you. You have no idea how many phone calls I get a year from people shitting themselves because they thought they saw you in their rearview mirror, all because they took a loan from Whitefarrow, or he helped them finance a piece of real estate."

"You could have ...," I began to say.

"What? Called you and explained all this? How? You're never in the same place twice, never have the same name. I wouldn't know how to get in touch with you if I had to."

"Then you tried to have me killed."

"That was Whitefarrow working through some idiot employee of ours. And I did everything I could to cover up that mess at the warehouse. Some of us don't want to see our friends in prison."

Just what the hell did that mean? He spoke again before I had a chance to ask, charming articulate bastard. Then I remembered what I always hated about him, how charming and articulate he was.

"Do you know what a British jail was like in 1903?" he asked me.

Pardon? "Why would I?"

"A better question is why would I know? ... Do you remember the little gift you left me after we split up?"

I was beginning to have an inkling of a memory, but I said instead, "No."

"You murdered my downstairs neighbor, strangled him with his own guts, and then left his body on my back porch."

"I'm sorry if he was a friend of yours." I made the words sound sincere. Because I felt that way, deeply. I had been really very petty when he and I split. I'm shit at breakups.

"He wasn't a friend, but I didn't find the episode funny. Neither did the London police, who put me in jail for it. I was locked up for almost two weeks before I broke out."

"Oh, shit."

"I couldn't go back to England for years. There still were wanted posters on me circulating throughout the empire into the 1940s." He tried to hide a smile. "I was even picked up in Canada in '27. The only reason they let me go was because I looked too young to be the notorious Chiswick Strangler."

"Oh, shit."

"You know, for all that nonsense and annoyance," he said, "if at any point you would have walked up and said, 'Rohan, I'm sorry about that thing I did,' I would have forgiven you on the spot." He reached out and touched my hand. "Because that's what friends do."

Why had I broken up with this man? Then it shot through my mind for a cynical minute that Rohan was manipulating me. He was a clever bastard, and we all were duplicitous by our nature. ... But no. He'd never been that way with me. He'd always been kind to me and honest, even when I hadn't always reciprocated.

"I'm sorry I got you in that jam," I said.

"It's okay. Water under the bridge."

I looked up to where Isolde still sat on the settee, elbow on knee, face in palm, looking elegant even while having an anxiety attack. My next words were hard—I still did not completely trust her, or him—but the words were sincere.

"And I'm sorry I frightened you, Isolde. It really was good seeing you today. And I'm sorry I desecrated your home. I won't ever do it again."

She gave me a weak smile, but said nothing.

"And we're sorry for having upset your friend," said Rohan. "It won't ever happen again."

"Are we friends again?" I asked.

"We were always friends." He gave my hand another gentle pat. "But you need to end this thing with Whitefarrow, one way or the other. And leave the rest of us out of it."

"I will," I promised.

There still was a profound anger and suspicion in me, so deeply had those two notions been engrained into my very being, and I nearly refuted my promise the moment I gave it. But I did not—I could not.

As much as it galled me, everything Rohan said was true. I had chipped away at my enemy's possessions, but far more people had suffered than needed to, and my enemy still was there. Stronger than ever.

Perhaps Rohan sensed the set of my jaw, or the look that remained in my eye. It was my damnable pride. He once had told me that I never did anything meekly, not even the dishes.

"You should take your friend home," he said in soothing words. "I'll have your car brought around."

"I sent it away." I stood, and he did too.

"I'll have one of ours brought around."

"I don't trust your drivers."

"Fair enough," he said. "He fished around in his pocket and recovered a set of keys. "Take mine. Just leave it ...."

"I'm keeping it."

"Okay." That damn look of genuineness he often had crossed his face at my pettiness. "If you don't like it, bring it back. I'll get you another."

"Could you stop being so pleasant?" I said to him as I went to recover Freya, who still had not said a word. I didn't imagine it was shock, just garden variety fear that for the moment had left her mute. It wasn't an uncommon reaction for people who discovered us for the first time.

"What would you like me to say?" he asked.

"Something shitty and petty. I'm foregoing a vendetta, so I'd like to at least leave here feeling I have the moral high ground."

"You're the third best fuck I ever had," he said without hesitation.

I heard Isolde laugh in the other room, and I made my decision. I was going to trust my two one-time and future friends.

"I'm leaving for New York right away. Make sure no one harms my friend Freya while I'm gone."

"You have our word on it."