"How long has it been?" Annja asked. "Since you tried to blow him up, I mean?"

"Twenty years. In Rio de Janeiro."

"Twenty years ago?"

"Yes." Garin's attention was on the armed guard approaching the car.

Annja thought he had to be joking. But as he thumbed down the window, he was tense as piano wire. It wasn't a joke. But twenty years?

"You hold your age well," she commented dryly.

"You," Garin assured her, "have no idea." He raised his voice and spoke to the guard. "Stay back from the car."

The guard started to lift his assault rifle.

"If you raise that rifle," Garin said, showing the man the big pistol, "I'm going to kill you."

The guard froze. "Mr. Roux," he said in a calm voice.

"Yes," Roux's unmistakable voice came over the radio.

"Your guest is armed."

"Of course he is. I wouldn't expect him any other way. Let him pass. I'll deal with him."

"Yes, sir." The guard waved to his counterpart inside the gatehouse.

Garin smiled but never moved the pistol from the center of the man's chest. "Thank you." The gates separated and he rolled forward, following the ornate drive to the big house.

"A lot of testosterone in the air tonight," Annja commented. She had to work to make herself sound calm. She was anything but.

"There is a lot," Garin said, "that you don't know."

Roux stood outside the house, defiant and confident, as if he were a general in control of a battlefield instead of a lion trapped in his den. He wore a dark suit that made him look like a wealthy businessman. His hair and beard were carefully combed.

A young man in butler's livery opened Annja's car door. He said, "Welcome, miss," in a British accent sharp as a paper cut.

Annja stepped out, still wearing the blouse and shorts she had worn for her research trip through Lozère that morning and afternoon. She felt extremely underdressed.

Garin's black clothes suited the night and the surroundings. He slipped the big pistol under his jacket.

"Miss Creed," Roux greeted her with a smile, as if they had just been introduced and none of the previous day's weirdness had occurred between them. "Welcome to my home."

Annja tried not to appear awestruck.

The home was huge. Palatially huge. Ivy clung to the stone walls and almost pulled the house into the trees that surrounded it, softening the straight lines and absorbing the colors. The effect was clearly deliberate.

The butler stood by Roux and his eyes never left Garin. In response, Garin bared his teeth in a shark's merciless grin.

"You have a new lapdog," Garin said.

"Do not," Roux growled in warning, "trifle with Henshaw. If you do, one of you will surely be dead. I will not suffer his loss willingly."

Roux even talked differently in his home, Annja realized. He's really buying into the whole lord-of-the-manor thing.

"An Englishman?" Garin snorted derisively. "After everything we've been through, you trust your life to an Englishman?"

"I do," Roux said. "I've found few others worth trusting."

Garin folded his arms and said nothing.

Roux turned his attention to Annja. "You must be tired."

"No," Annja replied.

"Hungry?"

"No," she said. She returned his bright blue gaze full measure. "Eating with you is too expensive."

Roux laughed in honest delight. "I did hope you had enough to cover the bill."

"Thanks," Annja said. "Tons." She held out her hand. "You owe me for your half of the bill."

Amused, Roux snaked a hand into his pocket and pulled out a thick sheaf of bills. He pressed several into her hand.

Annja counted out enough to cover his half of the bill, then gave the rest back.

He frowned a little. "I'm sure the tab was more than that."

"It was," Annja said. "I only took half. Plus half the tip."

"I would have paid for it all."

"No," she told him. "I don't want to owe you anything."

Roux put the money way. "There's still the bit about me saving your life in the cave."

"Really?" Annja smiled sweetly. She spoke without turning around, but she could see the man in her peripheral vision. "Garin?"

"Yes," he replied.

"Do you want to kill Mr. Roux right now?"

"Nothing," the big man said, "would make me happier."

"Please don't."

Garin's smile broadened. "If you insist."

"I do." Looking directly at Roux, Annja nodded. "We're even. I just saved your life."

A displeased look filled Roux's patrician features. "You're going to be trouble," he declared.

"I find I'm liking her more and more all the time," Garin said.

"If nothing else, this should be interesting," Roux announced.

"I want to see the charm," Annja said.

Roux ushered them into his house.

If the house had appeared wondrous and magical on the outside, it was even more so on the inside.

Annja gave up trying to act unimpressed. Paintings, ceramic works of art, stained glass, weapons, books and other pieces that should have been in museums instead of a man's home adorned the spacious rooms. Most of them had private lighting.

If Roux wasn't already wealthy, he would be if he sold off his collections. And a crook besides. Several of the pieces Annja saw were on lists of stolen items or had been banned from being removed from their country of origin.

The trip back to his personal office took time. Garin – obviously no lover of antiquities – looked bored as he trailed along after them, but Roux took obvious delight in showing off his acquisitions. He even offered brief anecdotes or histories regarding them.

Annja didn't know how long it took to get to the sword, but she was convinced it was a trip she'd never forget.

"The sword, the sword," Garin said when he could no longer hold his tongue. "Come on, Roux. You and I have waited for over five hundred years. Let's not wait any longer."

Five hundred years? Annja thought, realizing only then what he'd said. She figured it was only an exaggeration meant to stress a point.

Roux's office offered an even more enticing obstacle course that cried out for Annja's attention. Evidently he kept his favorite – and unique – items from his collections there.

Finally, though, with much prodding from Garin, and a promise of physical violence that almost triggered an assault from Henshaw, they reached Roux's vault room.

The huge door swiveled open. Roux disappeared inside the vault and returned carrying a case. He placed the case on the huge mahogany desk and opened it.

Something deeply moving attracted Annja's attention even more strongly than all the priceless objects she'd passed to reach this point. She stared at the pieces that had once made up the sword blade. Some of them were only thin needles of steel. Others looked as if they'd burned black in a fire. None of them would ever fit together again.

Yet she knew they all belonged together.

Somehow, on a level that she truly didn't understand, Annja knew that all the pieces were there. And that they had at last come home.

Unbidden, she stepped forward and reached out her right hand. Heat radiated against her palm.

"The pieces are hot," she said.

Standing beside her, Roux stretched out a hand. "I don't feel anything," he said.