She leaned closer, even rested her fingers on his so she could steady it where she needed. “It looks like d-e-r something. V-a-m . . .” She straightened. “It’s German. Der Vampir.”

Drake’s brows flew upward. “Is that a cognate? ‘The vampire’?”

Margot nodded. And shuddered. “A morbid name for a blade.”

“Certainly not one you’d carve into a kitchen knife.” He set it back down and rubbed a hand up and down her back. “How did you manage to disarm him?”

“Willa and Barclay taught me. Self-defense, they say, is every girl’s best friend.”

His hand hooked over her shoulder. Held tight. “Remind me to thank her on Sunday. Can you tell me what happened? Describe the man?”

She nodded. But somehow, with his arm so comfortably around her and the warmth of the flat seeping in, she became more aware every second of how weak her knees felt. And how much she didn’t want to admit to him that he’d been right to wonder about Williams. “Could we sit first? With that tea?”

“Of course.”

He carried the cups while she moved to the couch, casting a long look at Dot’s closed bedroom door. “Should we check on her?”

“Only if she’s in there more than half an hour. She knows how to calm herself and never thanks me for interrupting her process.”

Margot clasped her elbows. She still had much to learn about her best friend, to be sure.

Drake slid the tea onto the end table and motioned for her to join him. “Red said he’d be here by six-thirty. If she hasn’t emerged before then, we’ll go in.”

She nodded and forced her feet to move again. Six steps, a two-hundred-seventy degree pivot, and she sat beside him.

He pressed a warm cup of tea into her hands. And waited.

She took a sip and then began, detailing everything she could recall.

“I recognized him,” she said only after the rest had been summarized. She looked up from the tea into Drake’s silver-blue eyes. “It was John Williams. He didn’t look like he had at the Go game—he’d been hunched over then, disheveled-looking, always a bit unfocused in the eyes. He was different tonight. Standing tall—far taller than I thought he was.”

Drake went stiff beside her. “How tall?”

“Probably . . .” She closed her eyes, visualized the distance she’d had to look up into his face, calculated. “I’d say between six-four and six-four-and-a-half, depending on the soles of his shoes.”

He hissed out a breath. “What about his hair? The color of his coat?”

Her brows drew down. “Dark—longish. The first time I saw him he was in a blue coat, but this one was grey. Why?”

He scooted forward a bit and angled in. “That night you ran from the flat—the bloke you ran into. Was that him?”