Nora stepped out of the bathroom wearing the hotel’s white bathrobe, Le Richelieu embroidered in gold thread over the breast pocket.

“Let’s go outside,” she said, picking up a chair to take onto the terrace. “Can you grab the door?”

Cyrus stopped her. “Let me carry that.”

“Oh my,” she said. “Aren’t you chivalrous?”

“Just polite,” Cyrus said.

“That was the beginning, you know,” Nora said, holding the glass door open for Cyrus. He watched as Søren, the Viking, put his paper down on the table and folded it neatly. One of those types. A little anal. A bit too proper. Secret wild side. Cyrus knew the type. Used to be the type.

“The beginning of what?” he asked Nora.

“Chivalry. The subculture of male submission,” Nora said as she sat in the open chair, coffee cup cradled in both hands. Cyrus set his chair down and sat.

Nora continued, “It began in the courts of medieval Europe. Supposedly. Knights would choose a lady—almost always married because that was more proper—and he would devote himself to serving her chastely. Poems, heroic deeds, gifts… It was the start of the idea of Woman Superior and Man Inferior—not a common concept you find in most cultures outside a handful of matriarchal societies.”

“So you’re saying kink comes from King Arthur,” Cyrus said. “Crazy.”

“I still have male subs who bring me gifts, write me poems, offer to do all sorts of things for me. One offered to have him killed.” She nodded at the Viking.

“You never told me that,” the Viking said, giving her a look. Same look Cyrus might have given Paulina if she said one of her exes had offered to kill him.

“I wanted to keep my options open,” she said, winking at Cyrus.

The Viking picked up his coffee cup and drank from it, keeping an eye steady on her the whole time.

“I didn’t expect to be having these conversations when I agreed to find out the cause of Father Ike’s suicide,” Cyrus said.

“Any new news there?” Søren the Viking asked.

“He called Nora before he shot himself, and he had that thing in his bedside table,” Cyrus said. “That’s all I got right now.”

“Did you decide what it was precisely?” the Viking asked Nora.

“Some custom piece,” she said. “Stainless steel cock blocker. With that thing on, no way would he be able to get an erection without agony. Like putting your dick in a spiked vice. I need one.”

The Viking’s brow furrowed. Cyrus crossed his legs.

“And kinky men really get into that?”

“Oh yeah,” she said. Her green eyes went bright and wide. “I could tell you stories, Cyrus Tremont.”

“Don’t tell me any stories,” Cyrus said. “No stories at all.” The Viking chuckled.

“Wish I could help you more,” Nora said.

“You could help me find Mr. Edge. I better ask him if he remembers giving your card to anyone down here.”

“You can ask him,” Nora said, “but I asked him yesterday and he says he didn’t.”