The color spread from pink to red, and was getting darker. "Do not use terms of endearment to me. I am no one's sweetheart."

I'd been all set to make another scathing remark, but that stopped me, and I thought of something better. "How sad for you."

"What are you talking about?"

"How sad that you are no one's sweetheart."

The color that had been fading from his face flushed dark now, almost as if he were blushing. "Are you feeling sorry for me?" His voice rose a notch, not yelling but like the low growl of a dog just before it bites. As he got more emotional, the accent got thicker. Very German, very lowland. Grandmother Blake was from Baden-Baden, on the border between Germany and France, but great-uncle Otto had been from Hamburg. I couldn't be a hundred percent sure, but it sounded like the same accent.

"Everyone should be someone's sweetheart," I said, but my voice was mild. I wasn't angry. I was baiting him, and I shouldn't have. My only excuse was that all the talk of rape had made me scared of him, and I didn't like that. So I was doing something that was actually very masculine. I was pulling the tail of the beast to make myself feel braver. Stupid. The moment I realized why I was doing it, I tried to stop.

"I am no one's fool, and that means I am no one's sweetheart." He spoke carefully, enunciating each word but his accent was thick enough to walk on. He had started to move slowly around the table, muscles tense like some big predatory cat.

I flashed my jacket on the left side, showing the gun. He stopped moving forward, but his face was furious. "Let's start over, Olaf," I said. "Edward and Bernardo here told me what a big bad guy you were and that made me nervous, which made me defensive. When I'm defensive, I'm usually a pain in the ass. Sorry about that. Let's pretend that I wasn't being a smart ass, and you weren't being all big and bad, and start over."

He stilled. That was the only word I had for it. The quivering tension in his muscles eased like water running down hill. But it wasn't gone, just shoved away somewhere. I had a glimpse into Olaf. He operated from a great dark pit of rage. That it was directed mostly at women was accidental. The rage needed some target or he'd turn into one of those people that drive their cars through restaurant windows and start shooting strangers.

"Edward has been most insistent that you are to be here, but nothing you will say can make me like it." His words were pulling free of the accent as he regained control of his temper.

I nodded. "Are you from Hamburg?"

He blinked, and for an instant puzzlement replaced the sullenness. "What?"

"Are you from Hamburg?"

He seemed to think about it for a second or two, then gave a small nod.

"I thought I recognized the accent."

The scowl was back full force. "You are an expert on accents?" He managed to sound sarcastic.

"No. My Uncle Otto was from Hamburg."

He blinked again, and the scowl wilted around the edges. "You are not German." He sounded very sure.

"My father's family is; from Baden-Baden on the edge of the Black Forest but Uncle Otto was from Hamburg.

"You said only your uncle had the accent."

"By the time I came along, most of the family, except for my grandmother, had been in this country so long there was no accent, but Uncle Otto never lost his."

"He's dead now." Olaf made it half question, half statement.

I nodded.

"How did he die?"

"Grandma Blake says Aunt Gertrude nagged him to death."

His lips twitched. "Women are tyrants if a man allows it." His voice was a touch softer now.

"That's true of men or women. If one partner is weak, the other partner moves in and takes charge."

"Nature abhors a vacuum," Bernardo said.

We glanced at him. I don't know what the expressions were on our faces, but Bernardo held his hands up and said, "Sorry to interrupt."

Olaf and I went back to looking at each other. He was close enough now that I might not be able to draw the Browning in time. But if I moved away now, all my peace-making efforts would be for nothing. He'd either be insulted or see it as weakness on my part. Neither reaction would be helpful. So I stood my ground and tried not to look as tense as I felt, because no matter how calm I sounded, my stomach was in one hard knot. I had one chance to make this work. If I blew it, then the rest of this visit was going to be an armed camp, and we needed to be solving the crime, not fighting each other.

"You are either a leader or being led," Olaf said. "Which are you?"

"I'll follow if someone's worth following."

"And who decides, Anita Blake, who is worth following?"

I had to smile. "I do."

His lips twitched again. "And if Edward put me in charge, would you follow me?"

"I trust Edward's judgment, so yeah. But let me ask you the same question. Would you follow me if Edward put me in charge?"

He flinched. "No."

I nodded. "Great, we know where we stand."

"And where is that?" he asked.

"I'm sort of goal-oriented, Olaf. I came down here to solve a crime and I'm going to do that. If that means at some point taking orders from you, so be it. If Edward puts me in charge of you, and you don't like it, take it up with him."

"Just like a woman to put the responsibility off on a man's shoulders."

I counted to ten, and shrugged. "You talk like your opinion matters to me, Olaf. I don't give a damn what you think of me."

"Women always care what men think of them."

I laughed then. "You know I was starting to feel insulted, but you are just too funny." I meant it.

He leaned towards me trying to use his height to intimidate. It was impressive, but I've been the smallest kid around for as long as I can remember. "I will not take it up with Edward. I will take it up with you. Or don't you have the balls to stand up to me?" He gave a harsh laugh. "Oh, I forgot, you don't have balls." He reached for me in a quick motion. I think he meant to grope me, but I didn't wait to see. I threw myself backward into the floor and was drawing the Browning before my butt hit the floor. Drawing the gun meant I didn't have time to slap my hands down and take the impact the way you were supposed to. I hit hard and felt the shock all the way up my spine.

He'd drawn a blade as long as his forearm from somewhere. The blade was coming down, and the Browning wasn't quite pointed at his chest. It would be a race to see who drew first blood, but it was almost a guarantee that we'd both bleed. Everything slowed down to that crystalline vision, as if I had all the time in the world to point the gun, to avoid the blade, and at the same time everything was happening too fast. Too fast to stop it or change it.

Edward's voice cut through the room. "Stop it! The first one to draw blood, I will personally shoot."

We froze in mid-action. Olaf blinked, and it was as if time had resumed normal flow. Maybe, just maybe, we weren't going to kill each other tonight. But I had the gun pointed at his chest, and his hand was still upraised with the knife. Though knife seemed too small a word, sword was more like it. Where had he pulled it from?

"Drop the knife, Olaf," Edward said.

"Have her put up the gun, first." I met those hard brown eyes and saw a hatred there like what I'd seen earlier in Lieutenant Marks' face. They both hated me for being things that I could not change: one for an innate God-given talent, and the other because I was a woman. Funny, how one unreasoning hatred looks so much like another.

I kept the gun very steadily pointed at his chest. I'd let all the air go out of my body, and was waiting, waiting for Olaf to decide what we'd be doing tonight. Either we'd be fighting crime, or we'd be digging a grave, maybe two if he was good enough. I knew what my vote was, but I also knew that the final vote wasn't mine. It wasn't even Olaf's. It was his hatred's.