Kingsley was not in a good mood for the next week. True, he had no cause to complain. He’d completed his assignment in Manhattan, therefore it was no real surprise they’d recalled him. He thought, at first, that they’d brought him back because they needed him for another job. Oh, but no. They’d brought him back because they were done paying for him to live in New York. They could keep a closer eye on him in Paris. He’d learned from Bernie that his superiors worried he was a “risk” since he had dual U.S./French citizenship. Better to bring him back to France and remind him who he worked for than to leave him in New York in the bed of a rich, beautiful woman who was happily letting him take advantage of her money, her penthouse, and her body. They did have a point. In Paris, he had to pretend to be an American as part of his cover. In Manhattan, he could be as French as he wanted. He felt more French there than here.

And he fucking loved living in New York. If the feds had come knocking on his door and offered him a job, it would have been “Au revoir, Gay Paris” and “Bonjour, Big Apple” in a heartbeat.

C’est la vie, this was the job. No one had lied to him about what he was getting into when he’d signed up for it. Once more he was John Kingsley Edge, struggling American writer trying to live out his Hemingway-in-exile dreams. Picking up university students and taking them back to his garret apartment as he waited for his next assignment to come down the pike, as his American grandfather would say. Kingsley had never figured out what “the pike” was, but apparently things to do came down it.

And every night he dreamed of the dark forest where the boy he loved and hated in equal measure met him and hurt him and made him regret his every waking hour. He despised the boy for invading his dreams, but despised himself even more for not despising the boy enough. Finally, on the eighth morning after eight nights of dreaming, Kingsley gave up and called Madame.

He didn’t know why he did it, other than he wanted to see what would happen if he went back to that phone booth and dialed that number again.

The phone rang.

And it rang.

And it rang.

And it rang.

After the fifth ring, Kingsley hung up. He stared at the black phone in the cradle and tried to tell himself he was glad no one answered. Perhaps he could let go of that part of him that wanted to submit and to serve, he could finally let go of that part of him that still loved that ice-cold boy who lived in the forest in his dreams. Life had given him so much pain and suffering, it made no sense to him that he craved more of it. Maybe that’s why he’d called Madame. Because if anyone knew the answer to why he craved pain when life had given him more than enough of it, it would be her.

But it wasn’t meant to be. Perhaps Madame was done with him, after all.

Kingsley left the phone booth and started to walk away. He made it five steps before the phone rang behind him.

He froze. The phone rang again.

He turned.

The phone rang again.

He ran.

On the fourth ring he answered it. “Looking glass.”

“You’ve been missed, my boy,” Madame said.

Kingsley sagged with relief at the sound of her voice. “You’re the one who kicked me out.”

“You were never kicked out, nor were you kicked. Carried. But not kicked.”

“Why did you make me go?”

“It’s our—”

“Way, yes, you said that.”

“We couldn’t have Colette getting enamored of you.”

“And she was?”

“Far too much and far too quickly. She’d been talking about you nonstop since the moment she spoke to you in the phone booth.”

“And that’s bad? I like her, too.”

“Yes, you like her. She adored you. She pined for you for months after you left. How long did you pine for her?”

Kingsley didn’t want to answer that question. He’d had sex with someone else two days after leaving the château.

“Not months,” Kingsley finally said, wrinkling his nose as he answered.

“Too much partiality can fracture a community such as ours,” she said. “Time apart is best to cool the blood.”

“Is Colette’s blood cooled now?”

“I can’t read her heart, but she has stopped asking me about you every day,” Madame said. “But don’t think for one moment she’s forgotten you. You made quite an impression.”

“I haven’t forgotten her either,” he said, though in truth he’d given her little thought since meeting Maggie. It was Madame who’d haunted his waking hours. She was the puzzle. She was the enigma.

“Is that really why I had to go?” Kingsley asked. “So Colette wouldn’t fall in love with me?”

“Or perhaps so that you wouldn’t fall in love with Colette. Considering it’s taken you months to contact me, it seems to have worked.”

“I was gone,” he said. “On assignment.”

“Welcome home.”

“How’s Leon?”

There was a pause. “Content.”

“No one else has come around asking about him?”

“You threatened to leak highly-classified details of your agency’s operation to the press, after all. Not necessary, I assure you, but truly appreciated.”

“I don’t want to see any women or children getting hurt. I suppose that sounds old-fashioned.”

“Polly tied you to her bed and anally penetrated you for her pleasure and yours. I believe we can safely say you are not a man bound by tradition.”

“Only bound by lovers,” he said.

“Why are you calling, Kingsley? The first time you called me, it was for your work. What is it you want now?”

Kingsley considered the question carefully.

“I don’t know,” he said.

“What is it you are missing that you think I can help you find?” Madame asked. She didn’t sound angry or impatient. Merely curious. She was probing him, looking for chinks in his armor, he imagined. Chinks she could sneak through, slip a finger through. Slip a knife through…

“I thought,” Kingsley started. “I thought you could tell me something.”

“Ask.”

“It’s human nature to flee from pain, yes?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Then why do I miss being hurt?” Kingsley asked.

“We never hurt you here,” she said.

“He hurt me. And I miss it. Why? Do you know? I think if anyone might know it’s someone like him.”

“The boy who hurt you was a sadist. Don’t you think it’s strange you’ve come to another sadist for help?”

“Makes perfect sense to me,” he said. “Takes a thief to catch a thief? Takes a sadist—”

“To beat a sadist?” she asked.

Kingsley laughed softly. “Something like that.”

“If I let you come back, I will hurt you,” she said.

“Good.”

“I will play games with your mind.”

“I’d be disappointed if you didn’t,” he said.

“You’ll be devastated when I do,” she said. “You understand this, yes? And you accept the risk?”

Kingsley tensed, swallowed, exhaled.

“Yes,” he said finally.

“One more night,” she said. “And you’ll serve me and only me.”

“That’s what I want.”

“I will cut your heart open, Kingsley. Cut it open like a surgeon. And you might not like what we find inside. What do you have to say to that?”

Kingsley smiled to himself. He was standing in a phone booth in a Paris alleyway, hard as a rock.

“I’d say…my scalpel or yours?”