That was the flag with gold fleurs-de-lis. “Sure.”

He nodded. “If you need to meet with us, hang it on your third-floor balcony. Someone will see it, send a note. And if we need to meet, we meet here.”

I nodded. “Easy enough.”

“In that case,” Darby said with a smile that looked pretty relieved, “welcome to the team.”

•   •   •

A warm breeze was blowing outside as we walked across scratching gravel to the truck.

“So, I guess we’ve joined a treasonous secret alliance.”

“That’s what it looks like,” Liam said as we climbed into the truck. He stuck the key in the ignition, pumped the gas until the truck roared to life.

He glanced at me. “I can’t say I’m thrilled about the possibility the Veil will open again—or that we’re the only thing standing between war and peace.”

“We have to start somewhere,” I said.

He looked at me, smiled. “That’s one of those things people say that doesn’t really mean anything. They just say it to make you feel better.”

“Yeah, they do,” I said. “And don’t you feel better?”

He grunted.

“What are you going to have Moses look for?”

Liam frowned. “I’m not sure yet. It’s not like he can search every instance of ‘Sensitives’ in Containment-Net. That’s probably thousands of documents.”

I smiled at him. “No. But he could search for ‘Marla Salas.’”

He opened his mouth, closed it again. “Damn, Connolly. That’s not bad.”

“It’s pretty damn brilliant, actually.”

Liam snorted, swerved the truck around an enormous pothole. “Don’t get a big head. I’ll talk to him tomorrow.”

“If we keep the Veil closed and save the world, do you think there’s any chance Containment will rethink its position on Paras?”

“Not immediately. They’re too invested in the narrative at this point.”

That sounded like something Tadji would say. “Right. Containment lies.”

“Put that on a damn T-shirt,” he muttered. “But in the long term? Yeah. Public opinion will eventually sway. It always does. And it sounds like we’re going to help it along. We just have to keep you safe in the interim. I mean, except for the treason.”

“Eh,” I said, waving it off. “Compared to saving the world, what’s a little treason between friends?”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

I found out the next morning, when they blew in like a hurricane—eight men and women in dark gray fatigues with helmets and very large guns, led by Jack Broussard.

He wore a dark gray suit with a pale blue tie, his wavy hair gelled back above his forehead. His badge was on a chain around his neck, and there was a folded piece of ivory paper in his hand.

When he flipped the store’s OPEN sign to CLOSED, my heart jumped into my throat. This was not going to be good.

I knew the signs of a Containment raid—agents busting in to look for Paranormals, for prohibited magical goods. There’d been hundreds of them during the war, when Containment decided Ouija boards and tarot cards meant the difference between victory and defeat, and after the war, when they were still trying to round up Paranormals who hadn’t yet been driven into Devil’s Isle.

I hadn’t heard about a raid in the Quarter in years—probably two or three. There wasn’t a point to it. There weren’t enough of us left, and certainly not enough “implements of magic,” as Containment called them, to make raids worth anyone’s time—or the bad PR. It didn’t do much for morale to bust people who were just managing to get by.