The SUVs sat idling on the far side of the lot. Three of them, all black, all identical. The drivers wore gloves, faces obscured by the gloom. Jess opened the rear door, then turned to me. “Stay close,” he said. “This is the hard part.”
Inside, the seats were cold leather, and the air smelled of air freshener. Gwen slid in up front, beside the driver. Jess and I took the middle row, with Wrecker, Parker, and Papa crammed in the back. Doc took the shotgun seat in the second vehicle, barking instructions into his phone.
For a minute, no one spoke. The city flashed by outside: streetlights, skeletal trees, a tangle of overpasses painted with graffiti. I saw a kid on a bike, weaving through traffic, and wondered if he had any idea what was rolling past him in the night.
Gwen turned in her seat, looking at me. “You okay?”
I nodded, but she frowned. “You need to breathe. Hyperventilating makes you useless.”
I sucked in a lungful of air, held it, then let it out slow. It helped a little.
The convoy pulled to a stop at the edge of the customs lot. Another set of agents waited, one of them carrying a clipboard. He made a show of counting the cases, then frowned.
“There is an error,” he said, flipping the page. “This crate is not on the manifest.”
He pointed to the big black Samsonite—our magic weapons case. My heart skipped.
“It’s just audio-visual equipment,” Gwen said, voice bored. “For a meeting. The client asked us to bring it last minute.”
The agent considered, then reached for the latch. For a second, my whole body went cold. If he opened it and saw what was inside…
Gwen’s hand moved so fast I barely saw it. She tapped her wrist, just once. The agent blinked, stepped back, and looked at his clipboard again.
“Ah,” he said. “There is a correction. You may proceed.”
Jess exhaled, the tension draining from his shoulders. I glanced at him, and for the first time, I saw real fear in his eyes. Not for himself, but for all of us.
We rolled past the checkpoint, then out into the wet Paris night. The cars merged with the traffic, headlights painting the world in strobes.
Only when we were a mile from the airport did anyone speak.
“That was too close,” Wrecker muttered.
Parker shivered. “Witches. Fucking terrifying.”
Gwen smiled, catching my eye in the rearview. “Magic is just a trick. You get used to it.”
I watched the city flicker past, each building a blur, every street a maze. Even with all the power in this car, I’d never felt smaller.
The rain kept falling, soft and relentless. I wondered how many eyes were already on us, how many traps had been set.
In that moment, I realized: the only thing scarier than being seen was being truly invisible. Because then, nobody would ever come looking for you.
And in this city, that was the easiest way to disappear.
We followed the lead car through the periphery of Paris, headlights cutting ribbons through the rain, every intersection marked by the flicker of yellow streetlamps and the sudden, glimmering eyes of city cats perched on stoops. The soundproof glass made the world feel far away—a silent movie, all glow and shadow and the streaks of water that mapped every curve in the street.
Gwen’s outline glowed blue whenever we crossed beneath a streetlight. She’d anchored something magical to the dashboard, a tiny rune-scarred stone wedged behind the coin holder. Every time we slowed at a checkpoint or roundabout, her fingers brushed it, lips moving in a silent chant, keeping the veil around our convoy tight. Nobody looked twice, even when we double-parked on the Rue de Rivoli and a city cop walked right past our bumper. Maybe it was the magic, or maybe it was Paris being Paris—indifferent, eternal, and tired of its own drama.
The city was more beautiful than I’d expected. Not the cold, touristic grandeur of the postcards, but an intimacy: the way the rain pooled gold beneath the lamps, the way bakery lights burned behind fogged windows, the way each building wore its centuries like a comfortable old coat. Even the people lookedbetter here—every umbrella a fashion statement, every sidewalk argument a scene from a movie I could never quite translate. I watched the world slide by and wondered if, in another life, I might have lived here. Danced here.
I thought of Aspen suddenly. “Papa, you need to bring Aspen here when this madness is over. If anyone would love this place, it would be her.”
I looked over my shoulder and saw the face of a man rapturously in love with his mate. “There is no question but that my Sunshine would find herself in heaven in the bakeries here. It’s keeping Oscar hidden away that would be the challenge.” He gave a small laugh that we all shared. That brief moment of levity was so needed at that moment. But that’s what Aspen did. She brought happiness. I hoped I could be a little like her someday. Jess squeezed my hand.
Thirty minutes later, the convoy snaked around a block-long park and stopped at the entrance to our hotel. Not just any hotel, but the Hôtel de la Reine: a five-star palace in the 2nd arrondissement, all carved limestone and black wrought-iron balconies, glowing like a beacon in the gloom. The awning was striped navy and cream, the kind of touch that made my heart skip with nostalgia for things I’d never actually had. Jess leaned in, voice low.
“You ever been someplace like this?” he asked.
