The Watchdog Times had also cleared the name of a conservative senator who was accused of having sex with a minor. They hadn’t saved his marriage, but they’d saved his career, mostly, and certainly rescued him from a jail sentence when they proved the whole thing had been set up by his political rival—and that the boy in question had been a very young-looking twenty-three-year-old who’d been well paid to act his part.

If he said he had documentation, L. J. Torbett had documentation.

“You were asleep when Jenny asked if I’d mind if her old friend joined us,” murmured Adam to me. “Jenny said he’d thought that it was odd that Cantrip Agents were first on scene, and asked to sit in this afternoon.”

I leaned against him and watched the old lawyer turned journalist wipe the floor with the Cantrip agents.

“This,” he said, “is a disgrace. That government agents who should be above reproach lend themselves to such a scheme is appalling.”

“You can say what you’d like,” said Orton with dignity. “But that doesn’t change my orders.”

“Yes,” Agent Kent said heavily. “Yes, it does. Unless you want to be dropped to junior-janitor rank for the rest of your tenure in Cantrip, it does. Kerrigan is a political rat, and if he’s behind this, he’d sell us down the river without a qualm. If he’s not behind it and it is from higher up, he’ll sell us even faster.”

Torbett nodded at the younger agent but looked at Orton when he continued talking. “There are larger issues at stake, too, gentlemen. Do you know that the fae are talking to the werewolves, trying to gain their support for an alliance against the government of the US?”

Orton gave a short nod. It wasn’t a secret.

Torbett said, “What do you think would happen if you forced the Alpha of the Columbia Basin Pack, one of the most prominent packs in the US”—that the humans knew about, anyway—“to defend his wife against government agents? The man who gave you your orders doesn’t understand what he’s messing with. A man like Hauptman, a werewolf, will die defending his mate. He would never have let you leave with her. He tried to tell you that. Did you miss the part where Mr. Hauptman said he wouldn’t let anyone hurt his wife?”

He gave them a moment to digest that. Then he said, “Do you want to be famous, gentlemen? I assure you that your names would have gone down in the history books as the idiots who forced the werewolves into a confrontation with the federal government.” He leaned forward. “Do you know that Hauptman has been doing his level best to keep our relations with the werewolves from reaching the boiling point, as they did with the fae?”