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“Case closed.”

I stare at him. “That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

I grab the paper. Black Hellwarden seal at the top, official stamp at the bottom, and enough bullshit packed between them to make my eyes hurt.

One line catches my attention.

SUPERNATURAL THREAT CLASSIFICATION: RESCINDED

I read it twice. “They cleared my roar?”

Raze drops into the chair opposite me. “Apparently sealing a doorway to Hell while keeping half the supernatural population on this side alive was enough to convince them you’ve got control of it.”

A laugh scrapes out of my throat. I’m still getting used to that. “Nice of them to notice.”

“Only took them about four hundred words to admit it.”

I toss the paper back onto the table and reach for my beer. “Could’ve saved themselves the ink. I could’ve told them that weeks ago.”

Raze snorts. “Yeah, but then they’d have to trust you.”

“Fucking terrifying concept.” I pick the paper back up and read it anyway, because some habits don’t die just because a war ends. The language is careful, stripped of anything that comes close to admitting the Devil just tried to turn the power inside my roar into his own personal weapon. Malgrave gets named. The binding gets named. Even the chasm gets a painfully official description.

The Devil?

Apparently, nobody wants to put that bastard’s name in writing.

“They think this is over,” I say.

Raze’s jaw works once. “Nobody who stood in that cavern thinks that.”

No.

We don’t.

***

By the time Church starts, every chair around the table is taken. Wreck drops into his usual seat across from me. Scar comes in with Cali and leaves her at the door before taking his place, while Ruckus and Coil squeeze past each other with the usual amount of shoving and muttered bullshit. Along the back wall, the prospects line up shoulder to shoulder.

Even they got called in for this one.

Echo takes the chair beside mine and drags it closer before she sits, the legs scraping over the floor. Her knee bumps my thigh beneath the table.

Raze waits until the door shuts before planting both hands on the table. “Council closed the file.”

A few heads turn my way.

I lean back in my chair. “Yeah, apparently I’m house-trained now.”

Ruckus snorts.

“Debatable,” Scar mutters.

A laugh moves around the table, and the sound catches me somewhere I’m not expecting because I fucking answered.

Out loud.