The gate was closed, a sleek guardhouse sitting outside it, guards standing at attention around it.

I blew out a breath, clenched and unclenched my fingers against very sweaty palms. My body felt suddenly heavy, like it was rooting in place to stay outside those walls. My escape plan hadn’t had a sixth step. And if it had, it wouldn’t have been “walk into Devil’s Isle of own accord.”

But the fear wasn’t all about me. Part of it was about them. About the images that lived in my mind about the war, about the beings who’d fought it, and the prison I’d imagined. I thought of military barracks, utilitarian buildings, sad faces. Beyond that, I had no idea what to expect, and that was as scary as anything else.

“You do what I tell you, and nothing more, and you’ll be fine.”

It was the tone of Liam’s voice that had me looking up, hoping it had been a good idea to follow a man I’d only just met into a supernatural prison that wanted to add me to its rolls.

I nodded. “I’m not afraid of many things, but this place is one of them.” The intimacy of the admission had me looking back at the concrete, at all the things it kept in, and the things it kept out. “Of being locked away because of something I didn’t choose,” I said. “Something that came to me, and not the other way around. I tried to help someone tonight, and that’s threatening to tear my world apart.”

I swallowed, looked into his shockingly blue eyes. “I didn’t run—because you asked me not to. You were straight with me about the Containment agents. I’m going to trust that you’re being straight with me now.”

“And if I’m not?”

“I’ll tell Containment you lied to them about a Sensitive and let them sort it out.”

His eyebrows lifted in appreciation. “That’s a pretty good threat. I consider myself duly warned.”

“Okay,” I said, and fell into step beside him. Because sometimes a girl had to take fate into her own hands.

A Containment agent stood inside the guardhouse, his gun strapped to one side of his belt, a stick on the other. He looked at us mildly.

Liam seemed utterly cool and composed.

“Hawkins,” Liam said.

“Quinn,” Hawkins responded. He was medium height with brown hair and blue eyes. Every bit of him seemed precise: bluntly square jaw, perfectly shorn hair, an immaculately pressed uniform that he filled out with heavy muscle.

Liam pulled a leather wallet from his back pocket. Hawkins scanned his ID with a small wand, and the comp inside his station beeped with approval.

“Who’s she?” he asked.

“Trainee.”

Hawkins looked me over. “She doesn’t look like much of a trainee.”

“You tryin’ to insult me, or her?”

“If the shoe fits,” Hawkins said. “You hear about the wraith attack tonight? Some girl in the Quarter fought them off with a stick.”

I decided it wasn’t a good idea to take credit for that. But Liam didn’t have any qualms.

“She’s the girl,” he said, and tucked the wallet away again.

Hawkins’s eyebrows lifted. “You don’t say.”

“It was me,” I said. “But it was a tree limb. Not a stick.”

Liam looked at me with amusement. It was the first time I’d seen him put on anything close to a smile, and it highlighted dimples in each cheek. They transformed his face, made him seem a lot less disquieting.

“Making sure you get full credit?” he asked.

“I earned it.”

“T’as raison,” Liam murmured.

“He says you’re right,” Hawkins translated with a smile. “I’m thinking you’ve got a handful with this one.”