It was true. The Eiffel Tower sparkled at night. Every hour on the hour, just like Hem said. At least he told the truth once in a while.

In the eight minutes it took the boats to get to the next stop, the sky went from dusk to dark, and when the first boat made the turn toward the Eiffel Tower, the light show began.

“Whoa.” Henry knelt on a bench between Anna and José. All three of them leaned over with their elbows on the railing, staring up at the twinkling lights on shore.

“Spectacular,” José whispered.

And it was. But then Henry spotted something even better than twenty thousand carefully choreographed lightbulbs. The swirling blue lights of at least twenty police vehicles lit the area around the dock and reflected in the waters of the Seine. It was the most beautiful thing Henry had ever seen.

When the boat pulled into the dock, the grumpy crew member hurried right up to the Interpol officers waiting on shore, ready to report his unruly line jumpers. But the officers pushed past him and made a protective circle around Henry and his dad and the others.

“We have an armored van to take you to headquarters,” one of the female officers said. She wore a blue Interpol jacket with small yellow stars like the others, but her collar was open, and it was impossible to miss the silver jaguar pendant gleaming at her throat.

“Goosen is here — you know that, right?” Henry started to point, but the woman put up her hand and motioned him to lower his arm.

“We know. We’ve been tracking him for three days, and we were closing in when you decided to raid the Conciergerie on your own.” She looked at him over her glasses.

“Oh.” When she put it that way, Henry felt kind of dumb, even though it had all worked out. “Well, I guess we sort of brought him to you instead.”

“I guess you did.” She smiled. “Well done.” She gestured toward the van, pulled right up to the dock with its door wide open. Henry hesitated — he couldn’t help remembering the other dark van that had swallowed up his dad and everyone back at the bookstore. But these are the good guys, he reminded himself. We’re all safe now. It’s okay.

He climbed into the van between his dad and Aunt Lucinda and closed his eyes, listening to Anna and José whispering to their parents in the back seat, listening to Hem on the police phone with his mom. His accent was less annoying when he sounded tired and scared like everybody else.

Henry was exhausted, but he still felt sort of supercharged — like the currents of adrenaline that had carried him through this whole thing weren’t quite burned out yet. His fingers tingled, but not in that awful anxious way — in a good way. Like he’d finished the last level of the best video game ever. Feeling his dad’s arm around his shoulders was even better than seeing his name on a high-score list.

Henry took a deep, quiet breath and tried to relax. This time, they were really going home.

The van’s engine started, and Henry opened his eyes. The woman with the jaguar pendant was driving and another Interpol agent sat in the passenger’s seat, staring out the window toward the river even as the van started to move. He still looked like he was on alert, and for a second, Henry was afraid to look back, afraid he’d see something to burst the bubble now that everything was finally all right. But he couldn’t keep himself from turning to the window and pressing his nose against the glass.

When he did, when his eyes adjusted to the chaotic flashing lights, he saw not only the fleet of police cars but half a dozen Interpol boats in the river. They surrounded a cluster of Serpentine Princes who must have leaped from their Batobus into the Seine when they realized they’d cruised into a trap. A spotlight from shore lit up one of the officers as he leaned over the railing of his boat, fishing a very angry, very soggy Vincent Goosen from the water.

This time, Henry wasn’t even a little bit sorry he’d decided to look back. It was the best thing he’d seen in days.

Game over.

The Silver Jaguar Society had won.