"We can't let those mages run wild. More importantly, we can't let them investigate Gotham without restraint. Whether the Ultimate Evil Curse is real or not, this violates the rules of the occult world. We can't just barge into someone else's territory..."
"Rules?" Constantine snorted, golden liquor reflecting in his eyes. "When you betrayed me back then, you never gave a thought to any rules."
Zatanna's fingertips twitched slightly. "I thought they were wrong about what happened back then too, Constantine. You may be a bastard, but you're not a bad person. You sacrificed a lot to do good things. But after all, not everyone in this world is a good person..."
Zatanna looked at Constantine's weathered, dejected profile and recalled what he had looked like when he was young and strong. She had been very young when she first met Constantine, holding her father's hand as he introduced him as a once-in-a-century genius in the occult world.
"Genius..." Zatanna murmured. "In this circle, the greater the genius, the sadder the fate."
Silence fell between them. Constantine spoke again. "If your relatives find out you came looking for me, they'll go mad."
"More than that. If they find out I slept with a bastard like you, they'll die of rage." Zatanna shrugged. "But I don't care. Ever since I saw through their hypocritical facade, I stopped caring what they said."
"So, how do you plan to stop those mages from entering Gotham?" Constantine asked.
"Of course, with magic. Reversal magic is what I'm best at, but it's not all I can do. Remember the misdirection tricks used in stage magic? I'm going to create a fog and completely seal off Gotham's spirit realm, so mages who are good at taking shortcuts can't get in and will be constrained whenever they