spy detection

I flipped the pancake. If I hadn’t spent years with the old man, I wouldn’t have noticed anything in his tone, but there was a peculiar shade of emphasis to his phrasing that made me glance up at him. He’d said Cristos, but what he meant was …
“The Black Council,” I said.
He grimaced at me and then at the walls.
The Black Council was secret stuff. Some unknown folks in the wizarding community had been causing a great deal of mischief in my life over the past decade and more. Their goals were no clearer than their identities, but it was obvious that they were damned dangerous. Wizard Cristos had ascended to the Senior Council under odd circumstances—circumstances that seemed to indicate that the Black Council was exercising power within the Council itself. A White Council that was bumbling and fussy and not interested in anything but its own politics was a fairly terrible but normal thing—but a White Council that was being directed by the kind of people I’d run into over the years was a nightmare that barely bore thinking upon.
A few of us had gotten together to see if we could stop it from happening. Because secret societies within the White Council were seen as evidence of plotting to overthrow it, we had to be really, really careful about our little cabal. Especially since we were kind of plotting against the White Council, even if we were doing it for its own good.
“I sweep it three times a day and have the Little Folk on the lookout for any possible eavesdropping,” I said. “No one is listening in on us.”
“Good,” Ebenezar said. “Yes. Whether Cristos is an open servant of the Black Council or just their puppet, I think it’s safe to say that they want you gone.”


Peace Talks Chapter 3, Page 28-29