She whispered, “Shane watches everybody and everything. He could probably impersonate any one of the Nightkind council if he had to.”

Xavier gave her a sidelong glance. He looked extremely thoughtful. “Good to know.”

In the great hall, the four Nightkind guards, along with their hostages, all turned to Shane/Dominic.

“Benet,” said Shane/Dominic as he approached. “Send your men to help keep guard over Leopold. You stay with me.”

Everything Melly had ever heard about illusion spells unfolded now like a textbook case.

People tend to see what they’re expecting to see, what fits the stories they know. They believe the evidence of their eyes, because it takes far too much effort for the brain to question every bit of information it accumulates. The more outlandish the illusion, the more difficult and fragile the spell became.

Shane was a clever, very dangerous man. This illusion apparently fit with the stories in the guards’ minds.

“Yes, sir,” said Benet. He snapped his fingers at the other three guards. “Go.”

They shouldered their weapons and headed toward Melly, Xavier and the Light Fae guard. Whirling at the same time, Melly and Xavier waved the Light Fae back. They retreated back down the hallway several yards, weapons trained on the open space in front of them.

Moments later the three Nightkind guards walked around the corner. As they came face-to-face with ten soldiers pointing guns at them, they froze. One by one they raised their hands in a universal gesture of surrender.

From the great hall, a single shot rang out.

In the split second that followed, while the hostages in the great hall screamed or exclaimed, Xavier raised his gun and double-tapped each Nightkind guard in the head. They vanished into dust, their weapons clattering to the floor.

Recoiling, Melly stared at Xavier’s hard expression.

He said, “Once a traitor, always a traitor.”

The Nightkind was Xavier’s demesne too. She didn’t question his right to execute the soldiers. It wasn’t her place to do so. Turning, she ran into the great hall, followed by the rest of her team.

Benet had disappeared, and so had the Dominic illusion. In his place, Shane stood with his hands up, his gun pointing to the ceiling. He was speaking calmly as he tried to deescalate the group’s panic.

Melly didn’t bother trying to talk over the hostages’ noisy reactions. Instead, she raced straight to Annis. The Vampyre gave her a wild-eyed look. “Melisande? What on earth are you doing here?”

Melly told the other woman, “I’m glad to see you’re all right, Annis. Evenfall isn’t secured, so we don’t have time for extensive explanations. Julian’s battling Dominic and Justine, and we’re here to help you get to safety. Get your people under control and follow me.”

Melly gestured her team back while Annis and Xavier worked to calm down the group. In short order, they headed back down the hallway toward Julian’s suite.

Annis joined Melly, Xavier and Shane. Melly told her, “We’re going to send you down a tunnel. There’s no real shelter at the other end – the tunnel lets out into the woods – but it’s shaded enough that it’s safe for Vampyres, and it’s a good distance from Evenfall. It’s the most safety we can offer you on such short notice.”

“It will do,” Annis said. She was a tall, spare woman who looked to be in her late forties, with straight black hair, stern features and gray eyes. “I want to know if we’ll be able to get cell reception.”

“I tried when we were out earlier,” Xavier told her. “It’s patchy, but if you search around, you might be able to make a connection.”

“I’ll keep trying until I get word out.” Annis’s jaw set in a determined line. She sounded outraged. “People need to know what’s going on in here.”

“You should tell everybody you can,” Xavier said to her, his tone solicitous. “In fact, our next objective will be to free Leopold too, so he can help you.”

Behind her back, his dry gaze met Melly’s. Before the hour was out, she knew the entire council would be informed, and she was willing to bet they would all descend upon Evenfall within the next few hours.

“Good,” Annis said viciously.

They reached the outside of Julian’s suite. Rapping on the doors, Xavier called out. Herman and his partner let the group in. As soon as everyone had stepped inside, they slammed and bolted the doors again.

If the suite had felt crowded before, now it was positively cramped. The Light Fae guard showed the former prisoners the opening in Julian’s bedroom wall that led to the tunnel staircase, and one by one, they began to leave.

Melly blocked out the noise. She followed Xavier as he pushed his way through the crowd, and Shane joined them. When they reached the office area, Tess stood so fast, she knocked the chair back. She and Xavier came together in a tight clench.

Tess pulled back almost immediately. “Gavin didn’t disconnect the server from Evenfall’s internal network,” she told them. Her face and voice were full of some kind of emotion that Melly didn’t know how to identify. She met Melly’s gaze. “He and I have been talking, and I have a visual feed from several cameras. I have to warn you, the feeds are hard to watch. I saw everything that happened in the great hall.”

For Melly, everything else fell away. She rushed to kneel in front of the computer and gripped the edge of the desk with both hands. Xavier, Tess and Shane joined her.

At first, Melly struggled to sort all the information. There were six camera feeds on the screen, and all of them showed different scenes.

The bottom right camera feed focused on Gavin and two other people. They huddled together, their expressions tense. The scene behind them looked like a typical busy office, with cubicles, workstations and electronics parts laid out on a nearby table. The trio appeared to be looking right out Julian’s computer screen.

Gavin’s voice sounded clearly over Julian’s speakers. “Xavier, there you are – thank the gods.”

Xavier said something in reply. Melly didn’t pay attention. She tuned out their conversation as she searched the other camera feeds. The two others in the bottom row of images were of main thoroughfares in the castle. One was of the great hall, now standing silent and empty.

The top three feeds showed different scenes of a battle. Or maybe they were different battles.