"Tell me what happened," Halcyon said in quiet command.

"We were Basking," said Chami. He was boyishly lean, deceptively young in appearance. With violet eyes and curly brown hair, he looked more like a graduate student than the accomplished killer he was. "Light filled her, renewed us — all normal. Then this veil of darkness swept across the moon, covering it. Black light pulsed down, traveling through the rays of moonlight, and struck Mona Lisa. It was like this giant hand of darkness closed around her and swallowed her up. She was gone, just like that."

"We searched," said Aquila, continuing the tale. A former rogue bandit, he was a bird of prey, an eagle in his other form. "I searched with all the others who could take to the sky on wings. Dontaine and Amber searched the grounds with the other guards, shifted into their animal forms. There was no scent. No trace of her. No trail to follow."

"I called High Court and was on the phone with Lord Thorane," said Dontaine, "trying to see if there was any way of contacting you, when you showed up. How did you know to come?"

"She is my mate," Halcyon said. "We are bound together now." In more ways than many of them knew. "I came because I no longer sense her."

"Could my sister be down in Hell?" Thaddeus said, asking the question innocently without truly understanding what he asked.

"No," Halcyon said, shaking his head. "I would have sensed her if she were in my realm. She is not there, just as she is not here in this realm."

"What if she's transitioning?" asked Dontaine, and he, unlike Thaddeus, was fully aware of what he asked. "Could you have missed her while traveling through the portal?"

"If she was in Hell now, I would feel her, but I do not. If she was making the transition, it would have occurred by now."