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"He left her to die. Granted, he did turn himself in to the police and told us about his accomplice in these murders, but we must be clear: he is far from innocent, and his history tells us he can't be trusted."

"He's still a kid," Richard said, "and you can't just arbitrarily decide to execute him. Not without a trial."

"With a majority vote, we can," Oliver said. "Two for, one against. I believe that is a majority. It won't be a public event. He'll just quietly - disappear."

Eve's mouth dropped open. She leaned forward, frantically searching the screen for a clue. "When was this? Michael? When did she record this?"

"I don't know," he said. "I thought you should know. Your brother's been sentenced to death."

"Oliver - he didn't even - he didn't say anything."

"Well," Myrnin said, "I don't suppose he felt it was necessary. I expect they were planning to arrange something quiet, perhaps an accident. Or suicide."

Eve fell into the chair, and blindly reached out for Michael, who took her hand. "They can't just kill him. Not like some - rat in a cage. Oh God, Michael . . ."

"I told you Detective Hess was here. He left right after we found that. He's going straight to the jail to be sure Jason's okay. He'll put him in protective custody, okay? Don't worry."

She gave out a breathless, broken laugh."Don't worry? How do I not worry after you show me things like this?"

"Good point," Shane said. "Michael, Kim bugged the council meeting. How could she possibly do that?"

"She couldn't," Myrnin said. "The human parts of town, yes, of course, but not the vampire parts. She has no excuse to be there, and she'd be caught if she'd gone anywhere near the official chambers. Or Amelie's house." He held up another black hard drive, which was clearly labeled in silver ink. "Or Oliver's, for that matter."

Claire caught her breath. "Your lab?"

"No. Oddly enough, nothing. But the evidence she has here is damning enough, I would say."

"But nobody would believe it," Eve said. "I mean, sure, she might get some off-brand cable station to air it, but everybody would think it was some kind of hoax."

"Doesn't matter," Claire said. "Even if nobody does, tourists will come flocking to town, and how long do you think things will hold together once that happens?"

"I'd give it a week," Myrnin said. He sounded quiet, and not at all amused. "This is our refuge, Claire. Our last safe place in this world. Don't be fooled; we might be willing to compromise, but we are territorial. Kim has violated the deepest covenant of Morganville. She can't survive this."

"She didn't do it alone; you said so yourself. It took a vampire to bug the council, let alone Amelie's house."

"And we will find them," Myrnin said. "And we will destroy them. There are rules to Morganville, and Kim and this vampire have shattered them beyond all repair. Amelie must never know of this. I'm afraid what she would do."

That seemed a strange left turn. "Why? We're going to catch them, right? We've got the video."

"Do we?" Myrnin looked at the array of hard drives. "You spoke of more than seventy cameras, but I see only sixty or so hard drives. What's missing, Claire? You know Amelie. You know that her first concern is for her people. If she believes that we've been compromised here, she will cut our losses."

"Losses being humans," Shane said.

"She'd rather move us and destroy all evidence we were ever here. It's always been her final option. You have no idea how many times she's come close recently."

Claire swallowed. "We can't let her do that."

"We cannot stop her," Myrnin said. "Not even I can do that. But what we can do is remove the evidence."

He crushed the hard drive he was holding into junk and dropped it to the floor, then moved on to the next, and the next.

Michael helped Eve out of the chair, picked it up, and smashed it into the editing station. He ripped out the hard drive from the video editing system and smashed it against the wall.

Claire and Eve backed up against the wall, holding hands, as the two vampires systematically destroyed every bit of data storage in the place. It took a while, but they were thorough, and when the last piece of equipment was broken into random parts, Shane said, "I thought that would feel better, somehow."

"We're not finished," Myrnin said. "We need to find every camera and destroy