The accusation pulsed in the air between all of us.

“Answer her,” Lon urged.

“I wasn’t conscious during the abductions.” Merrin tugged his shoulder back in a weak attempt to break from Lon’s hold. The top button on his shirt popped out of its hole and a dark tattoo peeked out, black with a blue border. An eagle, I thought. It looked like a military insignia, maybe an army tattoo. “I didn’t even know it was children until I heard it on the news and realized that we had done it, he and I. We were the Snatcher.”

“You were the Snatcher,” I said. “You.”

“I didn’t remember anything while I was possessed, but I couldn’t stop invoking him or he’d kill me. You’ve got to believe me!”

“You also killed Bishop. When you realized that his visions might rat you out, you killed him with magick in the cannery, where you were keeping the kids.”

Merrin flailed in Lon’s grip, panicking. “I didn’t! I swear! It was the duke! I woke up in the cannery after one of the possessions and Bishop was dead inside one of the duke’s traps. The demon claimed that Bishop had found where we’d hidden the Buné spell. He’d taken a photograph—was going to send it to Ambrose Dare.”

The Polaroid.

“Bishop was my friend,” Merrin said softly. “I would never have harmed him.”

Is he telling the truth? I asked Lon in my head. He looked up from Merrin and stared at me blankly, as if I was distracting him. If Merrin was Earthbound, I could just bind him and know for myself. So frustrating.

“What went wrong with the first ritual?” I asked impatiently. “Why aren’t the doors open?”

Merrin blinked. His eyes became glossy with remembered emotion. “The planetary alignments were correct and the veil between earth and the Æthyr was thin on All Hallows’ Eve. Everything should’ve been right. But there was a flaw.”

“It was the kids themselves, wasn’t it?” Lon said.

Merrin nodded. “The duke was seeking the strongest pubescent Earthbounds. He assured me they wouldn’t be harmed. He just needed them to harness power and open the doors. But mistakes were made in the selection process. Some of them weren’t strong enough to handle the energy of the spell.”

Cindy Brolin was, but she got away.

“I woke up and the doors weren’t open,” Merrin said. “The spell had failed, and the children were piles of ashes in Sandpiper Park. I could barely see where they ended and the sand began.”

No bodies. Would Hajo have been able to track them even if we’d given him an object of Merrin’s instead of Bishop’s?

“Is that why he’s using descendants of transmutated Earthbounds this time?” Lon said. When Merrin didn’t answer right away, Lon shook his shoulders, then spun him around to face him and shoved him against the wall. “I said, is that why he’s using transmutation descendants?”

Merrin flattened against the wall and turned his face to the side to avoid Lon’s angry gaze. “The duke wasn’t aware of the Hellfire transmutation spell. When the first group of children failed, he thought it was my fault. I was human, and his possessions were taking a toll on my body. Little things, like my blood pressure. But he could tell when he possessed me that I was weakening. When I woke up in the park after the last possession, the duke had gained enough power during the ritual to leave my body and become semicorporeal. He was furious about the failure. I tried to tell him that it wasn’t my fault. Told him about the transmutation spell, and how it strengthened Earthbounds. They would make better vessels. They might survive the ritual. But he didn’t believe me—or he just didn’t care at the time. All the current vessels were ashes, and the doors between the planes weren’t open. He took it out on me physically. Forced himself inside one last time and tried to kill me from the inside out. I barely survived.”

Lon grunted. “Your ‘accident.’ The reason you quit working for the Hellfire Club and left La Sirena.”

“I was in the hospital for weeks. My back was broken. I just wanted to leave it all behind and forget it ever happened. Which I did, until I saw the news stories about the Snatcher returning. I knew it was him. He’d found someone else to possess. He’d try again.”

Fury knotted Lon’s face. He pushed a hand against Merrin’s chest and held it there. “Liar. You’re working for him again. Did you set that fire tonight as a distraction so that he could take another kid? Tell me.”

“No, you’ve got it all wrong—I was paid by the anti-Halloween group. They wanted something spectacular to get trick-or-treating banned.” His head dropped. “They paid me a handsome sum of money.”

It made sense. Leave it to a bunch of misguided activists to put on a puritanical front and utilize whatever means necessary under the table to obtain their goals. Political sabotage was a big moneymaker for rogue magicians.

“You expect me to believe that this duke didn’t come back looking for your help?” Lon said.

“Why would he?” Merrin said. “I failed him the first time, and he realized that he didn’t need a trained magician to conduct the ritual. I summoned a few Æthyric demons later and inquired about him. Another demon told me that the rumor in the Æthyr was that the duke had managed to pierce the veil between the planes during our attempt at the Buné spell. Not a fully functioning door but a hole. If it was big enough, he could possess anyone in the La Sirena area without being summoned. Human, Earthbound—it could be anyone.”