“But the guards . . .” Lon said. “How?”

“Everyone was watching the damn fire truck and the damn police cars and the exodus of the people from the Little Red Riding Hood float. The boy was standing near the back of the float. One of the guards felt movement behind him. By the time he turned around, the boy was gone. Right under our noses!”

I wanted to throw up. My voice was almost a whisper. “It wasn’t Merrin, then.”

“Where’s your son, Ambrose?” Lon’s voice was even and cool as ice.

Dare stared at him, not answering.

“I asked you a question. Where’s Mark?”

“He was at the carnival the night the third teen was taken,” I said quickly. “He slipped off this float right before the explosion. Merrin told us that back in the eighties, Duke Chora only possessed him for short periods of time. The person possessed this time around . . . you might not even realize . . .” I faltered as I watched Mark Dare approaching us.

“One of the police signaled him off the float,” Dare said slowly. “He was asking about our weapons permits for the guards when the explosion happened. He returned immediately, and helped the guards search the barricades with the help of the police when the kid was snatched. My son has been right here the whole time, Ms. Bell.”

My heart sank as Mark stopped in front of me, all blond hair and blue halo. He didn’t look possessed. He looked royally pissed. Like he hated my guts.

“It was a logical leap,” Lon said. “It looked suspicious. So let’s all calm down and figure things out. No one saw the kid being dragged into the crowd? No one at all?”

For a moment, Mark continued to stare at me like I was trash, then he finally spoke. “Not a damn thing. It’s as if the child just disappeared. No one spotted anyone with mismatched eyes, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

Lon shook his head. “We chased down Merrin. It couldn’t have been him.”

“Tell me what happened. In detail, if you would,” Dare said.

Lon doesn’t do detail well. I listened to him recite a bare-bones account of what happened and had to stop myself from interrupting to add things, but the Dares got the gist of it well enough. Lon tried to pinpoint the exact points in Merrin’s interrogation that he had trouble “hearing” him.

I thought about it, trying to make sense of it all.

If we assumed that the beginning of Merrin’s story was at least half true, then maybe Merrin really hadn’t been aware of the duke’s final plans for the “vessels” when he was puppeted into snatching the kids for the demon. But Merrin was a talented magician; an experienced magician. And he’d snooped around after the Buné spell failed, asking other Æthyric demons what the duke was up to. He found out that the veil had been pierced by the spell, and knew that the duke could come back in thirty years to try again.

And if I were unscrupulous and egotistical, like Merrin, and an Æthyric demon had not only used me to kill a bunch of kids but had also nearly killed me from the inside out after it was over, I would want revenge against the duke. I would do whatever it took to kill the duke, or at the very least, banish him permanently. I would want me and Lon to track him down and help me get rid of the demon.

So why didn’t Merrin?

He had to be working with the duke again. It was the only thing that made sense. He set the magical fire on the float to divert attention away from the Dare float. He was helping whoever was possessed. The getaway driver, so to speak.

I knew damn well that I didn’t trust that asshole the moment Lon pulled him out of the restroom stall. I should’ve trusted my instinct and used Moonchild right then. But I didn’t. And now look what happened. Another kid gone.

Dare’s fury-laden voice plowed over Lon’s account of what transpired with Merrin in the restaurant. “What you’re telling me, then, is that you don’t know jack shit. Merrin may or may not have lied the entire time.”

I’ll admit, Lon’s account sounded pretty dubious even to me. And I could see that it was killing him to lay the whole messy thing out in front of Dare. It was killing me, too. But all I could think about—what repeated over and over in my head—was that another kid was taken. This was my idea, bringing the kids here. It could’ve been Mark Dare’s kid here tonight; could’ve been Jupe. In the end, the kid who was taken tonight was innocent, just like the others, but this time it was my fault. I forced Dare into the baiting plan. Me.

Tears welled. I couldn’t stop them. I was shaky and exhausted and I wanted to crawl into a hole and die. But I couldn’t. I had to fix things. I needed to get home, or someplace private, where I could try to summon Duke Chora again. If he was riding someone right now, and if Bishop had been telling the truth about the possessions being timed and temporary, then maybe I could summon him in a few hours. At dawn. A long shot, but it was all I had.

“This is a disaster,” Dare said, looking between me and Lon. “And tomorrow is Halloween night, so let me tell you what’s going to happen. All of the remaining kids are going to be locked up in a room inside my house at noon. I’m putting a hundred armed guards inside and outside that room. And tomorrow night, I’m going to send a hundred more people to patrol the streets of La Sirena. The two of you are going to help them. And you’re not going to sleep until you bring me back every single one of the missing kids, and Merrin’s head on a fucking pike.”