Solomon’s gun shook a little from emotion. “That boy called for you. When I first came to this godforsaken town and visited him in that room where his scared family had chained him to a bed. He asked for you. By name!”

Blackwood nodded, looking at the ground. “I know.”

“He summoned you!”

“Did he? Do you think he wanted me here? Or did he fear me?”

Solomon’s eyes widened. “Fear you?”

“The boy is a pawn in all this. An innocent victim.”

Solomon shook his head, needing Hugo Blackwood quiet. “Are you a goddamn demon?” he said. “With all those tools and potions, and the chanting. What are you?”

“I am a man with a difficult job to do.”

Solomon nodded harshly, for no good reason. “If you’re a man, then you can stand before a judge and plead your case. You put me in this thing, right beside you.”

“You saw it last night—”

“I don’t know what I saw,” insisted Solomon.

Blackwood said, “There are things that exist beyond the rule of law.”

“No, there aren’t. Not in this county, this state, this country. The taking of a life is murder. Call it self-defense, call it unpremeditated, that all comes out in the wash. I am no different from those behind the lynchings in town, black and white. Except that I am a sworn officer of the law. I took an oath.”

“Your job, as I understand it, is to uphold the laws of the land by protecting the innocent and punishing the guilty.”

“And I can’t cover up a murder. No matter how strange, no matter how…distasteful.”

“The boy was already lost,” said Blackwood. “But there are other lives still at stake here. He was an innocent…an instrument through which a spell was being cast. He’s a victim, but he is not a victim of us. Don’t you want to stop whoever did that to him?”

Solomon resisted Blackwood’s argument, having promised himself he would not be swayed by anything this murderer said to him.

But he thought of the boy’s mother, his brothers and sisters. He thought of facing them, trying to explain what happened. Solomon fought the tears that threatened to squeeze out of his eyes.

Solomon said, pleadingly, “He was only six goddamn years old.”

“I know,” said Blackwood. “We have to find whoever set him loose. He didn’t shake off those chains around his wrists and ankles.”

Solomon exhaled deeply, remembering the image of the chain lying on the storage room floor, the manacles unlocked. “Then…who did?”

Blackwood said, “Who else had access to the house and that key?”

Chapter

2019. Englewood, New Jersey.

Yoan Martine went about the house smashing things until he was exhausted. He sat down on a sofa cushion he had disemboweled with a knife.

Even the mpangui would not help him. Yoan let him walk away. No one could cleanse him now.