Mr. Pyo glances down at Austin and Taeyo’s empty wrists. “How did you do that?” he asks, fear clouding his face. Then his eyes light up as if he’s suddenly remembered something. He scrambles to the trunk of his car and takes out a baseball bat. “Don’t come any closer, or I’ll use this!” He waves it around like we’re mosquitoes about to give him malaria.

I shake my head. Too bad he doesn’t know what Sora’s dominant element is.

Sure enough, she rubs her wrists and snaps her fingers. And just like that, the baseball bat breaks into two clean pieces.

Mr. Pyo’s jaw drops. Then, finally admitting defeat, he falls to his knees and starts begging. “Please don’t hurt me. I’ll tell you anything. Just don’t hurt me!”

Sora steps forward and glares down at him. “Tell us why you did it. Why did you frame our clan and get us banished? Why did you go to such lengths at the expense of so many lives?”

Austin spits on the pavement in disgust, and even Taeyo’s face has gone red with anger. “And where is the last artifact?” I add.

“She made me do it! She said if I did, she would reward me with the artifact. But if I didn’t, she would kill me.”

“Who’s she?” Auntie Okja demands.

“Sookhee Harrison. She made me do it, and then she killed all those people to get the ax. But after Sookhee was killed, it was too late to come out with the truth. I couldn’t reveal the part I played. So instead, I blamed the Horangi…. What else was I supposed to do?”

Emmett gasps and I frown. That couldn’t be right. Emmett’s mom had told the gwisin halmeoni that she didn’t kill those people. She said someone she trusted had betrayed her. Someone who was working with the council.

“You’re lying!” I say. I want to shake the man until the truth rattles out of his mouth.

Then I remember something else Emmett’s mom had said through the gwisin halmeoni. I didn’t want to hurt anyone. I was possessed.

The cogs start spinning in my head. “Are you sure it was her?” I ask Mr. Pyo. “Are you sure it wasn’t someone who just looked and sounded like Sookhee? Someone who happened to be using her body?”

Emmett grips my arm. “What are you talking about, Rye? The man is clearly delusional!”

Mr. Pyo gapes at me as if I’ve just asked him to eat his arm. But then his eyebrows merge until they look like one long caterpillar on his forehead. “Wait…” His face goes as white as Appa’s makgeolli, and he drops his head in his hands. “Oh Mago, that makes so much sense,” he mumbles.

“What makes sense?” Sora asks. “Spit it out.”