The crowd erupted with boos and murmurs of discontent. The old woman was playing it up for them.

"Then you've got no proof, just accusations," Martin said.

"Oh, but we do have proof of murder. Premeditated, in fact. Martin practically confessed to it in his book, isn't that right, Mavis?"

Mavis nodded with a devious smile.

"You've gotta be kidding me! Damiani would have killed me if I didn't get him first. I thought he could lead me to the killer, I didn't know he was the Mirror Man. You think I went there on a vigilante mission? He was a lead, that's all. I could have died."

"So you told the police," Ethel said. "But your thoughts tell a different tale."

Sheila was watching him, questioning him with her eyes.

"It's not true."

"Isn't it?" Ethel said.

Was there a part of him that wished it was true? A part that wanted to play the hero, who suspected Damiani was the Mirror Man and wanted the killer to reveal himself so he could justify the murder as self-defense?

"Even if it is, you can't prove it."

"You wouldn't think so, would you?" The blind woman approached him, holding her cane at her sternum. "But I can."

She rose on her tiptoes, bringing her nose close to his ear. He tried to shy away but Sinjin held his head. The old woman breathed in deeply through her nostrils. He smelled baby powder, Ivory soap—and lurking beneath it all a sickly-sweet mustiness, like an old corpse.

Pain throbbed in the center of his brain, like a loud buzz heard through earphones. The old woman was searching his thoughts. The pain blossomed. He struggled against Sinjin's grip but found he couldn't move an inch.

"Oh yes, I see you've got plenty to confess, dear boy," she said. Her breath stank of rot, hot in his ear. "So much guilt, it's practically eating you ali—"

A sudden crack shattered the quiet.

For a split-second, he thought the sound had come from inside his own head, that the old woman had broken his mind.

With the echo still ringing, Ethel's head obliterated, instantly severing the connection between their minds. The pain diminished. Blood and bone spattered his face.

Sinjin let go of his head, allowing him to turn away in horror.

The cane fell from Ethel's splayed fingers and clattered on the concrete pedestal. And somehow Ethel still stood, her body wavering, gore and chunks of brain dripping down the front of her shawl. The top of her head looked like a hollowed-out pumpkin. Her sunglasses hung from what was left of her nose, the lenses shattered.

The crowd all looked up at once and blinked in confusion, like people roused from their cell phones. The anger in their eyes evaporated. A woman screamed, causing a chain reaction of shock to ripple through them.

Mavis grabbed Ethel's lifeless body the moment gravity started to take hold and hugged her, blood smearing black on her forest-green peacoat. Her hat was coated with it. She resettled it on her head with a whimper of sorrow as she cradled her dead sister in her arms.