Everyone turns to Hazel. She looks frankly back at us, shifting her laptop, hair blowing around her earmuffs. “It’s just like the song says. He buried her where the milkweed grows. Like those other kids who got killed. Like Gavin Cotswold.” She’s starting to show signs of wavering under Bree’s stare. “They’ll probably never find her because he took her deep down into the mud.”

“Who thinks that? Your friends?” Bree waits until Hazel nods. “Yeah, well. Your friends are also, like, two years out of light-up sneakers.”

Kincaid slows to a stop, and it’s strange, seeing him through this new filter, a mortal with a mother, a home. I probably have as much personal knowledge about him as anyone now, and there are about ten different things I wish he’d say to me, none of which start with, “We saw him that night. Didn’t we?”

“Saw who?” Bree says.

“The Mumbler.” Kincaid. “He was out there.”

“What? When and where did this happen?” Sage’s attention is focused on me.

“When I got lost, and Kincaid found me.” I shake my head, holding his gaze. I see it now, how he uses these stories to keep me at arm’s length, to cast everything in a distorted light. “He pretended he saw something on the bank across from us.”

“I never pretend.”

“Yes, you do.” I raise my voice. “You were messing with me. Again.”

“What exactly didn’t you see?” Trace is waiting.

“I don’t know. Kind of like . . . a head. Some shoulders. But it was just bushes and trees and stuff.” I point at Kincaid. “He’s the one who made it something else. To scare me.” Wish I hadn’t tacked that on; sounds petulant and little-girlish. “Okay. New subject.”

“Do you think it really was somebody?” Sage looks between us. “I don’t mean the Mumbler, but a real guy? Somebody who got Ivy?”

“No,” I say, even though the idea of it makes my stomach churn, the thought of someone standing there, so unnaturally still, watching Kincaid and me together.

“A kid in my class saw the Mumbler once.” Hazel sounds thoughtful. “Outside in the trees behind his house. Just watching. He said his eyes glowed white.”

“Ew, Hazel,” Bree says distractedly, but Hazel goes on.

“And I know a couple kids who think he came into their rooms, back when they were little.”

“Came in? How?” I ask.

Hazel shrugs. “Under the bed. Through the closet. You know. The monster tunnels.” I jerk slightly, touched by a cold finger, seeing my closet door; first open, then shut, a movement ever so slight. “Everybody says you should leave your jack-o’-lantern burning all night on Halloween, until the candle’s gone. He likes that.”

“Should we tell the cops? About there maybe being somebody in the marsh that night?” Sage asks.