“I’ve done things I’m not proud of,” Gries says quietly, “and things that I regret. If the god of this island wants to punish me for that, then I’ll gladly pay. But don’t take this out on them, Hemslock. They have nothing to do with this. My son has nothing to do with this.”

“But not Alon? So you believe me when I say he’s got deeper ties to the Godseye than he lets on?”

Gries looks at me, then glances away.

“He was rejected,” I say.

“Still defending Leo because you have a thing for his son?”

Chase quietly simmers, but I ignore the insult. “No. I meant your other friend. The Diwata rejected him as an offering.”

“And how the fuck would you know that?”

“Because when you sacrificed him, it attacked you instead. The roots didn’t drag his body underground like Steve Galant.”

Hemslock’s smile wavers. “You’re wrong. I know more about the legends, about what the riddle requires, more than you ever could.”

“Yes,” Chase says, vibrating with extreme sarcasm despite everything. “You know so much better than a boy who’s been living here all his life, the only one the island had ever welcomed.”

I am no longer watching Hemslock and Gries. I am watching the ceiling above us, where the roots and tiny hair-like twigs have slowly begun reforming into a wide eye staring down at us.

Hemslock sees the movement, his eyes flicking upward. “You accepted my offering!” he shouts. “You took Galant and Rosmussen! You rewarded some fucking brown monkey when he killed Cortes for your sake! I brought the last of the three sacrifices you need! You were ready enough to take them until they intervened! I gave you what you demanded—now pay me what you fucking owe!”

The soldiers have spread apart, their guns trained upward at the writhing mass of branches.

Hemslock’s gun is pointed right at me.

“If your little pet guide makes any move to harm us,” he says, “I’m going to kill you.”

“It’s not going to matter that you offered the Diwata those sacrifices,” I say quietly. I take a deliberate step toward him. “It doesn’t matter because you’re part of what it wants. It knows the demons that plagued Karl are nothing compared to the demons that haunt you.”

A muscle ticks in the actor’s jaw. “You’re pushing it, kid.”

I risk another step. “The cultists were punished not because they were mistaken. They were punished because the god saw that Lindsay Watson was the better choice for sacrifice than the woman they were offering.”

Hemslock doesn’t move.

“The Diwata knows what you did to Carol, and Lee.”

His face hardens.

“There were more of them than the news reported. That’s why you were so paranoid. You think that the people in your studio knew about the others, and that they’re all against you. That this is a setup to earn more profit from your confession than a ghost investigation documentary. That’s the only reason you can come up with, after you started seeing her everywhere.”