It was a puppet.
The picnic table snapped loudly, some knot in the old wood popping in the heat. A car drove by in my peripheral vision, along the road on the far edge of the park, and seeing it brought me back to reality with a sudden shock. This wasn’t a barbecue or a campfire anymore, it was arson—arson in a public place, destroying city property. I swore and backed away, looking at the scene with a critical eye. The snow I’d pushed away was too obvious: no one would see this as a picnic that got out of hand, but as a deliberate attempt to burn the table. My best bet was to grab Boy Dog and go, to get away before anyone noticed. I called him softly and ran toward the car; he followed, but only in his slow, plodding way. I called again, patting my legs, but he couldn’t be bothered to move. I opened the car door, shifting the things I’d packed there in the early morning when Potash was asleep, and Boy Dog picked up his speed a little, shifting from a walk to a slow jog. I looked around. Who was watching me through distant windows? Under heavy branches?
Should I warn the others about the puppet? Would they even take me seriously if I did?
Boy Dog finally reached the car, heaving himself into the foot well on the passenger side. I made sure he was out of the way, slammed the door, and ran around to the driver’s side, fumbling for my keys. I threw myself in, sat down and stared at the fire. It seemed thin and ethereal from this distance, in this light, the flames fading into the morning sky beyond. Black smoke was beginning to curl up in dark, angry billows.
I had to leave now. I had to get to Brooke and go.
But if I did, the whole team would die.
I pulled out my phone, dialing Potash’s number with one hand while I started the car with the other. I got a recorded alert for a wrong number and wished I’d bothered to put everyone in speed dial. I hung up and dialed again.
Potash answered his phone. “John, why did you leave again?”
“Plausible deniability,” I said. “I didn’t see you commit any genocides, and you didn’t see me not burning down a picnic table.”
“Did you burn down a picnic table?”
“I just said I didn’t, do you even listen to me?” I shoved my keys in the ignition and turned it on, hearing the engine roar to life. “The Hunter is using a puppet.”
“What?”
“He has a skull puppet, probably an actual skull—he cleaned it up, bolted the jaw on, and now he’s using it to take bites out of the corpses.” I threw the car into reverse and backed up wildly, looking over my shoulder as I shouted into the phone. “That’s why he doesn’t pass out when he bites the sedated bodies, and that’s why the bites are scattered all over instead of concentrated in one spot, and that’s why his methods are a crazy mishmash of precision and ferocity: because he’s faking being a cannibal. It’s all an act, from the bites to the hidden injection marks to the letters he sends us. It’s all fake.”
“Why would he fake cannibalism?”
“To throw us off the scent,” I said, putting the car in drive and heading for the street. The park table was burning brightly behind me now, and it occurred to me that in all my frantic planning, I’d only thought about escape. I’d never even considered the possibility of putting out the fire. I could have, if I’d acted quickly; there was enough snow to smother the whole thing. But it hadn’t even crossed my mind. I hate to kill a fire.
“John?” said Potash.
“He’s trying to trick us,” I said, as I pulled into the street. “He’s a Withered and he knew we had Brooke and now he probably knows we have Elijah, so he’s hiding his methods. If he’d come into town killing people the same way he always did we’d have figured out who he was and how he worked, and then we could have figured out a way to kill him. He knew we could do that because we’d done it to half a dozen Withered already. So he’s hiding his real kills and feeding us a bunch of fakes to keep us in the dark. When he comes for us, we won’t know anything about him.”
I paused, waiting for him to answer, but all I heard were vague mumbles in the background. After a moment Potash spoke again. “It looks like we’re the ones going after him. Trujillo thinks he’s figured out where he is.”
“Where?”