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“Did you see Justin McMullen?”

“No. I didn’t see anybody hurt. I was only there for a minute or two.”

That distinction mattered, even if every part of me wanted the call to hand O’Shea a neat answer.

I asked, “Did Grant seem surprised to see you?”

She paused. “Not really. Maybe annoyed. But mostly like I was somewhere I shouldn’t be and he wanted me gone.”

O’Shea took over again, clarifying the approximate location and timing without leading her. The account stayed maddeningly ordinary. She had wandered somewhere she shouldn’t have. Grant had redirected her. Another guest had later seen a woman with my coloring and dark outerwear from a distance and assumed it was me.

Nothing about it was dramatic.

It also changed almost everything about the identification that had helped put me in a holding cell.

When the guest finished, I thanked her. My voice sounded steadier than I felt.

O’Shea waited until she disconnected before speaking again.

“I’m treating the original identification as corrected. The witness saw a woman who matched your general appearance, but we now have someone acknowledging she was in that location and fitting the description.”

I braced both palms against the edge of the worktable.

“So the witness didn’t see me.”

“That’s where the evidence points now.”

The words loosened something in my chest, but not enough.

“And the charge?”

“This weakens the case against you. It doesn’t erase everything else by itself.”

I closed my eyes for one second.

Of course it didn’t.

Damien rested his hand at the small of my back, steady and warm through my thermal.

“O’Shea,” he said, “Grant told you he wasn’t anywhere near Hollowfield Thursday.”

“He did.”

I pulled last year’s laminated plan closer.

“The lantern and the hanging figure both matched last season’s setup,” I said. “Not this year’s. Grant worked that version.”

“So did Clinton, Troy, and plenty of other people,” O’Shea reminded me.

“I know. But the guest just put Grant here Thursday after he told you he wasn’t here at all.”

A short silence followed.

“That makes him a much stronger person of interest,” O’Shea said. “It doesn’t prove he killed Justin. I’m following up on him now.”

Damien picked up the old plan.

“Last season’s guest approach ran beside the place where the lantern was moved,” he said. “The figure also swung toward last season’s guest passage instead of the current staff crossing. Two separate changes, same old configuration.”