“I was trying to avoid it, actually. I sort of succeeded. More or less. Anyway, before I went down there I made a request of the spirit of the Santa Anas. You know how wind spirits work. They all mix and match and fuck each other and what one knows eventually they all know.”

“I see. And Quetzalcoatl, being a wind god, got into the conversation and gave you what you were looking for. His price was what, exactly?”

“Burn down Mictlan with that lighter. He doesn’t like the place or the people. Holds a grudge like a motherfucker. That lighter contains the last of the god Xiuhtecuhtli’s fire. You light something in Mictlan, the whole place will go up. You light it out here, it’s a lot more limited, but you’ve seen what it can do to a building and a person.”

“I see,” he says. “It sounds as though he has something personal against you. It sounds like if I just killed you, this whole mess would end.”

“I thought that, too. And yeah, it probably would. For a while. But they’d just find some other patsy later and try again. You know Darius, right?”

“The Djinn? Yes, I’ve met him. Ah, they think you have his prison.” He looks at me carefully and—wait for it. There we go. I feel the touch of magic coming from him. Let’s hope that noseful of Bolivian flake I did earlier does its job. “Do you?”

“If I did, do you think we’d be having this conversation?”

“Fair enough. But why do they think that’s what they want? Or that you have it?”

“My grandfather was part of an archaeological dig on Catalina after the war that found some Spanish artifacts. I guess he was known as something of a collector? Anyway, Catalina Island, Spanish artifacts, Cabrillo dead on one of the islands. You know about Darius, it’s not a big leap. Also, bit of trivia I picked up in Mictlan, Darius and Quetzalcoatl helped the Spanish kick the shit out of the Aztecs. If anybody knows what Darius can do, it’s him.”

“Interesting,” he says. “So how did you figure this out?”

I mentally cross my fingers. Lying indirectly like I did when he asked if I had the bottle is one thing. Talking complete bullshit is something else entirely. It helps to pepper it with enough truth to make it plausible bullshit.

“Somebody kept pushing on me to see if I could find a spirit bottle strong enough to trap Quetzalcoatl and started talking about rumors about my grandfather. That rang alarm bells.