“Then get them out of here before that happens.” She glares at me, but she’s through the door in a blink of an eye, and I can hear her using her cop voice to get people moving.

“Oh, Sweetums,” I say to the air, thinking the same very hard. I get nothing in response.

“If you call me that again I will fucking skin you alive.” Santa Muerte’s voice with Tabitha’s cadence in my head. This is going to get some getting used to.

“Hey, you’re the one who wanted me, so you might as well get used to it. A friend of mine suggested Honey Bunny earlier. How’s that strike you?”

“Like a hammer to the back of my head,” she says, with the sort of tone that says she’s wondering if she’s made a horrible mistake. “Is he there yet?”

The orderly sounds of people being evacuated are suddenly shattered as gunfire rips through the air. Pistols, shotguns, automatic weapons.

“I’d say the show’s about to start.” Clever fucker. Have Sastre sow some chaos out front, bet on me caring about any of them enough to be distracted. I can already feel people dying, ghosts coming into being. I’d love to help them, but I’ve got priorities.

There’s a tremendous tearing sound above me. It’s a two-story house. I don’t know what’s above this room, but I kinda doubt it matters anymore.

I hunker under the desk. There’s a sound like a tornado through a trailer park and the room fills with sunlight and debris. He’s pulled the whole second floor off. A spear of flame tears in from above, shoots out, threads its way through the ceiling. Takes me a second to realize it’s Quetzalcoatl’s tail. He yanks back, peeling off the second story floor like the lid of a sardine can. Pieces of plaster and wood rain down. The flaming wind god flaps his wings and starts to descend into the room.

“You think you can hide from me?” he screams, voice filled with a burning rage.

I poke my head out from under the desk. “Hide? Dude, you’re dropping a ceiling on my head. I don’t even have an umbrella.” I pull myself out completely, brush dust off my pants. It’s a futile gesture. The heat intensifies as soon as he sees the bottle.

He descends lower into the room and I get a good look at him. He looks awful. His flames aren’t as bright as I’ve seen them before. Barely any form left to him. He’s more a tattered blob of flame than a winged serpent.

“I knew I could count on a foolish human like you to find the bottle,” he says. “Now give it to me.”