The pain isn’t just in my hand. It’s in my bruised ribs, all the cuts and scrapes and bruises. They light up like Satan’s own Christmas tree. Behind the pain, behind the whole what-the-fuckness of being nailed to a table, there’s something else; I can’t feel any magic.

There must be something besides blind agony in my eyes because she smiles big and proud, like I’m the slow student who just figured out his times tables. “They block magic. You can’t cast any spells. Oh, and I took these, too.” She shows me the Browning and the straight razor. She drops them into my messenger bag on the floor, and kicks the whole thing across the room.

“I am so gonna fuck your shit up,” I say through gritted teeth. I try to reach for the magic but nothing comes. I’ve been cut off from my own magic before. It’s a pain in the ass. Right now, it’s a pain everywhere else. Some of my tats act as pain buffers, skin and bone strengtheners. Without them I couldn’t take the sorts of beatings I’ve had, and now they don’t work. After going a couple rounds with a pissed off wind god and having nails shot through my hand, I could really use them.

“I don’t think so,” she says, “but it’s good to have goals. It’ll keep you alive longer. And I have a whole long strand of nails to use. But we’ll get to that. I have one last job to do. See?”

She gestures to the side and I look, already guessing what’s there. The pain can’t match the shock of what I’m seeing. Pallets of tlepilli laid out in rows along the floor. Each pallet about four feet square, each tlepilli maybe an inch thick with some space separating it from its neighbor. I try doing math, but I can barely think straight. I settle on two-hundred, maybe two-fifty per pallet?

I stop counting pallets when I hit about twenty and see that they cover the floor of the rest of the open office suite leading into the darkness.

She limps over to the pallets, leaving a trail of blood behind her. That gunshot in her leg is gonna slow her down. She’ll need to get it fixed up. But I get the feeling she’s not too worried about getting that far.

“These took forever to build,” she says. “But they’ll burn very fast.” She pulls out the Zippo and flips it open.

I push through the pain and haul myself and the cable-spool table toward her. I get a few feet, my hand tearing, sweat pouring off me from the pain. But she’s too far away to get to in time.