She flicks her thumb along the striker. Blue flames erupt around the wick. She limps over to one of the palettes and sets one of the tlepilli on fire. The flames are like I remember seeing on Isla de La Muñecas. They consume and spread, jumping from one bundle to another, each one transferring the magic of the flames to some unknown location. The room glows in eerie blue light, reflecting back on itself in the windows. I see other blue flames erupting outside. Tiny little dots across the city. Like voracious moths eating a tapestry, the flames grow into raging infernos in seconds. Below us, Los Angeles burns.

“Isn’t it beautiful?” she says, and through the haze of pain and shock I have to agree with her. It is beautiful. A beautiful horror show of flame and death.

And that’s only one palette. It burns to ash quickly. I catch sight of a protection circle painted on the floor beneath the ash before the light dies down. Smart. The flames won’t spread beyond any one pallet or set the building on fire.

She lights another one and her face is orgasmic. She doesn’t even look out the window. She’s transfixed by the burning pallets, their blue glow pulling her in.

Which means she’s not paying attention to me. Not that that does me any good. I’m nailed to a table, I can’t cast, my gun and straight razor are across the room, and my pocket watch—

Huh. My pocket watch is still in my pocket. I pull it out with my right hand. If these nails are blocking me from accessing magic, does that extend to something I’m holding?

She’s too far away for the pocket watch to do its thing to her, and even if it could she’s too close to the tlepilli. This thing has a mind of its own sometimes and I can see it just hitting the tlepilli, which might actually be worse than the flames.

So I focus on what I can do. I point the watch face toward the top of the table. I’ve never used it on anything that I was physically attached to before, so it might affect me as much as it does the table. And boy will that ever suck.

But I’m out of options. I spin the crown with my thumb and push down on it. The table starts to age, wood cracking, turning black, bits falling off. I’m afraid it’s making too much noise, the smell of wood rot too strong. But Sastre is in too much ecstasy over the next burning palette to care about anything else.