“First off, I am not King of the Dead. At best I’m Handyman of the Dead. Or maybe Groundskeeper, I don’t fucking know. So stop calling me that. Second, I call bullshit. I didn’t break an agreement with you, because I wasn’t fucking talking to you. You were just a pass-through for Quetzalcoatl. Whether you went along with it willingly or not makes no difference. You misrepresented yourselves, so you can fuck right the hell off.”

The wind picks up again, another gust from multiple directions hammering at our shields. Smoke and ash swirl past. It’s a little hard to breathe and the winds aren’t making things any easier.

“Hit a nerve, did I?” I say. “Big tough wind spirit got taken for a ride by a half-dead Aztec god. More people believe in you than believe in him, yet you’re the patsies. That’s gotta sting.”

The wind dies down, and there’s an expectant pause. “Yes,” say all three voices together. “Where did you send him? We would see this forgettable god again and . . . have words.”

“I—”

“Hang on,” Letitia says, putting a hand on my shoulder. “You’re really the Santa Ana winds?”

“We are,” they say. “We are the Devil Wind, the fire-breath, the wind that gives and the wind that takes.”

“Not to mention Bane of Asthmatics Everywhere,” I say. “Yes, they’re the spirit of the Santa Ana winds. As I was saying, I’m not going to tell you where I sent him, because that’s privileged information. Any dealings we had in the past are done.”

Letitia’s eyes light up. She gets where I’m going. “This is a clean slate,” she says. “You want that information, you’ll need to pay.”

Whispers through the smoke, a back and forth, unintelligible voices raised. The wind is arguing with itself.

“What is the price?” one says.

“Right now you’re fanning all these fires,” I say.

“It is what we do,” they say. “We are the Devil Wind, the fire-breath, the—”

“Yes, I get it. Stop.” The wind goes quiet.

“That’s not what I meant. Well, it is what I meant, but I also meant ‘stop’ as in ‘stop fanning the flames.’ In fact, try putting some out, or at least helping. Quetzalcoatl might have started this, but you’re keeping it going. He’s playing you. You’re still dancing to his tune.”

“So help stop the fires,” Letitia says. “Clear the smoke. Give the firefighters a chance. This is Los Angeles. We curse you every year, like we curse the rain’s absence. We curse the fires you fan, the air you turn to dry dust. You’re the closest thing we have to the Devil. Try being an angel for once. Trust me. Do this, people will notice.”