There’s no final death toll yet, but they’re already saying it’s in the thousands. They’re not even close. I’ve felt the deaths until they all blur together into one seamless montage of agony and fear, and even I don’t know how many died.

But I do know how many new ghosts there are. I can feel them as far south as Long Beach, as far north as Pasadena. It’s a general sense, like listening to static and gauging decibels.

In general I’ve found around 1 in 5 people who die of trauma become a ghost, and the few other necromancers I’ve spoken with about it have told me the same. Echo, Haunt, or Wanderer, those numbers are pretty solid. I don’t know why. I’m sure a mathematician could work it out. If they hold true here, and I really hope they don’t, this will be the worst disaster the U.S. has ever seen.

There are about 25,000 new ghosts across the whole of the Southland. I can almost deal with that number. I can picture 25,000 people. That’s half of Dodger Stadium. But that means 100 to 125,000 died tonight. I can’t fit that in my head. It’s too big, too abstract. The dead at Hiroshima numbered 150,000. Nagasaki, 75,000. They’re statistics.

In one night, over a hundred thousand dead because I pissed off some psychotic wind god with an axe to grind and wouldn’t do his dirty work for him. He made everyone in this city pay. All those deaths are on my hands.

No. I push the thought aside. Plenty of time to place the blame once everything’s, well—not back to normal, but stable? I can’t think about this right now. It’ll eat me alive if I let it.

I start the car and head back to my motel, not sure if it’s still standing until I get there. A couple buildings a few lots over have been reduced to ash, but it’s just fine. I ditch the car a block away and head into the courtyard. I fumble for my room key in my pocket, a thin plastic card. But when I look up, my door’s not there.

Instead there’s a red, leather-upholstered door with large brass tacks set in diamond patterns from top to bottom. I need sleep, not this crap. But it’s not like I didn’t know it was coming.

Fuck it. Fine. Might as well get it over with. I push the door open and instead of walking into my motel room, I end up in an empty speakeasy, the inside of which I haven’t seen in a while.