If that sounds like a sacrifice, it’s because it was. Once I did it, the connections between me and Mictlantecuhtli and Tabitha and Santa Muerte would be so strong they’d boot us out of our bodies, letting the two gods wander the mortal world in more than just their followers’ dreams.

But I’ve never found a plan I couldn’t fuck up. I turned it around and shoved the knife into my own chest instead—which I don’t recommend, by the way. Instead of the bond with Mictlantecuhtli strengthening, it snapped.

In the seconds I was dead Tabitha got hold of the knife and stuck it into Santa Muerte. I was too late, so I did the only thing I could think of. I yanked the knife from Santa Muerte’s bony chest and shoved it into Tabitha’s in a desperate attempt to reverse whatever was happening.

I don’t remember much after that. Both of them burning like road flares, energy coursing between them like Hot Wheels cars on a Super Loop, then nothing. I woke up alone in the middle of the Mexican desert.

“Is she the same Santa Muerte?” I say. “Is Tabitha a part of her? Or is she a part of Tabitha? Is it a trap? The Aztec version of playing Peter Gabriel outside my window?”

“She’s reaching out to you,” Gabriela says, inspecting the two cards closely before handing them back to me. If she finds anything that shows they’re not just card stock and ink she doesn’t say. “For whatever reason, she wants to see you. Use it.”

“You think I haven’t thought about that? Creepy death goddess wife notwithstanding I don’t even know where to look for her.”

“Bullshit,” Gabriela says. “You know exactly where to look. There’s that church on Alvarado, that bullshit botanica on Melrose, and at least three pharmacies Downtown that if you go in the back you’ll find a shrine of hers you can talk to. You know she’ll show up. You’re just too chickenshit to do it.”

She’s right on both counts. “Fuck me. There’s got to be another way,” I say, even though I know there isn’t. Gabriela tosses the cards onto the surgical table behind me.

“Maybe you’ll figure one out on your way to church.”

Chapter 5

I didn’t have time to look over the Cadillac after Malmon put bullets into it. I’ll have to get the driver and passenger windows replaced. Probably the mechanism to roll them up and down. And definitely the locking mechanism on the driver’s side door. Fuck it. I’ll just replace the doors. Where the hell am I going to find doors and windows for a ’73 Cadillac Eldorado?