And I had to go and marry her. I didn’t know that’s what was happening at the time. I pledged myself to her for help in finding my sister’s murderer. Should have read the fine print. That bond turned me into her husband.

But as it turns out, the cosmos doesn’t like paradoxes. Mictlantecuhtli is the King of Mictlan. The King of Mictlan is married to Mictecacihuatl. I’m married to Mictecacihuatl. So, I’m the King of Mictlan. Except Mictlantecuhtli is the King of Mictlan . . .

The universe’s solution is to swap Mictlantecuhtli and me. That little detail about Mictlantecuhtli being turned to jade is kind of important, because I find out real fast that green is so not my color. I’m turning to stone. Mictlantecuhtli is turning to flesh.

Enter the wind. The spirit of the Santa Ana winds, actually. While I’m trying to figure out how to get a speedy divorce before I turn into a lawn ornament, I find myself needing some help, and they’re the best shot I have. They help me find a guy I’m looking for, and I give them . . . something weird. They want me to burn my home down. I was squatting in a rancid, little rat trap at the time, so what do I care? Sure. No problem.

Except they don’t mean my home. They mean the King of the Dead’s home. They mean Mictlan. Whole goddamn place. And why is that? Because all the wind spirits are connected. The spirit of the Santa Anas connects to the Chinook in Alaska to the Abrolhos in Brazil to the Zonda in Argentina and on and on, and eventually to a half-dead Aztec wind god, named—surprise!—Quetzalcoatl.

He gives me this spiffy Zippo that holds the fire of the god Xiuhtecuhtli. It could burn anything in the mortal world in no time flat and all of Mictlan with one flick of the wheel. I tried it out on a creepy little island outside Mexico City filled with the trapped ghosts of murdered children.

Since I’m heading down to Mictlan to divorce my death goddess wife and take out her jade statue ex-husband with extreme prejudice, it sounds like a win-win to me. Only it isn’t. Because burning Mictlan, I find out, means destroying the thousands of souls calling it their afterlife. I’m a bastard, but I’m not that big a bastard. Mictlan stays unburned. In the kerfuffle between me, Santa Muerte and her husband, I lose the lighter.

After seeing what happened to the house in West Adams I know for sure the lighter is back in play, and I can only think of one guy who’d try using it.