A few see something else in me. They offer me coffee, or a place to wash up, worry writ large in their eyes. I know I look pretty bad. Even after washing the blood off my hands and arms, the spatter from my face, I’m still covered in gore. My shirt and pants are soaked through, stiff from dried blood.

I’ve spent a lot of time covered in blood. You do death magic, you get used to it. Only this is different. This is the blood of someone who shouldn’t die, someone who cares about the world more than I ever have. I’ve only run into that a few times, and never like this. By the time they get to a hospital, they’re DOA.

I’m worried, but it’s a distant thing. Pushed aside along with everything else by a singular, blazing-hot thought: How do I kill Quetzalcoatl and his pet assassin and make it hurt?

About an hour and a half after they disappeared through the door of Gabriela’s makeshift surgery, Vivian comes out, stands in the doorway. She looks exhausted. I’ve never seen her so tired. She waves me over.

“Okay,” she says. “I’ve patched her up, but she’s still under that spell. You need to bring her out and I’ll be ready in case anything goes wrong. I’m not going to know for sure that what I did helped until she’s a little more alive.”

I follow Vivian inside and she closes the door behind us. Gabriela’s lying unconscious on the surgical table, intubated, hooked to a ventilator and an IV, a blue sheet covering everything but the wound. The conditions aren’t ideal—hey, it’s a warehouse—but Vivian’s a professional and she knows her shit.

“I don’t know how this works,” she says. “When you bring her out will she need to be sedated?”

“I have no idea,” I say. “I’ve never done this on an injured person. She could come back and still be unconscious, or she could wake up screaming.”

“Joy. Well, I can knock her out with a spell and then dose her with fentanyl if I have to. She’s closed up, and I’ve got an antibiotic enchantment on the room, so she’ll be fine, but scrub up, anyway. You look disgusting.”

“Unless you’ve got a power washer I don’t think it’s gonna make much difference. Do I need gloves?”

“You sticking your fingers in her intestines?”

“Not today.”

“Then no, you don’t need gloves.”

I tear open a sponge packet at the sink, scrub the dried blood out from under my fingernails, dig into the crevices of my palms. No matter how hard I try, I can’t seem to get the last of the blood out. Funny. I always thought that was just a metaphor.