“That’s not what I mean.”

She considers that. “Did you make this happen?” she says. “Did you and Gabriela do this?”

“How’s she doing?”

“Fine, but she’s still out. Answer the question. What did you do? Did you kill all those people?”

“No,” I say, but I honestly wonder how true that is. “We definitely triggered it, though. All that smoke and fire? All those dead? They’re a great big double-fisted fuck you. I told you the basics of me going to Mexico, but a lot more happened than I’ve talked about.”

I tell her about Quetzalcoatl, his blaming me for his not getting to fulfill a 500-year-old revenge fantasy, his connection to the mage murders, La Niña Quemada, what happened last night.

“She’s the one who stabbed Gabriela?”

“Yeah. I had a choice to make: take her down and let Gabriela die, or let her go and get Gabriela back here.”

“You made the right choice,” she says.

Did I? Ask the hundreds who died last night, or the ones who are going to die today and tomorrow. Ask the survivors if they think I made the right choice. That fire’s gonna burn for days, if not weeks. If they’re lucky it won’t spread. But it won’t be the last one.

“Maybe,” I say. “They’ll do it again, though.”

“This—I can’t believe I’m saying this—this god hates you that much that he’ll burn the city down just to fuck with you?”

“Honestly, I don’t know. I have a hard time thinking this is all just petty revenge. But they don’t think like people. Or, fuck, maybe they do.”

“I still can’t wrap my mind around that. Gods, goddesses. Quetzalcoatl. You know, that’s the only Aztec god I remember. And he’s real. I’m fine with magic because I use it every day, but actual gods? When you told me about Santa Muerte, I figured she was just some demon. I don’t know why I’m okay with demons and I’m having so much trouble with gods.”

I think about telling her that it’s because they raise uncomfortable questions. Demons are like cockroaches. They’re all over the place and mages learn to deal with them early or we don’t live long. We’ve seen them. Some of us, unfortunately, have touched a few.

But gods are different. Gods mean maybe you’re not in control. Maybe you don’t have your shit together like you thought you did. Nothing will piss off us magic types more than not being in control. We can twist reality like fucking balloon animals, but there’s something bigger and badder than us out there.

And Vivian wonders why I never told her half the shit necromancy is about. She has trouble with gods? Imagine if I’d told her the real story about ghosts.