“Land of the dead. Aztec souls, cartel guys, lots of Catholics oddly enough. Burning it down would have destroyed them all, and I wasn’t about to commit genocide. When I refused to burn down Mictlan, he said he’d get back at me.”

Letitia puts her face in her hands, like if she can’t see me this will all go away. “I want to get this right. You’re married to a skeleton in a wedding dress who you killed—”

“Sort of killed.”

“Sort of killed?” She parts her fingers so she can look at me between them.

“It’s complicated.”

“You said that.”

“I think it bears repeating.”

“Okay. Sort of killed, and her husband—”

“Ex-husband. He was dead. Then I killed him.”

“Don’t you have that backwards?”

“No.”

“Now this Quetz—fuck, I’m not even gonna try to pronounce that. This other god is pissed off because you wouldn’t burn down all the souls in the land of the dead. Why the hell did he want that?”

“It’s—”

“Complicated. Got it. Okay, so you didn’t burn the place down and now he wants to get back at you by burning L.A. down.”

“That I’m not sure about. I don’t know what he gets out of that. He tried to have me killed in Mictlan and that didn’t work out so well for him. But I was expecting it then. I don’t know why he doesn’t just kill me now instead of trying to pin me for a bunch of murders. He’s got something else going on, but I don’t know what it is.”

“I think I’m gonna be sick.”

“Welcome to the wonderful world of necromancy,” I say.

“I like my knack better,” she says. “But I really wish I didn’t have it right now.”

“What is it?”

“Alethemancy.”

“I don’t know that one,” I say, which isn’t really surprising. There are so many ways to categorize and subcategorize magic I’m bound to have missed a few.

“Truth magic,” she says. “Like how you see the dead, I can tell when I’m being lied to.” That explains the weird looks she was giving me the last time we met. If she can tell when I’m lying to her, can she tell when I’m not telling her everything, as long as I keep it truthful?

“Good to know. Am I lying to you now?”

“I really wish you were.”

“Me too. Now that that’s out of the way, I found our assassin in Vernon. Ran into her and Quetzalcoatl. Barely made it out in one piece. Later that night, blocks of factories go up in massive fireballs.”

“Maybe it’s a coincidence,” she says.

“I saw Quetzalcoatl in one of the fireballs.”

“Shit,” she says.

“Accurate, if understated.”

“So, what happens now?”