“What, that you were more than just some guy I was told to fuck? Because that’s what you were, Eric. I had marching orders and I followed them. When I came on to you, you’d just gotten the shit kicked out of you. You really think a girl’s gonna go for a guy with a busted nose, covered in bruises? Yeah, that’s hot. You think I have that little respect for myself?”

“Clearly, or you wouldn’t have done it in the first place.”

One second she’s Tabitha. The next, her face splits open with cracks like dried mud, flames glowing behind her eyes. And then she’s Santa Muerte, an eight-foot-tall skeleton in a dress with a burning scythe in her hand, a screaming goddess of vengeance.

“Oh, there she is. The star of our show. Outstanding performance. Brava!”

“You know nothing,” she says, her voice a tear in the fabric of the universe. The full force of it slams into me, a freight train made of sound, pushing me back in the pew.

But now I’m on familiar footing. I might be confused about Tabitha, but a pissed off death goddess? That I can handle. Whatever came into being out of Tabitha and Santa Muerte, the binding between the personalities can’t be that tight. It didn’t take much at all to get Tabitha talking about herself in the first person. And it didn’t take much to draw out Santa Muerte.

I don’t doubt that I’m confronting something brand new, built out of both of them. But it doesn’t matter. I had a reason for coming here, and all this bullshit about Mictlan, rings, Tabitha, and my own fucking stupidity clouded it over. But I remember now.

“Oh, blow it out your ass,” I say. “I killed you once before, I’ll fucking do it again.”

She tips her head back, neck bones creaking, and laughs. Without flesh it should be comical, but everything about her is terrifying.

“With what?” she says. “You don’t have Mictlantecuhtli’s knife, anymore. That ridiculous razor? Foul language?”

“Xiuhtecuhtli’s fire,” I say. “Quetzalcoatl’s in town. And I bet he’d just love to get his hands on you.”

Chapter 19

That stops her. “You’re lying,” she says. “I would know if he was near.”

“You sure about that? ’Cause I had a lovely chat with the guy last night. He’s got a minion lighting shit on fire. You hear about the Vernon disaster? That was them. If the lighter can do that to a whole chunk of the city, just think what it can do to you.”

In Mictlan she was terrified of Xiuhtecuhtli’s fire. It could burn the whole place down and she knew it. It might not have quite the same power here as it does in Mictlan, but she’s not from here. At least the Santa Muerte part of her isn’t.