Hungry Ghosts (Eric Carter #3)(22)

She says nothing for a long time, just stares at my wrist. I realize what she’s looking at and drop my arm. The sleeve of my jacket covers the jade poking out from beneath it.

“I hadn’t realized you were so far gone,” she says.

“Not so far gone I can’t do something about it.”

I keep my eyes on the road, but I can feel hers on me. The silence stretches between us until she says, “I can’t hear her. I’ve had her in my head for so long and now I can’t hear her. It’s very . . . quiet.”

“I thought you were supposed to be Santa Muerte,” I say.

“And I thought you were supposed to be Mictlantecuhtli,” she snaps. No matter how calm she tries to come off, she’s on edge. “I’m her as much as I need to be. I have a piece of her in me. Just like you’ve got a piece of him in you.”

“I don’t—”

“Please. You might not be able to hear him but you still have some of his power. You’re still turning into jade. You and I might be different in the particulars, but we’re not that different. You’ve blocked my link to her, but you can’t pull her out of me. Just like you can’t pull him out of you.”

When I had Mictlantecuhtli talking to me he took the form of my dead friend Alex. As I got more ensorcelled ink, spells in my tattoos to block him and Santa Muerte, he’d appear to me less and less. Soon he was nothing more than a hint of a whisper I could ignore. Eventually I blocked him entirely.

I did the same thing to the handcuffs. As long as she’s got that on, and it’s not coming off without my say so, she’s cut off from Santa Muerte.

Getting rid of Mictlantecuhtli didn’t really affect me. I’d only had him in my head a short while. But Tabitha, she’s been linked to Santa Muerte a lot longer. Years. No wonder she’s on edge.

She worries at the cuff with her hand. “So where to now, lover? Or are we just going to drive around Mexico City until you turn into a piece of pottery?”

“Need a good way into Mictlan.”

“You’ve got a good way into Mictlan.”

“One that doesn’t end with me turning into a green garden gnome.”

“Okay. Muerte could have taken you there. Hell, she could have dumped you right in front of Mictlantecuhtli.” She pauses, chewing her lip in thought. “Unless you didn’t want her help.”

“Hey, you’re quick.”

“So that’s what this is about? You kidnap me, break my link to Santa Muerte and, what, make me tell you how to get into Mictlan so you can kill my goddess?”

“I haven’t decided if I’m going to kill her, yet.”

“Oh, horseshit,” she says. “You decided that a long time ago. I told her not to go after your sister. She was just going to piss you off by doing that.”

“I thought—”

She tips her head back, closes her eyes. “That I don’t have my own opinions? That’s not how this works. Our lines blur, but it doesn’t mean I don’t have my own identity. Christ my head hurts.”

Tabitha tried to dissuade Santa Muerte from killing Lucy? I don’t know how to feel about this information. I don’t even know if I trust it. And I’m not sure how much difference it makes if it’s true.

“Goddammit, you’re fucking with my head,” I say. “Why?”

She cracks one eye open. “I’m fucking with your head? I’m the one with a migraine over here. Muerte didn’t strip me out of this body. I’m not a puppet. She’s not like that.”

“I meant why did you tell her to leave Lucy alone? Just because you thought I’d come after her?”

“Because Lucy was innocent,” Tabitha says. “Because this wasn’t about her. Hell, it’s not even about you and I.”

“Then what is it about?”

“You know there are bigger things than us, right? There’s a lot of fucked up out there and some of us would like to change it. But I wouldn’t expect you to know anything about that.”

“Okay, what the actual fuck are you talking about?”

“It’s about the souls scraping in the dust of Mictlan,” she says. “It’s about the countless dead from half a millennia ago. It’s about the spirits she’s responsible for since she became Santa Muerte. Mictlan’s broken, Eric. Can you even conceive of that? A decrepit heaven that might as well be Hell. She has a responsibility and she takes it seriously. And she’ll do anything it takes to make it whole.”

“And why do you care about that? And what the hell do I have to do with any of this?”

“Because there are a lot of broken things and this is one I can fix. And you? You’re not some Chosen One, Eric,” Tabitha says. “That shit doesn’t happen. You were just the right person at the right time. There aren’t that many necromancers around, or hadn’t you noticed? Santa Muerte needed someone tuned to the Dead. Someone with enough power in them that they wouldn’t burn out. She’s been waiting for you for a very long time.”

Necromancy is an exclusive club inside an exclusive club. Doesn’t mean it’s better. Psychopaths are a pretty exclusive club for humanity, too. You don’t see anybody signing up for that action. There just aren’t a lot of us around. No idea why. I’m sure there’s some enterprising mage out there who’s tried to answer that with math.