Hungry Ghosts (Eric Carter #3)(4)

“Perhaps it is time for a drink,” he says and lifts his shot glass, his hand shaking a little.

“Perhaps it is.” I’m not worried about poison, my body is crawling with tattoos infused with spells for protection. I have at least three against poison. I think. Maybe four? I’ve lost track over the years.

I take my hand off the shotgun, but hold on to the knife. It’s the more dangerous of the two. We down our shots. If it’s poisoned it’s worth it. It’s damn good tequila.

“I see you’ve heard of the knife,” I say. “Mictlantecuhtli’s blade. The Aztec king of the dead made this for Xipe-Totec, the Flayed God, to carve the skins of his enemies and absorb them into himself. A few quick cuts, toss the skin over the shoulders and everything a person is, everything they know, goes to the one who uses it. You’re not gonna make me use it, are you, Manuel?”

“No,” he says, eyes firmly on the blade.

“I’m glad to hear that. I don’t know what nest of vipers are bouncing around inside your head, but believe me I don’t want you in mine. Now you seem awfully eager to be having this conversation. Why is that?”

“Se?ora de las Sombras told me to,” he says. Lady of the Shadows. Also known as La Flaca, Se?ora Negra, La Madrina.

“I’m not looking for Santa Muerte,” I say. Which is true. I know exactly where she is.

A while back I got backed into a corner, and to get out of it I made a deal with an Aztec death goddess. She used to go by the name Mictecacihuatl, Queen of Mictlan, the Aztec land of the dead. In more recent years she’s transformed, recreating herself as Santa Muerte, Saint Death.

Her movement, religion, cult, whatever you want to call it, has spread to over two million devotees throughout Mexico and the United States and across the world, getting bigger every day. She’s seen as the Narco Saint, a protector of killers and thugs, but she’s so much more than that. She’s a protector of the innocent, an instrument of vengeance, and, oddly enough, a love sorceress.

And she’s my wife.

That was the deal I made. Marry my power to hers. Necromancy and a death goddess. I got the pitch black eyes and a ring covered in calaveras on my hand. She got me. I’m her champion, her consort. Neither of which is a job I’m particularly thrilled with. She’s got some other plan in mind for me but I don’t know what it is.

I had a friend, Darius, who told me it was a bad idea. I should have listened to him. He’s had some experience with her, though I don’t know what kind. He had the sort of perspective you’re not gonna get from most people.

Darius is special. He’s a Djinn. Hundreds of years old if he’s a day. He came over to California five hundred years ago with Cabrillo, and his bottle got lost in Los Angeles. Now he uses it as a pocket universe and lets people in from time to time so he doesn’t get bored.

Once I took the deal with Santa Muerte, he and I were on the outs. Should have listened to him. Wouldn’t be in this mess if I had.

The thing Santa Muerte didn’t tell me was that she already had a husband. Mictlantecuhtli, King of Mictlan. Darius told me he was dead. Turns out not quite. Dead gods are more complicated than I thought. It was more like sleeping. Sitting in a tomb in Mictlan, a statue locked in jade.

And by a fucked up piece of cosmic logic—Mictlantecuhtli is the King of Mictlan, but the King of Mictlan is married to Mictecacihuatl and since I’m married to Mictecacihuatl I’m the King of Mictlan—he and I are trading places. I’m getting access to his power. But I’m also slowly becoming jade, the stone replacing my flesh like petrified wood. He’s slowly becoming . . . whatever it is Aztec death gods count as flesh. I don’t really know.

The last time I saw him I was just beginning to change and he was still stuck in his tomb in Mictlan. Now a good forty percent of my body is green stone, flexible, movable, but stone nonetheless.

“Her avatar, then,” Bustillo says. “Tabitha Cheung.”

“Ah,” I say. “Now her, she’s the one I’m looking for.”





Because my situation with Santa Muerte and Mictlantecuhtli wasn’t weird enough, I met a girl, Tabitha Cheung. Worked at a friend’s bar in Koreatown in Los Angeles. We hooked up a couple of times. She helped me out of a jam.

And then I found out that she’d actually been killed a while back and the only thing keeping her upright was that Santa Muerte had stuck a piece of her soul inside her, turning a mid-twenties Korean waitress from Fullerton into her will made flesh.

When I figured it out and confronted her, Tabitha showed me her true colors. She told me that she’s Santa Muerte, but she also told me she’s a combination of the two of them, blurring together until she can’t tell where one ends and the other begins.

That means it’s possible there’s some of Tabitha still in there. I have a lot riding on that.

She walked out and I let her. I’ve wondered since if that was maybe not the best decision I could have made, and boy howdy have I made some bad decisions. Killing her would have just killed Tabitha’s body and whatever was left of her inside it. It wouldn’t have touched Santa Muerte. And I wouldn’t have the opportunity that I have now.

I tried to keep track of her, but she went to ground. It’s taken me months to pick up the trail of men and women she’s seen or talked to. Santa Muerte herself has trouble talking to people in person. Most can’t see her. So she appears to them in their dreams.