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.
But with Tabitha, Santa Muerte gains a physical presence. She can actually see her followers, show them proof of who she represents. Whether operating through an avatar limits her power at all, I have no idea, but I’m not sure how much that matters.
It’s not surprising that Santa Muerte knows I’m down here, and if she knows it, then it’s a good bet Tabitha knows. I’ve made a point of making as much noise as I can to get her attention. I want her to know I’m coming for her. I want her to think she’s got the upper hand. I want her to get lazy. It might be a stupid move, but it’s not likely I could surprise her, anyway, so I’d rather work with what I’ve got.
But if she’s set this guy up with a message for me then it’s not just that she knows I’m in Mexico looking for her. She knows that eventually I’d have come here for him to give it to me. I’ve been herded in this direction from the start.
“You should know she wants very much to see you again,” Bustillo says. “She knew you would be coming here not long after her visit.”
“How long ago was that?”
“A month ago? Little more?”
“What’d you guys talk about? Best ways to dispose of troublesome Federales? The ins and outs of the heroin trade?”
“Tithes, mostly. Sacrifices to Santa Muerte. Spreading her word among the faithful. Se?ora is powerful, and she has many devotees, but she needs more.”
This is pretty much what I’ve heard from everyone else. Santa Muerte’s looking to consolidate her power, grow her flock. Every day she gets more followers. Among the narcos, sure. But also, oddly enough, among Mexican and U.S. law enforcement, not to mention the millions of men and women who are caught in that crossfire, or the ones who simply see her as an alternative they can understand.
They follow her for different reasons, but a lot of them do it because they think she’ll help when the saints they grew up with and the god they follow won’t.
Santa Muerte will not judge you, will not tell you what you are doing is right or wrong. She will help you with vengeance, she will help you with your rocky relationship, she will help you when the chips are down and there’s nowhere else to go.
Unless she doesn’t. She can be fickle. She is Death, after all.
“All right. So where is her avatar now?” I ask.