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Pinotl began to speak. “Those of you who have been with us before, know what it is to make sacrifice to the gods. You have shared in that glory, taken the offering into yourselves. But only the bravest, the most virtuous, are fit sacrifices. There are those that are not fit to feed the gods with their lives, but they, too, may serve.” He drew the cloth off in one large movement, sending the black and sequined draped cloth spreading wide like a fisherman’s net. As that glittering cloth fell to the stage, the contents of the coffin were revealed. Gasps, screams spread through the audience like ripples in a pool.

There was a body in the coffin. It was dried and wizened, as if the body had been buried in the desert and had mummified naturally. No artificial preservatives. The spotlight on the coffin seemed very bright, harsh. It showed every line in the dried skin. The skeletal shadow of bones underneath was painfully clear.

We were only three rows back, close enough to see more detail than I cared to see. At least this time they wouldn’t be cutting anyone up. I really wasn’t in the mood to see inside anyone’s chest tonight. I was searching the crowd, trying to see if she was coming or if we were about to be surrounded by werejaguars.

I turned and looked. The dead mummy’s eyes were open. I looked at Edward. He answered the question without me having to say it. “Its eyes just opened. Nobody touched it.”

I stared at that skull trapped under dry parchment skin. The eyes were full of something dry and brown. There was no life to the eyes, but they were open. The mouth began to open slowly, as if the mouth were on a stiff hinge. As the mouth opened a sound came out of it, a sigh that grew into a scream. A scream that echoed through the room, reverberated off the ceiling, the walls, the inside of my head.

“It’s a trick, right?” Ramirez said.

I just shook my head. It wasn’t a trick. Dear God, it wasn’t a trick. I looked at Edward, and he just shook his head. He’d never seen this particular act either.

The scream died, and there was a silence so thick you could have dropped a pin and heard it bounce. I think everyone was holding their breath, straining to hear. To hear what I didn’t know, but I was doing it, too. I think I was trying to hear it breathe. I studied that skeletal chest, but it didn’t rise and fall. It didn’t move. I said a silent prayer of thanks.

“This one’s energy went to feed our dark goddess, but she is merciful. What was taken shall be given back. This is Micapetlacalli, the box of death. I am Nextepeua. In legend I was the husband of Micapetlacalli, and I am still married to death. Death runs through my veins. My blood tastes of death. Only the blood of one consecrated to death will free this one of torment.”

I realized that Pinotl’s voice was just a voice, a good voice, like a good stage actor, but nothing more. Either he wasn’t trying to bespell the audience, or I wasn’t as susceptible tonight. The only change that I knew for certain was the marks. They were wide open now. I’d been told by my teacher and by Leonora Evans that the marks made me more vulnerable to psychic attack, but maybe on some things having a direct link to the boys helped me. Whatever it was, his voice didn’t move me tonight. Great.

Pinotl drew an obsidian blade from behind his back. He’d probably been carrying it the way Edward and I were carrying guns, at the small of his back. He held his arm over the open coffin, over that gaping mouth. He drew the blade across his skin. It wasn’t clear to the audience what he’d done. It would have been much better theater for Pinotl to slash his arm where the audience could see that first crimson slash. For him to hide it, there had to be some ritual significance, some importance, to those first drops of blood going into the corpse’s mouth.

He dripped blood on the top of the thing’s skull, dabbed it in the middle of that skull forehead, touched it to the throat, the chest, the stomach, the abdomen. He went down the line of chakras, energy points,