That term does not apply to Santa Muerte. For her, death itself is the objective. The term Santa Muerte refers both to the cult and to the being the cultists worship. She goes by many names, including the more formal Nuestra Señora de la Santa Muerte. The Saint of Death resembles a cross between the grim reaper and the Virgin Mary. She has a bare skull for a head and is draped in the blue-and-red robes of the Holy Mother.
I grab my phone and scroll through the photos I took in Elizabeth’s room. There it is before me, a red-and-blue color scheme that suggests some tenuous connection. Could Sebastian be telling the truth? I keep reading.
The cult itself is an offshoot of Catholicism. Its true origins are unknown, but its popularity throughout Mexico has exploded in recent years, so much so that the Catholic Church had to officially condemn its practice. That did nothing to quell its supporters.
I read my discoveries aloud to Paige throughout the night. By two in the morning, she’s had enough and decides to go to bed. She mumbles something on her way out.
I mumble back, “Okay.”
“Did you hear me?” she asks.
“Yes?”
“I said, ‘Promise me you’re not going to stay up all night reading.’”
“Just five more minutes.”
As she disappears through her doorway, I can tell by her expression that she doesn’t believe me. Honestly, I don’t believe me, either, because once I get started, I can’t stop, the same way Paige can’t stop exercising once she gets going, I can’t stop reading. Time slows down. The pages go by in a blur. I can’t remember how many times I’ve stumbled on a curious book at the library, and once my shift ended, I spent the rest of the evening in some nook, unable to leave until I got to the last page. The same is true of research. Once I get invested in a topic, I’m like Alice stumbling down the click hole—I keep going.
I find information on Santa Muerte’s prevalence in Mexico and its migration into the United States. In recent years, the popularity of Santa Muerte has been attributed to the growing power of Mexican drug cartels. The practice of worshiping the Saint of Death is connected to both those who work for the cartels—who summon her power to destroy their enemies— and those seeking protection from them. A common practice for followers is the ritualistic sacrifice of animals to appeal to her. Then there are the news articles. Every week, there’s another ritualistic decapitation of men, women, and children in her honor. There’s plenty of conflicting information from various websites, and I can’t tell which is legit and which consists of the ramblings of some mommy blogger looking for hits.
I try to find information on this temple Sebastian mentioned in East Los Angeles, but apparently, no one bothered to create an entry for Dangerous Death Cult on Yelp. This might take some good old-fashioned detective work.
“What are you doing?”
I look up to find Paige standing at her door with a disapproving scowl on her face. She’s not wearing the same outfit she wore moments ago. Now she’s dressed in her morning-workout gear.
“What?” I ask.
“You stayed up all night!”
That can’t be right—it’s still dark. I look out the picture window. Through the buildings and skyscrapers looking east, I get a glimpse of a warm glow rising in the horizon. The time on my laptop reads 5:02 a.m.
My eyes rise to meet hers. “Oops.”
She shakes her head and walks across the room to take a seat across from me at the table. “What did you find out?”
I close my laptop and stretch. “Well, if Elizabeth was involved with Santa Muerte… she’s in real trouble.”
“If she is involved, and if she is in trouble, what’s the next step?”
I cast a glance at the terrarium. Inside, the snake slithers across the transparent container wall, looking for a way out. “I think I need to pay a visit to Fiona.”
Chapter 8
____◊____
I MAKE SURE THE lid on the terrarium is secure. The last thing I want is this denizen of the underworld to escape in the back seat of my car then attack me while I’m doing sixty-five on the 10 freeway.
“Thank God,” Paige mutters when she sees me packing him up. She stays seated at our table about as far away from me as she can without going into another room.
My stomach churns. Anytime someone utters a phrase or idiom that references God or heaven, I can feel Dudley writhing inside me. Allergy season is the worst. When I start sneezing and find myself on the receiving end of a barrage of “Bless yous,” I get physically nauseous.
“Yes,” I say to Paige. “Say goodbye to Sir Hiss.”
“I hope Fiona puts it in a meat pie.”
“Shhh. He can hear you!” I yell as I sweep out the door.
It’s a short drive to the studio where I’m set to meet Fiona after her taping. For those of you who don’t know, I should mention that the Fiona I’m meeting is the Fiona Flanagan—Irish celebrity chef, media proprietor, and owner of the Flanagan Foods brand, the same Fiona Flanagan who has a cooking show at eleven o’clock in the morning on local networks, enthusiastically introducing audiences to long-forgotten recipes with her musically thick County Cork accent.
When she demonstrated how to cook eighteenth-century dessert recipes on YouTube a few years ago, Fiona became the latest chef to reach stardom. Her grandmotherly appeal won the hearts of millions online, and she leveraged that popularity to launch a media and commercial-food empire. You can’t walk into the baking aisle of a grocery store anymore without seeing her silver hair and smiling face plastered on boxes and ads.
So why am
