Literature / Paraiso Street

Paraiso Street is a 2019 novel by Evan James Clark. It follows Danny Capistrano, an ex-priest and cartel physicist whose specialty is human trafficking— by smuggling the newly-deceased into Ptiamuzcuaro, the dystopian land of the dead. Cutting portals between worlds is practically the only thing Danny is good at, and after two decades of cartel living, he’s become a jaded alcoholic with no family and only bad relationships. His bad luck culminates when all on the same day he botches a major job, his girlfriend bails, and he’s recalled to the cartel’s headquarters in San Adriano, the border city into death itself. There, he’s given a last chance in the form of troubleshooting one of the cartel’s technological operations, and to that end is paired up with Cali, a mad-science prodigy... who happens to be his long-estranged daughter.

Parallel to Danny’s plot are the misadventures of Henshaw and Pagonia, two Ptiamuzcuari exiles and persons of mass destruction who have been contracted as assassins by the cartel. Their mission relies on subtlety and stealth, which proves far more difficult than their usual shtick of unrestrained slaughter. Eventually, their path crosses with Danny’s, resulting in uncovering an interdimensional conspiracy. Along the way are plenty of masked mooks, secret police, detectives trying to survive in a corrupt police force, and one undead eight-foot rabbit.

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Paraiso Street contains examples of:

• Admiring the Abomination: Henshaw and Pagonia's friendship began as this, with the former, a psychotic vampire spirit, in awe of the latter, a forgotten, undead god.
• Affably Evil: Henshaw and Pagonia, due to Blue-and-Orange Morality, are often polite and sympathetic to the people they kill. Henshaw, the more violent of the two, only breaks out her mean persona when confronted by genuine threats.
• Alcoholic Parent: Danny to a T. One of Cali's methods of getting back at him is finding ways to make his hangovers worse.
• The Alcoholic: Danny, who is in serious withdrawals throughout the majority of the action. The ending implies that he might be on a real path to recovery.
• Alien Geometries: Ptiamuzcuaro is made of these. The dead version of Del Espejo contains bridges that turn sideways, leaning skyscrapers that go from concave to convex depending on their mood, and streets that loop back upon themselves. The Breach also counts, being a rip between realities that appears as a gargantuan crystalline tunnel where the laws of physics break down.
• All Men Are Perverts: Danny has absolutely no shame in eyeing women, and repeatedly dwells on memories/fantasies of sex with the ex. This gets him into trouble numerous times, namely when Eisley uses this as a honey-trap to arrest him and when he draws the ire of Bill Netley by running off with Isis.
• Amazingly Embarrassing Parents: Cali views Danny this way, which he goes out of his way to reinforce. As he says, "I'm a parent... that's what we're for."
• Ambiguously Bi: Isis appears to appreciate Henshaw’s nervous interest in her, but this might also be because she’s used to it. Cali also offhandedly mentions previous flings, but feels her first true romantic connection with Zia.
• Ancient Evil: The Golden, although it is implied that there are evils in the lowest layers of Ptiamuzcuaro even more ancient.
• Another Dimension: Ptiamuzcuaro, the land of the dead accessible via the Paraiso Street gateway.
• Antagonist in Mourning: Pagonia falls into this hard after the death of Henshaw. It then triggers his Roaring Rampage of Revenge.
• Applied Phlebotinum: The artificial gates run on this, blurring the lines between quantum physics and Magitek. Also anything which uses materials imported from Ptiamuzcuaro, such a Ptiamuzcuari Steel.
• Attractive Zombie: Discussed by Danny and Gallows Charlie, then shown with Rosita, a ghost stitched into the corpse of her sister. Danny notes that Rosita would be quite attractive if he had an interest in dead things, and it is heavily implied that Charlie regularly sleeps with his clientele.
• Asshole Victim: Bill Netley, leader of the Zargoza Cartel and orchestrator of every awful thing that happens to the Capistranos, finds himself in the hands of Henshaw and Pagonia. He's tortured, mutilated beyond recognition, and dropped from the top of his 90th story penthouse.
• Avenging the Villain: The motive for Pagonia's Roaring Rampage of Revenge. After Henshaw's death, Pagonia decides the temptations of the living are to blame and sets out to wipe out as many humans as possible in a catastrophic Thanatos Gambit.
• Awakening the Sleeping Giant: Pagonia. He has no interest in the Xolotl vs Zargoza conflict, or even human problem in general. His only concern is returning to Ptiamuzcuaro as quickly as possible where he can relax. However, the death of Henshaw sends him into a rage that reveals his true nature as an undead deity and begins a Roaring Rampage of Revenge that destroys a huge section of the city.
• Bad Boss: Bill Netley. He's a manipulative bastard who reward cruelty, encourages infighting, and goes after a former subordinate over a years-old slight. He's also comfortable with klling his own successful employees when it's convenient. Averted (mostly) with the Stained-Glass King, the de facto leader of the Xolotl, who gives his people as much leeway as needed to perform their jobs. Just don't accept bribes, deal with criminals, or violate the Law of the Golden.
• Bad Moon Rising: Ptiaumzcuaro has one of these, which is called a "gift" from the Golden for the dead who missed the real moon. Given the obviously false and unsettling nature of it, it serves more as a reminder of the Golden's absolute power over the dead.
• Badass Boast: Danny's suicidal stare-down of the Stained-Glass King, perhaps the second most powerful creature in existence, is full of these. Justified in that he's stalling for time and has accepted imminent, agonizing death.
  "You sure as hell will tarry for me, your Highness! As appointed representatives of the worlds beyond this world, we are going to parlay!"
  "Even you aren't eternal. I've seen the eternal and knelt down to it. It's empty and still contains everything there ever was. It was there before you were shaped and it'll be there forever after the dust of every world is forgotten. So, yeah, I speak for nothing. Our Father who is nowhere, cousin. And in the name of the one greater than you and the Golden and all of death itself, you will GO BACK TO THE ABYSS PREPARED FOR YOU, MOTHERFUCKER."
• Badass Long Coat: The Xolotl wear these as part of their secret police uniform. Not only do they add to the menacing aesthetic, but they're dark enough to blend into shadows, allowing agents to be nearly invisible in low light.
• Bad Powers, Good People: Downplayed with Cali, who is both idealistic and fine with using completely amoral means to achieve her ends. Danny calls her out for her use of unholy Hellfire as a casual tool, and she later bonds with a destructive, tortured poltergeist to survive facing Pagonia.
• Badass Preacher: Danny was implied to be one before he fell in with Zargoza. He returns to it when he uses his priestly rites to stare down the Stained-Glass King.
• Bantering Baddie Buddies: Henshaw and Pagonia. They converse about pop culture and enjoy movies and meals after incredibly violent mass murders... or sometimes during. Danny and Wendell were a less murderous version of this when they were colleagues in San Adriano.
• Barred from the Afterlife: Downplayed. The dead are in fact required by law to arrange passage to Ptiamuzcuaro within a reasonable time frame. The danger comes from the Xolotl, who can conscript any soul they want into an interminably long "half-a-hell". In a more literal example, the physical passage into Ptiamuzcuaro is heavily guarded to keep only the proper flow of imports and exports moving.
• Batman Gambit: Bill's plan relies on Danny get so caught up in fixing the problem with broken portals that he draws enough attention to himself to be blamed for the Applecore project. Likewise, he counts on Cali's idealism to blind her to the purpose of what she's building with the cartel's resources. It works. Wendell counts on Bill's ambition, Eisley's dogged pursuit of the truth, and Henshaw and Pagonia's reckless destructiveness to undo Bill's plan. This also works.
• Battle Butler: Henry, Cali's personal driver, is shown to be ex-Special Forces. Danny notes this is common among minders for high-ranking cartel personnel.
• Bavarian Fire Drill: Cali pulls one off by bleaching her hair and showing up at the police station, claiming to be Danny's panicked administrative assistant. Eisley sees through it easily, but since Eisley has not shared information on her operations or even why she arrested Danny in a sting, Cali's gambit is just enough to get Danny released. Cali later admits it shouldn't have worked, but Eisley's own loner cop tendencies made holding Danny longer impossible.
• Bazaar of the Bizarre: The rain markets. They pop up at different areas of the city with almost no notice, utilize fields of artificial mist to keep out the dead, and sell anything from bootlegged rock albums to Phlebotinum-infused tattoos.
• The Beard: Wendell engages in this, likely to avoid homophobic suspicion within The Cartel. Then again, his only named girlfriend was Isis.
• Because I'm Good At It: Danny's motivation for continuing working for the Zargoza cartel. After being a cartel engineer for so long, he lacks any other skill set, and serving as a smuggler of the dead is the only thing in his life that he isn't a wild failure at.
• Being Evil Sucks: Danny firmly believes this, having lost everything good in his life because of his criminal and adulterous behavior, but considers himself beyond redemption even as he prays for his daughter's life. He does get better.
• Berserk Button: Threatening Danny's daughter is not a good idea. Telling Henshaw that Zargoza doesn't exist is also not a good idea. Suggesting the Stained-Glass King sleeps on the job is REALLY not a good idea.
• Better the Devil You Know: As much as Eisley hates the corrupt system she works in, she would rather keep the status quo than risk a full-scale awakening of the Stained-Glass King (and by extension, the wrath of the Golden). Her pursuit of Cali and the other Zargoza scientists comes from the possibility that their meddling might cause just that.
• Big Bad: Bill Netley. He not only orchestrates a plan to build numerous Cartel-controlled alternate gates to Ptiamuzcuaro, but manipulates the police, a mega-corporation, and the Xolotl all to make it look like Danny Capistrano's fault.
• Black Magic: Danny considers "bokor" or witch doctor a more-than-grave insult, because of the implication of being a black magic user. While he has no particular objection to black magic itself, or even a true belief in it, just saying the word may be enough to draw the attention of the Golden's servants. After appraising San Adriano's crimes, the Stained-Glass King himself begins by accusing the entire populace of this and thus needing to be purged.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: Pagonia expresses little interest in good or evil, in contrast with Henshaw, who understands both very well and just doesn't care. This is later explained by the reveal that Pagonia is an undead minor deity of a culture so ancient that not even the Ptiamuzcuari remember them.
• Body Horror:
  • Henshaw is the master of this. Not only does she suffer and recover from countless horrible injuries, but she is capable of inflicting them through manipulating the victim's own flesh. One of her favorite acts is to open the victim's chest by spreading their ribs until they pop.
    • After being assaulted by a necrophile medical examiner, she rips the man's lower limbs off, then forces him to push his own hand down his throat up to the elbow.
    • Her crowning achievement is her mutilation of Bill Netley, who she alters into a jawless, disemboweled, distended approximation of a butterfly before dropping him from his skyscraper penthouse. In both Netley and the medical examiner's cases, she keeps them alive and completely aware of what is happening to them.
  • Pagonia also gets in on this during his Roaring Rampage of Revenge, turning Zargoza gangsters inside out before pinning them to walls like insects, and immolating his own body from the inside out, creating a blackened scarecrow-like form with skeletal limbs.
    • Ptiamuzcuari natives have a tendency to do this, as indicated in Danny's story of a specimen that escaped from a holding tank and unrolled its keepers across the walls like paint.
  • Even Cali's torch can cause this, with a beam of concentrated Hellfire summoned from one of Ptiamuzcuaro's hells. When Henshaw inadvertently severs Bill's fingers with it, she notes that even Bill's ghost won't have those. The fact that someone weaponized such a thing disturbs even her.
  • Danny mentions the possibility of a "speed deportation" by the Xolotl, via large mulchers kept in their car trunks. While this seems like a joke at the time, Eisley mentions it as something that the Xolotl actually use.
  • Gallows Charlie's form is that of a towering demonic rabbit, but was created by warping a human body over time to match his preferred shape. Danny implies that the original owner of the body was still inside during that.
• Body Snatcher: The Xolotl are a voluntary form of this, in which native Ptiamuzcuari spirits inhabit the bodies of living hosts. Danny refers to them as the "willing possessed" and the implication is that the living host gains significant security in a dangerous world. This can also work against them, however, as shown when a powerful agent is called only by the host's name, creating a temporary break between the host and the spirit, causing the agent to panic.
• Boom, Headshot!: What finally takes out Henshaw, albeit from a stray bullet that takes out the back of her skull.
• Born Detective: Weather Eisley takes Sherlock scanning to an insane level, and is able to go back through her own photographic memory as if reliving a recording. This makes her both effective and unpopular among those she deems lazy, being everyone else.
• Botanical Abomination: Cali theorizes that the peacock-hued palms imported from Ptiamuzcuaro are actually these– supernatural entities who just prefer the shape of trees.
• Broke Your Arm Punching Out Cthulhu: Happens when Cali touches Pagonia in his cacodaemon form, resulting in heavy burns that will never fully heal.
• Brown Note: Entering Ptiamuzcuaro as a living person is this, combined with shades of Go Mad from the Revelation. This is due to said living person becoming no longer real on their own, but a part of Ptiamuzcuaro's manifestation.
• Bury Your Gays: Henshaw is attracted to human women (although she herself is only human in form) and it is strongly implied that Wendell is at least bisexual. Both end up unceremoniously shot. Averted with Cali and Zia, though they do not end up together.
• Butt-Monkey: Danny. He starts low as a barely-employed criminal who loses his girlfriend on the same day as screwing up a job for The Cartel. The next week piles up the indignities, including being betrayed, shot, beaten, and set-up as a fall-guy for a cross-dimensional criminal operation. All with a catastrophic hangover.
• Calacas: Ever-present, as Ptiamuzcuaro is based predominantly on Mesoamerican mythology. Symbolic versions are everywhere on Havisham Island, the location of the gate between worlds, while "living" versions are seen once Danny and Cali cross over. Danny notes that the dead often look how they think they ought to, but are unable to hide their bones, so savvier souls adopt patterns and dress that show them off, resulting in the traditional calaca image. These modifications also become more extreme the deeper one goes into the land of the dead.
• Calling Card: Danny finds a numer of crumpled papers in his ransacked apartment, with graffiti-like drawing of the Golden to suggest the rebel dead have been there. He correctly deduces that this is a Zargoza ploy to spur he and Cali to action, which is why he's caught off-guard when the actual rebel dead show up.
• Came Back Strong: The dead often have greater strength, no longer being bound by the physical laws of the living world. Cali herself gains enormous strength when bonded with the poltergeist of her 3-year-old self.
• Cassette Futurism: The living world is a low fantasy setting, aged up to roughly 1991 AD. The cassette tape vs vinyl war is going strong (with the implication that CDs are about to crush both), pagers and analogue answering machines are the norm, and computer terminals remain boxy, bulky affairs.
• Chance Meeting Between Antagonists: Henshaw and Cali literally run into each other during the raid on Vesparez Park's rain market. While Cali barely registers the encounter, Henshaw is dazed by their sudden etheric connection. Later shown to have been subverted as Henshaw and Pagonia had been tracking the white hat Hideo, who had instigated the raid hoping that Cali would be captured.
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • The music box Danny found among his things, which is a Soul Jar containing Cali's poltergeist.
  • Cali's tape-deck, which is confiscated by Mizayuko's men and used to record a heavily coerced confession from Danny about the Applecore project.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Ptiamuzcuari natives can lean this way, as they are literally from a world where reality is entirely malleable and death isn't a thing. Henshaw's playful psychopathy and lack of verbal filter put her at the top of the list.
• Coat, Hat, Mask: the standard uniform of Xolotl agents. Xolotl shock troopers upgrade to full Gas Mask Long Coat.
• Co-Dragons: Wendell and Hideo are this for Bill Netley, overseeing the Applecore project and running the cartel's connection with the Xolotl. Their levels of loyalty vary, but Wendell is by far the more competent.
• Cold-Blooded Torture: People who run afoul of Henshaw and Pagonia often gets this. Bill Netley presses directly on Henshaw's Berserk Button and gets this A LOT.
• Cool Car: The Shark, Danny's classic Fireapple-Red convertible and one of his most prized possessions. He loses it early on when the cartel confiscates all his belongings as punishment for a failed job.
• Cool Gate: while Danny’s mobile portal devices are neat enough on their own, the Applecore is a gigantic version, large enough to create a minor planar bleed over a mile wide. According to Cali and Malik, once fully activated it will be able to transport an entire section of the city.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: The Faux Affably Evil Dominic Mizayuko, who teams up with Bill Netley to create the Applecore project and is happy to impersonate Zargoza for the sake of positioning his company to control interdimensional travel. He even escapes Henshaw and Pagonia, who were originally brought on to find him, but then gets his Karma Houdini Warranty voided offscreen when the cartel decides to clean house.
• Creepy Cathedral: The dwelling of the Stained-Glass King on Havisham island is described as a cathedral-mausoleum. Its walls are decorated with faces which are meant to look awed but Danny thinks appear to be screaming.
• Crisis of Faith: Danny suffered one of these when he was younger, culminating with him leaving the priesthood and signing on with the Zargoza cartel. He experiences flashes of it upon seeing the widespread suffering in San Adriano's ghettos, and finally makes peace with his faith during his last stand against the Stained-Glass King.
• Cruel and Unusual Death:
  • Bill Netley is terrorized, tortured, and contorted into the shape of a giant disemboweled and jawless butterfly before being dropped ninety stories to the sidewalk.
  • The Zargoza cartel is known for this, as well as doling out fates worse than death in the form of botched sendings between worlds.
  • Hideo meets one of these at the hands of Pagonia, turned inside-out and pinned to a wall like an insect.
  • The Xolotl are reported to perform these in order to put individuals firmly within their jurisdiction. One method mentioned is "speed deportation" via a portable mulcher.
    • Fridge Logic here, as this would leave no body for the dead to try to hide/flee in, and completely destroy "stitched" individuals, serving as a punishment for violating the Law of the Golden.
  • The sorcerer Lucciola Vesparez suffered one of these at the hands of the Golden. After defeating her in a duel, the Golden had her dipped alive in molten lead and placed as a statue in a public square.
• Cultural Chop Suey: Ptiamuzcuaro is heavily influenced by Mesoamerican mythology, namely Aztec and Mayan, but also incorporates Polynesian, Haitian, and Celtic lore. Justified in universe by Ptiamuzcuaro being a vast world containing many different heavens and hells.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Henshaw and Pagonia's specialty. Any battle they engage in is explosively violent and tend to be very short. Being ordered to not engage in these ends up being a serious handicap that almost breaks them.
• Cute and Psycho: Henshaw. Her preferred appearance is as a small young woman, considered very cute all around. She's also a mass-murdering vampire and devoted soldier of a tyrannical Dimension Lord.
• Da Chief: Espinado plays this role for Eisley, and is a generally Reasonable Authority Figure. His anger and impatience with Eisley’s Cowboy Cop antics are totally justifiable.
• Damn, It Feels Good to Be a Gangster!: Danny's initial outlook on life as a Zargoza agent, and the driving force behind him abandoning priesthood. Later subverted, as that same lifestyle has taken a toll over two decades, leaving him broke, divorced, and estranged from his daughter.
• Dark Is Evil: The Xolotl run on this, with their black suits and masks intended to crank up their intimidation factor. Inverted with the Stained-Glass King, who generates light on the entirety of the spectrum.
• Dark World: Ptiamuzcuaro, down to the twisted reflection of the living world that exists at its entrance. It is implied that it wasn’t so dark before the Golden came to power
• Death-Activated Superpower: Occurs for many of the dead, including the ability to control temperature or use telekinesis. Unfortunately, this gets them conscripted into the service of the Golden.
• Demonic Possession: Quite common in San Adriano, as bonding with living hosts is one of the ways Ptiamuzcuari spirits can exist in the living world. The entire Xolotl ministry is made up of voluntary hosts and their "riders".
• Depraved Bisexual: Henshaw is either this or a Depraved Homosexual. Zig-zagged in that she’s also not human and her full preferences are therefore unclear.
• Destination Defenestration: Happens to Bill Netley, from his 90th story penthouse. After the horrific torture he’d experienced, it comes as a Mercy Kill.
• Devil, but No God: Said nearly word-for-word by Danny when asked by he left the priesthood. He manages to hold on to this philosophy even when resuming a priestly role in confronting the Stained-Glass King.
• Did You Just Flip Off Cthulhu?: During Danny's attempt to slow the Stained-Glass King, he resorts to a number of profane boasts, culminating obscene name-calling. it goes as well as expected.
• Dimension Lord: The Golden is this in Ptiamuzcuaro, and theoretically for the living world as well, though he merely demands tributes from the latter rather than full subservience.
• Dimensional Traveller: Anyone passing through the Paraiso Street gate is this, making such travel relatively common. Danny job as a cartel human trafficker is to get people between dimensions through smaller temporary gates, with varying levels of success.
• Dirty Cop: The San Adriano PD is full of these, although possibly not as many as Eisley claims. Averted with both Espinado and Durant, both of whom are loyal and dependable. On the side of the dead, the Xolotl seem to be an entire organization of corrupt cops.
• Dirty Harriet: Eisley pulls this during her initial encounter with Danny. See Honey Trap below.
• The Disembodied: It is implied that the dead immediately become this, although some manage to cling to their former bodies. Pieces of the disembodied can also break off to form wraiths and poltergeists.
• Disney Villain Death: Bill Netley is on the receiving end of one of these. However, having been subjected to extreme Body Horror, it likely comes as a relief.
• Disposing of a Body:
  • The cartel uses a morgue in The City Narrows to get rid of corpses that might get the attention of the Xolotl. Unfortunately, the medical examiner's sloppy work and tendency to experiment with the corpses leads to the emergence of a Dust Wraith.
  • It doesn't help that one of the bodies meant to be disposed of was Henshaw.
• Dragon-in-Chief: The Stained-Glass King is this for the Golden, overseeing Ptiamuzcuari operations in the living world.
• The Dreaded: The Stained-Glass King. When woken up, he eats undead abominations and is referred to as a walking nuke. Air-raid sirens sound at his approach and radios broadcast warnings to find shelter and not look into the light.
• Dying Clue: Malik gives one to Henshaw in the wreckage of the Applecore site. Even in his state, he is openly delighted to do so.
• Dying Moment of Awesome: Pagonia undergoes this in destroying his body to unleash his power as a cacodaemon. Completely averted with Henshaw, who is Killed Mid-Sentence in a random, accidental shooting.
• Eldritch Abomination: Many creatures from Ptiaumzcuaro fall into this, although they may become Humanoid Abominations if bonded with a human host. Full examples include:
  • The Stained-Glass King, a walking rip in reality contained in a crystal-and-iron shell.
  • Most likely, the Golden is one of these, although no one dares describe him.
• Eldritch Location: Ptiamuzcuaro, land of the dead. While the upper layers resemble a twisted version of the living world, it becomes more alien the deeper one travels.
• The End of the World as We Know It: A legitimate fear for most of the living, as the Golden is perfectly capable of this, although Bill Netley claims this is a hoax and the Golden is dead.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones:
  • Henshaw and Pagonia genuinely care for each other, skirting the line between Platonic Life-Partners and a romantic friendship. While not strictly evil, Danny is unapologetically corrupt, but cares deeply for his daughter.
  • Dominic Mizayuko is willing to ally with The Cartel, but also genuinely cares about his nephew, Hideo.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • The Stained-Glass King, an openly malevolent figure, does not approve of the corruption within the Xolotl, and is implied to punish them with a Fate Worse than Death.
  • Henshaw is unsettled by the Hellfire torch, a weapon capable of destroying souls themselves. This doesn't stop her from trying to use it once.
• Evil Gloating: Averted for the most part. Henshaw and Pagonia are rarely unfriendly even to the people they're killing, and the Stained-Glass King remains serious and even-minded while preparing to purge all of San Adriano. Bill Netley manages to gloat over Danny, but this is turned against him in short order when Henshaw and Pagonia arrive.
• Evil Is Bigger: The Xolotl agents as a rule are at the upper end of human height, and Gallows Charlie has warped his own body to be over eight feet tall. The Stained-Glass King himself is easily twice as tall as a normal person.
• Evil Is Hammy: Bill Netley happily explains in Evil Plan in dramatic style, and later attempts a major Badass Boast of his power, claiming it to be greater than the Golden. Danny points out that the bluster is merely an act to cover his small-time thug origins.
• Evil Is Petty: Bill Netley, the leader of a vast section of the Zargoza cartel, goes out of his way to pin all his misdeeds on Danny simply because Danny stole his girlfriend. This majorly comes back to bite him when his need to taunt Danny leads Henshaw and Pagonis right to him.
• Evil Overlord: The Golden, the master of Ptiamuzcuaro, land of the dead. In the world of the living, his proxy the Stained-Glass King serves as this.
• Evil Scheme: Bill Netley creates an elaborate scheme to develop forbidden technology, reveal it to the world via a staged accident, pin it on a scientist patsy, then wait for the Ptiamuzcuari bureaucrats to see the sense in actually using it, legitimizing the secret gates already being built. And it would have worked if he hadn't attempted to pin it on Danny out of spite. Danny himself is outraged upon realizing this whole thing boils down to a shipping hustle.
• Evil Sounds Deep: In the case of the Stained-Glass King, it's deep enough to require small caps. This is partially because the SGK has no mouth, but speaks by warping the air itself.
• Evil Tainted the Place: Places of extreme violence or blasphemous acts can sour an area, making it more likely to create wraiths. One such place is a morgue where the medical examiner had been experimenting on the dead, as well as indulging in I Love the Dead. This results in the Dust Wraith attack, though Henshaw's presence may have been what set it over the edge.
• Evil vs. Evil: The brutal, extremely violent Zargoza Cartel vs the corrupt, monstrous Xolotl, who police the entrance into the land of the dead.
• Fake Band: Cali maintains a music collection with bands like Marsiebelle, Ursa Invincible, Paper Tropic, and the Expedition. The music Danny overhears is described as a "violently zombified samba." Henshaw is also a fan of the Expedition, specifically because she admires the quality of their screaming.
• Fair Cop: Espinado, Eisley's direct commander, is a fair, honest cop who allows her to carry on a costly investigation out of respect and trust. At the same time, he's very willing to work with criminals in custody, and even puts aside inter-agency rivalry when faced with a large-scale threat to the city. Eisley believes Espinado to be so fair that the corrupt brass will eventually strip him of rank and put him in a mailroom.
• The Fair Folk: The natives of Ptiamuzcuaro can be considered this, having never been human to begin with. Gallows Charlie is a puca who stole the body of a minor wizard and twisted it over years to gain his true, rabbit-like shape.
• Fantastic Drug: Crystal Cuaride is distilled from the dreams of the dead. The process of creating it is implied to be extremely unpleasant, and its effects include causing the user to rot.
• Fantastic Noir: The plot ultimately boils down to a cops vs criminals noir tale, complete with dogged detectives and crime lords, in a world populated by ghosts, demons, mad scientists, Magitek, vampires, and eldritch abominations.
• Fascist, but Inefficient: The Ptiamuzcuari bureaucrats, and especially the Xolotl, who are for more interested in keeping personal power than serving the Law of the Golden.
• Fate Worse than Death:
  • Said by Gallows Charlie to describe the fate of conscripts in the Dark Fields under Ptiamuzcuaro, being forced to work for decades or even centuries without rest. This is considered even worse than having one's soul dissipated.
  • On the more scientific end, it is mentioned that portal sendings that go wrong may end up causing this, with the subject scattered across infinite dimensional planes, potentially still conscious forever. The cartel even retains a few physicists who know how to do this intentionally to remove rivals... or witnesses.
• Faux Affably Evil: Bill Netley is a charming, cajoling guy who offers Danny a drink and congratulates Cali on her accomplishments. Once Danny realizes Bill is merely making it personal as revenge for stealing his former girlfriend, Bill breaks out the threats, beatings, execution of subordinates, and blasphemy that scares everyone in the room.
• Fedora of Asskicking/Hat of Authority: The superfino fedoras worn by the White Hats are ridiculously expensive and a sign of rank within the cartel.
• Fiery Cover Up: Inverted with Project Applecore, which is destroyed in a violent explosion specifically to draw attention to its illegal experiments and make the technology developed there public knowledge, unable to be covered up by the Xolotl. Henshaw notes that the agents sent to make it look like a reactor meltdown did a terrible job, leaving behind evidence that should have otherwise been destroyed and creating fire damage facing the wrong direction.
• Fingore: Bill Netley loses several fingers when Henshaw accidentally triggers the cutting torch during her interrogation of him. Because the torch is powered by Hellfire, Henshaw informs Bill that even his ghost will lack those digits. The implications of this comparatively minor injury leaves Henshaw disturbed.
• Flat-Earth Atheist: Danny became one of these upon leaving the priesthood, fully accepting the nature of the afterlife and all its denizens while denying the existence of any benevolent higher power to explain it. He holds on to this view even when reverting to Badass Preacher mode, declaring the Stained-Glass King and his master to be lesser than the infinite empty universe.
• Follow in My Footsteps: Cali did this for Danny. Unlike scenarios based upon admiration, Cali did this out of spite, insisting on becoming a better criminal physicist than her father.
• Forced Transformation: Bill Netley in the last sixty seconds of his life. Not only does Henshaw transform him into what she thinks of as a "flappy bug thing", but she physically warps his flesh to do it. He is aware and feels every bit of it.
• For Science!: Malik's motivation in building the massive Applecore gate, even though he knows it will be used for evil purposes. Cali sees to share this view at first, but later admits the science is only the means to very personal end.
• Foreshadowing: Several examples:
  • The first gunshot Henshaw experiences does an enormous amount of damage compared to most of her injuries, explained in that she hadn't expected it and wasn't able to respond. Danny also explains to Cali that the only way to kill a vampire is to surprise it before it can regenerate. Henshaw is ultimately killed by a stray bullet from a street away, which blows out the back of her head.
  • Early on, Danny tells a story about being attacked by a poltergeist, describing both its ability to instantly bond with whatever it touches and its extraordinary level of violence. This later comes into play when Cali bonds with her own poltergeist, cut from her when she was a child, and becomes powerful enough to challenge Pagonia.
    • Gallows Charlie hints at Cali’s true nature when he refers to her as a pincushion. His inability to hypnotize her further indicates that she’s not entirely living.”
    • Cali find the rain markets to be extremely uncomfortable, which she blames on a sense of xenophobia that surrounds them. It’s actually because she’s unknowingly a Liminal Being, and the mist shield is intended to repel her.
    • On a more mundane note, Cali compares the experience to drowning in the “ghost of a swimming pool”. It is later revealed that Danny intentionally drowned her in a bathtub when she was a child, as part of a ritual to extract a piece of her soul.
    • During the attack on the Vesparez Park rain market, Henshaw is dazed after running into Cali. Henshaw sense’s Cali’s unnatural state, but is unable to identify what she is. Fitting since Cali is neither fully alive nor dead .
    • Cali's true nature is hinted at throughout, from poor quality of any photo taken of her to her habit of chanting "invisible" while trying to avoid attention, a supernatural knack that almost always works. The fact that she remained unaware of it for years makes the revelation a wham moment.
• A Form You Are Comfortable With:
  • Downplayed. Most of the more alien Ptiamuzcuari natives appear human because being in the living world requires them to bond with a living host, giving them less of a choice in the matter. However, most can alter their hosts to fit their preferred image, as Henshaw does to take on the appearance of a young woman.
  • Averted with Gallows Charlie, whose preferred form is of a monstrous rabbit and has twisted his host as close to that as possible. And then there’s Malik, who may or may not be in his own manifested body.
• Friend in the Black Market: Zia is Cali's contact in the rain markets, who trades Cali bootlegged concert recordings for limited edition tennis shoes. However, her primary trade is in medications and insulin, which makes sense as she's later revealed to be a paramedic during the day.
  • Wendell functions as this for Cali as well, since Zargoza scientists are kept hidden and are unable to go shopping for themselves.
• Gas Mask Long Coat: The more powerful Xolotl shock trooper wear an adapted uniform that makes their gas masks more obvious. Which leads to...
• Gas Mask Mooks: Bill Netley's choice in personal mooks as a display of his power.
• Gaydar: completely averted with Danny. Cali mocks him for it when Danny asks if Wendell ever had a relationship with Cali’s mother, though it is partially justified in this situation, since Wendell is also The Beard. Played fully straight when Danny asks Cali early on if she has a boyfriend.
• Genius Loci: Ptiamuzcuaro is this, which then branches out into countless smaller ones. The largest include sky-scrapers and artificial moons, which Danny warns are often unfriendly and will respond negatively to people they don't like.
• The Ghost: Zargoza, the man behind the cartel. Both Bill Netley and Dominic Mizayuko claim he's a figment, created so that men like them can use his legendary power without being challenged. Henshaw, on the other hand, not only insists that Zargoza is real, but that he's also angry.
• Go Mad from the Revelation: Just being in Ptiamuzcuaro can have this effect on the living, taking practice and preparation to not completely fall apart.
• God of Evil: The Golden is likely this. Given his abandoned altar, Pagonia may have been a minor one.
• Godzilla Threshold: The Stained-Glass King is this. Threats too powerful to be fought by the Xolotl are led to him to be devoured. Pagonia's Thanatos Gambit relies on creating enough damage that the Stained-Glass King will come to him.
• Good Is Not Nice: Weather Eisley is one of the few unequivocally good characters who appears. She's also rude, arrogant, and not above minor forms of torture.
• Good Scars, Evil Scars:
  • Inverted with Weather Eisley, who has a large, twisted scar down the side of her face. As a detective, she regularly uses wigs and glasses to hide it during sting operations, but otherwise does nothing to cover it up. Its origin is not directly discussed, but it's implied to be related to immunity to Ptiamuzcuari physical effects.
  • It will later become significantly worse when Eisley loses a large portion of skin from her face during the final battle. This proves to be the least of her concerns.
• Greater-Scope Villain: The Golden. His servants are the primary antagonists, but he never appears in person. Bill Netley claims that this is because the Golden is dead. He's wrong.
• Gunpoint Banter: Wendell and Eisley get into this during their Mexican Standoff, during which he offers to end the stalemate by taking her to dinner. Eisley admits to herself that in other circumstances, she might have taken him up on the offer. His clear respect for her here also foreshadows his Thanatos Gambit of sending her all the information on the Cartel’s dealings via recorded message.
• Hand Wave: Danny does this in-universe when explaining the mobile portals to Davidson at the beginning. Justified in that attempting to explain insanely complex [[Magitek]] would only make Davidson more nervous and crank up his Power Incontinence.
• He Who Must Not Be Named: The true name of the Golden, Naukkul, is spoken only twice, and just once by a human. Simply saying the word makes Danny feel intensely ill and scares the living hell out of everyone else in the room. The name itself is a disease.
• He Who Must Not Be Seen: The Golden has not appeared for centuries, leading some to believe he's actually dead. A slightly lesser example is the Stained-Glass King, who only emerges from his cathedral-mausoleum to eat eldritch abominations. This is considered a mercy, as even looking at the Stained-Glass King is physically and psychically painful.
• Healing Factor: Part of Henshaw's knack, which allows her to immediately regrow the body she's wearing. Averted later on, when she's killed accidentally by a stray bullet that she never saw coming.
• The Hedonist: Danny was one in the past, though the lifestyle eventually destroyed his marriage and relationship with his daughter. In the present, Henshaw throws herself into the physical delights of the living world, which aligns with Danny's statement that a "vampire is all hunger".
• Hellfire: Cali's torch is powered by this. Danny is shocked at the idea of using something capable of killing ghosts as a tool, and even Henshaw is unsettled by it.
• Hellgate: The Paraiso Street gate is this. The structures were built atop the Breach, a hole ripped between dimensions by the passing of the Golden.
• Hero Killer: The Golden was this upon arriving in the living world, dueling with Lucciola Vesparez, San Adriano's patron sorcerer. After defeating her, the Golden dipped her alive in molten lead and put the resulting statue atop a huge fountain in a public square.
• Honey Trap:
  • A variation, when Danny attempts a hook-up with a woman in a bar bathroom, who he assumes is a prostitute. In reality, it's Eisley in Dirty Harriet mode, who uses the opportunity to both search him for weapons and handcuff him to the plumbing.
  • Danny later suggests they repeat this when Eisley arrests him a second time, and she offers to shoot him. Later still, while she recovers in the hospital, Eisley clarifies that she will never sleep with Danny, forcefully enough that it comes off as a threat.
• Horror Hunger: Zig-zagged with Henshaw, who is perfectly able and willing to eat humans (or other, worse things) if necessary, but greatly prefers junk food. As a vampire, her nature dictates that she MUST keep eating to survive.
• Human Trafficking: Danny does this, though rather than moving people illegally between countries, he's smuggling them past immigration to another plane of existence. It is repeatedly pointed out that the arrangement binds the clients permanently to the cartel to be treated as disposable assets.
• Humanoid Abomination:
  • Several, as Ptiamuzcuari creatures tend to alter the shape of their host. This includes Gallows Charlie, an eight-foot humanoid rabbit with spider-leg fingers and toes.
  • On a larger scale, the Stained-Glass King is a roughly human-shaped tear in reality who moves by creating space-time warps where his joints would be.
• Hyperspace Is a Scary Place:
  • Limbo is a space between worlds that is simply empty of everything, including time, and anything placed there exists as if time has stopped. While this doesn't seem scary in itself, Bill Netley admits that in order to pull off the portal hoax, they just stopped retrieving clients from Limbo, a fate that Danny finds horrifying.
  • A straighter example is the Breach, a rip between worlds that looks like a burning crystalline tunnel, moving like both a meat grinder and a contracting intestine. Danny claims that watching it too closely can make one go mad.
• Ignored Vital News Reports: a downplayed but important example: every time Danny hears a weather report, the Breach Indicator Index becomes slightly worse. It’s white noise to the characters, but leads up to the appearance of the Dust Wraith.
• I Love the Dead:
  • Danny mentions that this is a justified problem, in that a person may not be aware that their partner is dead. Gallows Charlie outright states that there would be times when even the dead themselves could forget, which makes the situation highly problematic.
  • Played straight with the medical examiner in Bridgeton Fathoms, who gets more than a little touchy-feely with the scorched corpse of Henshaw. It does not end well for him.
• I Miss Mom: Said word-for-word by Cali when she admits that much of her work was motivated by fear of what would happen to her mother after death. The possibility of her mother being punished by the Xolotl inspired her to develop the Applecore gate for the sake of a sanctuatry city.
• In Love with the Gangster's Girl: Danny had this with Isis, the girlfriend of his cartel boss, Bill Netley. Danny even convinced her to leave Bill for him, which resulted in Bill making Danny the subject of a personal vendetta.
• The Informant: Wendell is those for both the police and Henshaw and Pagonia's faction in the underworld, doling out information via drops and automated phone messages. It ultimately gets him shot in the face, but being a Chessmaster, his death results in a final leak to the police, revealing everything about the Zargoza cartel to Detective Eisley.
• Interrogation by Vandalism: Henshaw and Pagonia use this on one of the cartel’s minor lackeys by destroying his bosses’ valuable collection of antiquities. Downplayed in that they’re also searching the room and terrorizing information out of the man is a bonus.
• It's Okay If It's You: Possibly the case with Henshaw’s love for Pagonia, despite that the former otherwise only shows interest in women.
• Jurisdiction Friction: Exists between the living police and the Xolotl. As the Xolotl are far more powerful, this leads to a sense of Police Are Useless and inspires plenty of dirty cops.
• Kangaroo Court: The Xolotl tribunals are implied to be this. Bill Netley counts on it in setting up Danny.
• Karma Houdini Warranty: Mizayuko walks away from his meeting with Danny and Cali completely unscathed, intent on reaping his rewards back in the living world. Then the conspiracy with The Cartel is revealed and its remaining enforcers clean house by burning his corporate headquarters with him in it.
• Kill the Host Body: A major drawback of "stitching" also called "surgical possession", in which a spirit is grafted into either a living or dead host. Unlike a natural death, in which a spirit simply leaves the body, a stitched spirit is stuck and takes the same damage as the host. This ends up being what kills both Henshaw, killed by a stray bullet before she could consciously heal from it, and Pagonia, who partially destroys his own body out of pure fiery rage and allows Cali to rip the rest apart, dissipating him entirely. Averted with the dead Xolotl, who are not permanently stitched and will abandon a host body if they feel overpowered.
• Killed Mid-Sentence: Henshaw is in the middle of drunkenly repeating Pagonia's planetary-destruction philosophy when she's caught by a stray bullet that kills her instantly.
• Killer Rabbit: Gallows Charlie. As a puca, his natural form resembles an eight-foot rabbit with fangs, bloody pools for eyes, and spidery hands and feet. Danny notes that this might be the closest to his natural shape that Charlie can assume in the living world, and that his true form might very well be worse.
• Killer Teddy Bear: A literal version is trapped in the music box Cali opens, serving as a soul jar for a poltergeist. When Cali later attempts to bond with the poltergeist, the bear grows fangs and bites her.
• Laser Blade: While technically a cutting tool, Cali's torch is a beam of white-hot Hellfire contained in a miniature space-time warp. Not only can it cut through anything physical, it's also capable of destroying ghostly ethers. Even Henshaw is disturbed by it, claiming that only a maniac would create such a thing.
• Lean and Mean: Pagonia is very tall and thin, nearly scarecrow-like. He's also a disguised cacodaemon, capable of destroying entire sections of the city and turning people inside out on a whim.
• Legions of Hell: The soldiers of the Golden, though they have many factions. The least of these are the Xolotl, demonic spirits possessing human hosts, who act as immigration and customs enforcement, as well as a secret police force. There are also numerous unaligned monsters from Ptiamuzcuaro, including the puca Gallows Charlie and Pagonia, an ancient undead godling.
• Lesbian Vampire: Downplayed. Henshaw is predominantly attracted to women, and she definitely is a vampire, but these two qualities aren’t particularly related.
• Lesser of Two Evils: For Cali, serving the Zargoza cartel is better than going along with the despotic rule of the Xolotl. For Eisley, the opposite is true and going along with the Xolotl is better than incurring the wrath of the Stained-Glass King and potentially the Golden.
• Light Is Not Good: The White Hats, named after their expensive headgear, are the lieutenants of the Zargoza cartel. On a far greater scale, the Stained-Glass King is made of Supernatural Light contained in a glass and iron shell.
• Liminal Being: Cali is unknowingly one of these, a living person whose soul has been split into two creatures. Bonding with her own poltergeist leads to...
• Loophole Abuse: ...when she claims that as a still living person, she does not fall under the jurisdiction of the Xolotl and technically, the Stained-Glass King. She only gets away with this by immediately accepting the Stained-Glass King’s judgement despite the loophole, gaining the respect his respect in the process.
• Mad Scientist: Cali calls herself exactly that, and she's not wrong. According to her school records, the only course she ever failed was "ethics and procedure". The Zargoza cartel has employed hundreds of similarly mad scientists to facilitate its technological operations.
• Magitek: While leaning harder on the 'tek', much of the highest technology in San Adriano relies upon materials mined from Ptiamuzcuaro. Ptiamuzcuari steel, a room-temperature super conductor, has plentiful applications in engineering because it does not follow the traditional laws of physics. In a smaller example, Cali's cutting torch uses a technologically-created warp to contain a beam of Hellfire.
• Magnificent Bastard: Wendell Graves. Not only does he facilitate Bill Netley's convoluted plan to take over all trade between worlds, but he pulls off a second plan that not only relies on Bill's operations, but also brings in the few human authority figures who can do anything about it AND sets loose Henshaw and Pagonia as wild agents to keep the Xolotl distracted. Unlike Bill's plan, Wendell's actually works perfectly, even after his death due to a back-up Thanatos Gambit.
• Malevolent Masked Men: The Xolotl wear plague-doctor style masks with beak-like extensions. While this serves to protect the agent and bolster their intimidation factor, its unspoken purpose is to hide how much the possessing spirit has warped the host's body. In some cases, the transformation is so severe that the masks become unremovable.
• Manipulative Bastard: Bill Netley. His plan requires playing the rebel dead against the Xolotl while conspiring with both, securing the secret alliance of a multi-national corporation, and tricking his rival into becoming the fall guy for an interdimensional conspiracy. It very nearly works, and is foiled only by a pair of unknown rivals.
• Master of Disguise: Eisley regularly uses make-up, wigs, and glasses in her sting operations, disguising herself once as a prostitute and later as the corpse of an overdose victim. Justified in that these items cover up her otherwise distinctive facial scar that would otherwise make her quite recognizable.
• Meaningful Name: Many.
  • Henshaw Krake's last name is a singular form of "kraken", indicating her non-human origins.
  • Similarly, a high-profile trafficker of the dead is named Wendell Graves.
  • Bill Netley's name reflects his own affinity for complex, web-like plots intended to ensnare victims, particularly Danny.
  • Danny Capistrano’s last name is a Shout-Out to the Mission San Juan Capistrano, best known as for a yearly mass migration of cliff swallows from Argentina to California. This in turn reflects Danny on-and-off faith and his eventual return to priesthood.
  • Cali's cartel alias, Katie Canary, implies a pet locked in a cage... or a sacrifice to warn of danger. It also becomes Chekhov's Gun for Eisley, who connects it with the nickname "Bird" given to Cali by Zia. Eisley deduces that Zia had known Cali under that alias, at least for a time, and discovers that they had attended university together, which leads her to Cali's school records and connection with Danny.
• Mechanical Abomination: Cali is made to fight a machine-like golem as part of Link's interrogation. In normal circumstances, this would be a drawn-out execution, as the thing is completely unstoppable. The only thing that saves Cali is a Hellfire-powered cutting torch.
• Mind Control: Gallows Charlie is capable of this, but proves to be unable to get into Cali's head due to her nature as a Liminal Being. Averted with Henshaw, who is able to override the body of anyone she touches and can communicate by directly stimulating the eardrum to give commands, but cannot actually control the victim’s thoughts.
• The Mob Boss Is Scarier: Invoked by Danny during his interrogation at the police station. Eisley turns this around by claiming that Bill Netley will be far more scary if he thinks Danny talked.
• Muggle with a Degree in Magic: Danny's education as a priest detailed countless aspects of the afterlife and its denizens, including the use of supernatural abilities such as "stitching" or surgical possession. However, the mere mention of him as a "bokor" is one of his Berserk Buttons. It later turns out that Danny did once attempt a ritual to remove and preserve part of Cali's soul, which ended up backfiring and creating a poltergeist.
• Mutant Draft Board: One of the roles of the Xolotl ministry is to capture the newly dead who manifest special abilities. These unfortunates are then conscripted into the service of the Golden as laborers or soldiers, potentially for eternity.
• Mutilation Interrogation: Bill Netley gets one of these from Henshaw and Pagonia, which quickly devolves into pure Cold-Blooded Torture when he manages to piss off Henshaw.
• Necromancer:
  • Gallows Charlie serves as one for hire, specifically for putting the dead in new bodies. He also describes himself as a Bokor and claims that Danny is one as well, since he traffics in dead souls. Danny takes serious offence to this.
  • The medical examiner's hidden lab in The City Narrows suggests he was attempting to be one, with his experiments (and own grisly death) likely being the source of a DustWraith.
• No Honor Among Thieves: Used repeatedly, as the cartel members regularly screw each other over to get ahead. This behavior is so normal that no one takes it personally, until Danny and Cali are betrayed by their only true friend in the organization, Wendell.
• No Man of Woman Born:
  • Exploited by Cali during her encounter with the Stained-Glass King. Having bonded with her poltergeist, she has supernatural undead abilities, but also never stopped being a living person, meaning he does not fall under his direct authority. Downplayed in that he simply could have overlooked it, or treated it as Loophole Abuse had she not immediately agreed to go along with his judgement.
  • Fridge Logic strengthens Cali’s case, however, since the Stained-Glass King is the representative for the Law of the Golden, he may not have had the ability to simply ignore the law in this case. While he still could have issued judgement on the rest of the city, likely killing Cali in the process, her pointing out a clear flaw in the law that could be exploited makes him reconsider the situation.
• No One Sees the Boss: Used with Zargoza, the head of the cartel who resides in a citadel in Ptiamuzcuaro. Or rather, that's what cartel members are told, and Bill Netley and Mizayuko are simply using Zargoza's name to give orders. Both claim that Zargoza himself is a figment and that the cartel has always operated that way. Henshaw later informs Bill that Zargoza is both real and more than a little angry at his disloyal lieutenants.
• Noble Demon: The Stained-Glass King is a literal example. He’s the representative of a demonic Dimension Lord, but is also dedicated to the Law and looks down heavily on corruption among its enforcers. He’s even willing to negotiate with humans to ensure stability between both worlds.
• Noodle Incident: While reading Danny's rap sheet, Eisley mentions that Danny was previously arrested in nationally-unclaimed waters, which she had never heard of before. Danny also mentions that he was once on a boat which was gnawed on by a Corpsekraken. Danny's reaction to Eisley's statement suggests that these are from the same incident.
• Not Using the "Z" Word: The most common word for corporeal undead is duppie, but is also considered a minor slur. Gallows Charlie references "island shamblers" and "ribbon-necks" as subtypes.
• Nothing After Death: What happens to souls that are "dissipated" or destroyed by supernatural means. In many cases, this is considered a better outcome than enslavement to the Golden.
• Occult Detective: Eisley is not supposed to be one of these, due to the strict jurisdictional divide between the mortal police and the Xolotl, who have authority over supernatural matters. She nonetheless knows a great deal about the dead, enough that she's able to resist torture by Xolotl agents that involves being exposed to Ptiamuzcuari light. It's implied that she learned this skill in childhood.
• One-Winged Angel: After Henshaw's death, Pagonia shatters his human body to become a cacodaemon, his natural form that is mostly an amorphous etheric shroud capable of melting concrete by ripping apart its molecules. However, he remains partially attached to the ruined human shell, enough that Cali is able to kill him by destroying what's left.
• Only One Afterlife: Ptiamuzcuaro is said to be the sole destination of the dead, though it also contains a multitude of smaller heavens and hells. The Law of the Golden even states that Ptiamuzcuaro is the only way into death.
• Orcus on His Throne: The Golden has not been seen for centuries, working solely through proxies. This has led some, like Bill Netley, to believe he is actually dead. His chief enforcer, the Stained-Glass King, disagrees. The possibility that that Golden might someday return to the land of the living is largely considered to be The End of the World as We Know It.
• Our Vampires Are Different:
  • Henshaw is outright stated to be a vampire, though is never shown drinking blood or being injured by sunlight. She does have an enormous appetite, is capable of hypnosis and minor possession, has an instantaneous healing factor, and is able to identify a fellow vampire just by reading the psychic impressions on his removed fangs. The last attribute comes into play during the Coda, where Rosita retrieves Henshaw's fangs to sell on the black market.
  • Danny also describes vampires as too alien to exist in the living world, requiring them to be stitched into a living host body. Henshaw alters her hijacked body to appear as a small young woman, but it is stated that this is just the form she prefers rather than her natural shape, which more likely falls between The Fair Folk and Humanoid Abomination.
  • To top this off, the Golden, an Eldritch Abomination Dimension Lord, holds the title of the Lord of Vampires.
• Our Werewolves Are Different: While Danny only identifies Malik as a Ptiamuzcuari native, Henshaw refers to him specifically as a "loup". However, by that time he has been tortured well beyond his ability to regenerate, so his true form is never revealed.
• Our Wormholes Are Different:
  • The Breach is a massive hole torn between realities by the Golden, and appears as a glowing crystalline tunnel through which a physical bridge has been built. It also moves in different ways depending on the viewer and watching it too long can make one Go Mad from the Revelation.
  • The Breach itself inspired the Zargoza cartel to develop technological methods for making portals. Danny's trade involves sending clients through Limbo with mobile portal makers, while Cali’s project is the construction of the massive Applecore reactor, large enought to move a city.
• Our Zombies Are Different:
  • As the dead exist in both corporeal and non-corporeal states, there are numerous types of zombie (although they’re more likely given the slightly offensive name of “duppie”.)
  • The dead who remain in their natural bodies become revenant zombies, and decay at a normal rate. There are still advantages to this form, particularly if the dead person has gained supernatural abilities and are now able to use them easily.
  • The “stitched” dead, who are placed into the dead bodies of others. A well-stitched corpse does not rot and maintains all of the usual bodily functions, including breathing, digestion, and sexual ability, to the point where even the occupant may forget they’re dead. The two drawbacks to this are 1) they don’t age, making them easier to spot after a reasonable length of time, and 2) the body is inescapable and any damage done to their shell is done to their spirit as well, so being killed in this form leads to Cessation of Existence.
    • The success of stitching is often reliant on the subject’s age and memory, with the implication that a ghost must be stitched as soon as possible after their death so they will remember the feeling of a working body. They still require time to adjust to avoid being out of sync.
    • It’s also shown that a ghost will be more receptive to a body they’re familiar with, as shown with Rosita, who occupies the body of her sister.
    • Gallows Charlie states that unstitching a spirit from a body is more difficult and far more expensive. His business model relies on stitching the dead at a very low cost, then charging extortion-level prices for the inevitable unstitching.
  • Charlie also dismissively mentions two subtypes: island shamblers and ribbon-necks.
• Parental Obliviousness: Danny runs on this around Cali, making mistake after mistake. Justified in that he’s not only been absent for most of her life, but purposefully blocked out memories of their early time together.
• Parental Substitute: Wendell serves as this to Cali, being a father figure in Danny's place. Even as an adult, she refers to him as her best friend. None of this is lost on Danny, who even sheepishly asks if Wendell ever had an actual relationship with Cali's mother.
• Parents as People: Danny’s entire relationship with Cali depends on this especially since Danny isn’t a particularly good parent, or person for that matter.
• People Puppets: Henshaw is able to override a person’s control over their own body, so long as she’s making physical contact with them. In some cases, this might involve simply holding on and giving orders by stimulating their eardrums. In most cases, she makes the bodies do things they’re not meant to, such as spread apart ribs until their chests pop. More extreme examples go into pure Body Horror, as her transformation of Bill Netley into a grotesque human butterfly.
• Perp Sweating: The Xolotl method of this uses a light that causes physical and psychic pain to the living, bordering on Cold-Blooded Torture.
• Person of Mass Destruction: Pagonia's telekinetic powers get turned up to 11 when he reveals himself to be a bound cacodaemon. Cali herself comes close after bonding with her poltergeist, becoming powerful enough to survive encountering Pagonia in his true form.
• Platonic Life-Partners: Played to the extreme with Henshaw and Pagonia. Henshaw openly loves Pagonia, but laughs at the idea that he might be her boyfriend, and Pagonia shares both sentiments. Justified in that not only are they not human, but they are radically different species.
• Police Are Useless: Or rather, hopelessly outmatched by their rival agency, the Xolotl. Despite that the human police are supposed to control all matter of law enforcement among the living, the fact that everyone will eventually fall under the Xolotl's jurisdiction (and the process can be sped up through "speed deportation") means the police have little actual power. This is compounded by rampant corruption and connections with organized crime.
• Police Code for Everything: The San Adriano PD have codes for various supernatural events. Breach events, indicating the arrival of a powerful undead creature or Eldritch Abomination, are coded 371.
• Poltergeist: Fragments of a soul which have broken away, usually during an especially messy death. Danny tells a story about unleashing one in the ruins of an abandoned amusement park, which attempted to eat anyone who got close to it. Cali later unwittingly releases one from a music box, which Danny then reveals is a part of her soul, removed when she was a child. Cali is later able to bond with the poltergeist, turning them back into one being. Further, Pagonia shows what happens when you create a poltergeist from a dead god.
• Possessing a Dead Body: Stitched humans are this, being inserted so seamlessly into a new corpse that they assume all of the bodily functions and don't even rot (they also don't age, giving them away eventually). Averted for the Ptiamuzcuari in the living world, who require living hosts.
  • Danny's early client, Davidson, also shows that the dead can attempt to remain in their own bodies, but they do eventually rot and become zombie-like revenants.
• Prayer Is a Last Resort: Danny resorts to prayer as he prepares to confront the Stained-Glass King. It's still inverted as he claims he's simply talking to himself to gather the strength for the confrontation, and the higher power he invokes is simply the emptiness of the universe.
• Pretty Little Headshots: Averted with Henshaw's death, which blows out the entire back of her skull, mulching her brain.
• Psychopomp: The Xolotl are meant to be this, but have since been corrupted to an evil variant.
• Reasonable Authority Figure:
  • Eisley's commander, Denzel Espinado, is one of these, allowing her to pursue her investigation rather than demote her.
  • The Stained-Glass King ends up being one of these as well, as he is not only upset by the blatant corruption of the Xolotl, but willingly negotiates with Cali to rectify the situation.
• Satanic Archetype: The Golden. A despotic Dimension Lord who rules not one but numerous hells (and heavens for that matter). Danny outright refers to him as the devil.
• Schizo Tech: Present in Ptiamuzcuaro, which mimics the technology of the living world but is forbidden access to electricity under the Law of the Golden (specifically because “spark” allows spirits to manifest physically). This allows for things like the golem in the citadel to exist beside steam engines and phosphorescent moss for lighting.
• Shout-Out:
  • Cali's favorite band of sneakers are called Star Roads.
  • Among Cali's musical collection is an album by Ursa Invincible, a real-life indie metal band.
  • Bill Netley conspires with corporate powers in a massively convoluted plan to build... a freeway.
  • Henshaw and Pagonia are introduced in a diner, having breakfast and talking philosophy while surrounded by a major crime scene.
• Showing Off the New Body: Henshaw alters her form to suit the situation, including adopting a glamorous look when infiltrating a corporate resort. Subverted in that Pagonia not only isn’t interest in the changes, but worries that Henshaw might be enjoying herself as a human too much.
• Shut Up, Hannibal!: Danny pulls this on Bill Netley, pointing out that Bill's grand design comes down to nothing more than a petty personal grudge.
• Sir Swears-a-Lot: The novel's opening line: "Danny Capistrano had a favorite word, and that word was motherfucker."
• Slavery Is a Special Kind of Evil: Being conscripted by the Xolotl into the service of the Golden is the greatest fear of the dead, often more than Cessation of Existence. The majority of those taken are sent to the Dark Fields, and forced to harvest crops that are saturated with despair, likely from the same laborers that pick them. Henshaw even refers to the Dark Fields as plantations, and even Gallows Charlie is afraid of them. In some cases, it can become a Fate Worse than Death if the victim is never released, drawing out their suffering for eternity.
• Snark-to-Snark Combat: Any confrontation between Cali and Eisley becomes this. Wendell and Eisley also get into this during their Mexican Standoff.
• Softspoken Sadist: Mizayuko maintains a calm, cheery demeanor while threatening Danny's life. Even Danny admits the man has serious gravitas.
• Sorcerous Overlord: The Golden appears to be this, having dueled with the powerful sorcerer Lucciola Vesparez at the gates of Ptiamuzcuaro. Suffice it to say the Golden won handily.
• Soul Jar: The teddy bear locked in Cali's old music box. It contains a portion of Cali's soul which Danny cut away when she was a child, intending to create a 'back up' but accidentally creating a poltergeist. This becomes Chekhov's Gun when Cali releases the poltergeist and bonds with it, using its powers to survive confronting Pagonia.
• Speak of the Devil: It is an extraordinary taboo to say the Golden's true name. Saying it aloud can terrifying even the speaker to the point of illness.
• Spikes of Villainy: The Stained-Glass King's body is a crystal and iron shell with very sharp angles and a crown of spikes with monomolecular points.
• Sufficiently Analyzed Magic:
  • Danny's specialty is reconciling metaphysical laws with quantum physics, allowing the creation of Applied Phlebotinum portals.
  • The mechanics of possession have been examined to the point where “surgical possession” or physically bonding ghosts with bodies is a subject to be studied. While Gallows Charlie’s stitching may still be through supernatural means, Danny proves that with proper study, a human can do it as well, as evidenced by his removal of part of Cali’s soul when she was a child.
• Summon Bigger Fish: A villainous example. The standard response to large scale threats is to awaken the Stain-Glass King, the high priest of the Golden. This is shown in the Dust Wraith attack, when the Xolotl agents drive the wraith to the King's cathedral-mausoleum, where it is devoured in full view of anyone capable of looking at it without being blinded or sickened. This becomes part of Pagonia's Thanatos Gambit, where he intentionally causes enough destruction to summon the King to the mainland, where it would destroy the city.
• Supernatural Light: The Black Lanterns used by the Xolotl create a weaponized version, mimicking the light spectrums in Ptiamuzcuaro. In the living, this can cause instantaneous illness and shock, and its used to devastating effect when the Xolotl use spotlights of it to break up the Vesparez Park rain market. Eisley is subjected to it during her interrogation by the Xolotl though she resists it with only minor effort, suggesting she may possess her own supernatural abilities.
• Sympathetic Inspector Antagonist: Weather Eisley is an honest cop in an otherwise corrupt department, attempting to enforce the laws that keep San Adriano from full occupation. Her primary quarry is a legitimate Mad Scientist working for a brutal criminal cartel... who happens to be the protagonist.
• The Syndicate: Zargoza crosses this with The Cartel.
• Teleporter Accident: Kicks off the plot, when one of Danny's clients disappears during teleportation to the Land of the Dead. He soon after finds out that not only is this has occurred with every teleporter on the planet for weeks. Later averted when Bill Netley reveals that the clients are intentionally not being brought out of Limbo space, in order to frame Danny for the Applecore project.
• Transformation of the Possessed: Common among those possessed by Ptiamuzcuari spirits, reflecting the preferred shape of the possessor. This can be minor, such as the human form Henshaw displays, to extreme, like the demonic rabbit form taken by Gallows Charlie. It is implied the Xolotl try to avoid this, but prolonged connection between the possessor and host is unavoidable, making their Plague Doctor masks necessary to hide the damage.
• Undead Abomination: The Dust Wraith, a ten-foot vaguely human pillar of darkness, made up of mutilated souls joined together in eternal torment and hungry to add more to its mass. Pagonia is eventually revealed to be one of these, a cacodaemon trapped in a human body, which according to Danny is a "little dead god".
• Undead Child: Cali's poltergeist is this, an undead shade of a terrified 3-year-old. It's also thoroughly insane and incredibly dangerous.
• Undead Laborers: Most of the dead conscripted by the Xolotl become this, working in dark fields far below Ptiamuzcuaro to "harvest black fruit saturated with despair to feed His armies". Even Gallows Charlie calls this a Fate Worse than Death.
• The Undead: All over the place, being as that there exists a physical passage between the worlds of the living and the dead. Many of the human dead in hiding are either residing in stolen bodies or attached to their own rotting corpses.
• The Underworld: Ptiamuzcuaro, the world to which all souls of the dead travel. It has countless levels and that the dead eventually cross its more hostile terrain to gentler afterlives.
• Urban Fantasy: San Adriano is a modern, technologically advanced city that borders a very literal land of the dead, with significant traffic between them. Ghosts, vampires, demons, werewolves, poltergeists, and undead border patrol are ordinary sights, while the state of the fabric of reality itself is included in the weather reports.
• Vengeful Ghost:
  • Poltergeists are these, having broken away from a soul during a traumatic death. They’re incredibly dangerous and are able to bond with nearby objects to attack the living.
  • Taken up a level with the Dust Wraith, which is effectively a colony of poltergeists. They’re created where the dead have gone mad with terror and pain, such as battlefields or serial killer dens, and can not only attack the living but assimilate them. The appearancce of one in San Adriano merits awakening the Stained-Glass King.
  • Cacodaemons are said to be the cousins of poltergeists, except rather than being mad from human souls, they’re created from dead gods. Pagonia shows how destructive they can be, and unlike the Dust Wraith, he’s old enough to be collected and intentional about his destruction.
• Villains Out Shopping: A literal example; Henshaw and Pagonia go to a boutique store for a new wardrobe. Pagonia is concerned that Henshaw enjoys the experience too much. They’re also shown eating take-out pizza in the park and attempting to order room service.
• Wicked Pretentious: Bill Netley lives in a skyscraper penthouse, surrounded by the finest, most expensive comforts possible, but proves to be little more than a thug who managed to claw his way up the cartel ladder. Danny even remarks, upon seeing a massive grand piano in the penthouse, that Bill can't even play piano.
• Willing Channeler: The Xolotl hosts serves as this, allowing the Ptiamuzcuari spirit to use their body. It’s implied that there is significant pay and benefits to this arrangement, though none of the hosts are ever seen without their “rider”.
• Would Hurt a Child: Danny. It may have been part of a well-intentioned ritual, but the act of drowning3-year-old Cali in the bathtub horrified and traumatized the both of them. Even two decades later, it remains a core factor in his self-loathing.
• Wound That Will Not Heal: The burns on Cali's hand from touching Pagonia in his cacodaemon form will never completely heal. This fittingly reflects that her chosen weapon deals that exact kind of damage.
• Wowing Cthulhu: Cali manages to impress the Stained-Glass King out of sheer audacity and her single-handed defeat of a cacodaemon. As a result, he is willing to speak earnestly with her, de-escalating a situation that otherwise might have destroyed the city.
• Xanatos Speed Chess: Wendell plays this constantly to keep both Danny and Henshaw and Pagonia on track. Luckily, he's so clever that he can pull it off each time.
• You Have Failed Me: The Stained-Glass King does this to the entirety of the Xolotl, recalling them to Ptiamuzcuaro. Danny suggest what awaits them is far worse than death.

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