Page 73 of Cemetery Boys

“He was with me, hermano,” Tío Catriz said, his smile apologetic as he placed a hand on Yadriel’s shoulder. “We were having a heart-to-heart, lost track of time. We didn’t mean to worry you,” he explained with gentle sincerity.

Yadriel stared up at him, surprised.

Enrique frowned, deep creases wrinkling his brow. There was something churning behind his eyes, but Yadriel couldn’t quite place it. He got the feeling his dad didn’t like that answer, but then he gave a short nod.

Luckily, Yadriel wasn’t going to get lectured, at least not at the moment. His dad had bigger matters to tend to.

“How could there be no sign of Miguel?” a younger bruja asked, and the group devolved into more arguing and questions. They converged around his dad again, pushing Yadriel and his tío to the outskirts.

“Thanks for that,” Yadriel said to Tío Catriz. “You really didn’t have to cover for me.” The last thing he wanted to do was drag anyone else into this mess he’d gotten himself into, especially his tío.

Catriz chuckled. “I won’t tell if you don’t,” he said with a wink.

Yadriel smiled back. He wished the brujx treated his tío better. He was a good man and always looked out for Yadriel. Even if it sucked to be a brujx reject, at least he had his tío Catriz to go through it with. Yadriel wondered if things would change once they saw he was a brujo. Would it put a wall between them? Would Tío Catriz be upset? He didn’t think he would be.

At least, he hoped not.

“Eat, sobrino,” Tío Catriz told him, nudging Yadriel with his shoulder. “And try to stay out of trouble.”

Yadriel didn’t need to be told twice. He was starving and immediately began shoveling food into his mouth. He slowly wandered around the group of brujx deep in conversation, trying to listen in and gather any information that might be useful.

“Did Claudia and Benny go to the police?” Tío Isaac asked, his deep voice easily cutting through the chatter. “Has Miguel been reported as missing?”

Yadriel’s dad nodded, raking his fingers through his mustache. “They did this morning, but it didn’t go well.” The corners of his lips tugged down.

“How do you mean?” Diego asked. He and Andrés had squirmed their way into the middle of the group, as if they were very important and needed to be at the center of the discussion.

Yadriel rolled his eyes and took another large bite of ropa vieja.

“Claudia and Benny don’t speak English very well,” Enrique explained. “They kept asking for an interpreter, not wanting to miss anything important and so they could give the police as much information as they could. Of course, that was complicated on its own, since they couldn’t say they knew Miguel was dead without explaining how they knew it,” he told the group.

Murmurs rose.

Yes, Yadriel could see how that would make things difficult.

“But the officers didn’t bring in an interpreter and just kept asking them questions.” His dad shook his head. “I’m not sure what happened, but by the time I got there to help, the police were completely brushing them off and started asking if Miguel was a legal US citizen—if they were.”

The murmuring turned angry, and so did Yadriel. Over the last few years, more and more people in their community—brujx and otherwise—had been deported. Families were split apart and good people were torn away from their homes. People were fearful of the police and scared to seek out help when they needed it.

The brujx tried to band together and close their ranks. As a community that was already so close-knit and stuck to their own, it only exacerbated their fear of outsiders.

“They got scared the police would find a reason to deport them, so they left. I’m not even sure a police report was actually filled out, but they’re too frightened to go back.”

Catriz shook his head slowly, the corner of his lip curling in distaste. “Awful.”

“Santa Muerte, los ayude,” an older brujo muttered, crossing himself.

“Miguel will return on Día de Muertos,” a young woman insisted. “Then he will tell us what happened.”

“But what if he doesn’t?” asked another, and they all broke out into more questions until it was just an unintelligible cacophony of voices.

Yadriel gripped his empty plate, suddenly feeling sick to his stomach. The only new information they had was the police hadn’t found Miguel’s body, which wasn’t much to go on. He was still missing. They still needed to find him.

Even if Día de Muertos was only two days away, there was no way Yadriel was just going to sit around, twiddling his thumbs until Miguel showed up. And if he didn’t come back, then his spirit was somewhere, tethered and trapped. He hated the idea of Miguel being stuck somewhere, unable to contact them. Where had he ended up that no one could find him? It wasn’t like there were wells to fall down in East LA. There were no cliffs to be tossed off. If a building or something had collapsed, they would’ve heard about it on the news.

Gone without a trace. Just like Julian.

Yadriel was certain that wherever one was, the other was, too. He and Maritza did have a leg up on the rest of the brujx. They at least knew where Julian had gone missing, and tomorrow they would see if Donatello and Michelangelo could track him from there.