Page 118 of Espíritu

Julian ran the options fast.

Yank Luca free, Angel would jerk. The knife and the water were too close. The only thing that seemed to soften them was when they looked at him and talked. He uncurled his fists, made himself breathe—four in, two hold, six out—and kept his hands where Angel could see them.

“Angel,” he said, softer now, “what did he promise you?”

Yadriel angled his portaje down until the gold barely showed. “Talk to us,” he murmured.

Angel’s throat worked. Their grip on Luca eased a fraction. The green at their mark thinned.

Julian clocked it. When Angel met his eyes, the green dimmed. When the cenote surged, it brightened. He needed to keep them talking. Keep them off the edge.

“I’m listening,” Julian said, voice low. “Tell me.”

“My sister…” Angel began, words catching. “She hid me. Shoved me in a closet and told me to stay quiet. Blocked the door with a chair.”

No one moved. Julian’s gut pulled in two directions—grief recognized, rage remembered. He could hold compassion and the need to get Luca out, but not at the edge of that knife.

Angel’s Marca Hueca deepened, the sick green edging outward like mold finding a seam, as if the memory itself were feeding it.

“I heard them screaming.” Angel’s mouth trembled. “Then nothing. When I finally got out…” With each word the green brightened, harsh as a wire heating under skin. “It was over. Malignos tore through our house like paper. No one came. No one saved them.”

Julian held Angel’s gaze, heart aching.

He knew the shape of that “after.” The room that still smelled like them, the jokes that curdled in your mouth, the way the world stayed the same while something inside you had been scooped out. Grief made bargains. He recognized the hunger in Angel’s eyes because he’d felt it, too.

If there’d been a door to bring his dad back, he would’ve thrown himself at it. But not with Luca on the edge of the water. Not like this.

“I’m so sorry,” he said, and meant it—but he shifted so Luca could still see him.

Angel dragged in a ragged breath. “I prayed to Lady Death. I begged. I did everything right. But she didn’t answer.” Their eyes cut to Yadriel. “She helped you. Not me.”

“It isn’t about deserving,” Yadriel said gently.

“Lady Death doesn’t keep a ledger,” he went on, voice steady. “Her door is open to everyone. She isn’t judge or jury—she doesn’t strike down the ‘bad’ or reward the ‘good.’ Death isn’t punishment or prize. Death just … is.”

Julian could live with a world that had rules—where death did its job and didn’t play favorites, where asking wasn’t about worth but balance. It didn’t make losing his dad hurt less, but it scraped some of the senselessness off the pain.

“He spoke from the water,” Angel said, eyes on the cenote. “Offered me a deal. Family for family,” they whispered. “Door for door. ‘Feed me and I will open the way.’”

The words settled over Julian. What Bahlam was offering wasn’t balance. It was theft dressed up as mercy.

“At first I brought him the ones already caught—spirits with dark spots, souls stuck and hurting. I told myself it didn’t matter—they were doomed anyway.” Their mouth twisted. “But it was never enough. The door wouldn’t budge.”

Heat flared behind Julian’s ribs. Souls stuck and hurting. That could’ve been him, once, if Angel had found him at the wrong moment, he’d have been another weight dropped into this pool. And “never enough” told him everything.

The door wasn’t meant to open. Bahlam had dangled a miracle and kept moving the price. Luca was leverage—young, marked, and Julian’s. A person guaranteed to pull Julian to the edge.

Angel lifted the obsidian dagger a finger’s breadth. It hummed in their grip. “He told me how. Obsidian to mark, blood to bind, the cenote to swallow. The dagger is the mouth. The pool does the rest.”

“Every time I hesitated, he pressed here.” Angel’s fingers hovered over their sternum, over the mark. “It felt like drowning on dry land until I moved.”

A tremor went through their shoulders. “So I started turning them. Every offering pushed the light a little further. He said when the basin was fed to the rim, he’d give them back.”

Silence hit like a blow. Julian’s vision tunneled.

He’d known, deep down—ever since they’d watched Felipe vanish in that acid-green light, ever since Marisol never came home—but he hadn’t wanted to name it. He’d told himself it was something else, something fixable.

Now the denial cracked wide open. The missing spirits weren’t lost or wandering.