Page 146 of Espíritu

Yadriel glanced at Julian. He sat with his St. Jude medal caught under his thumb, not fidgeting—gripping. Yadriel wondered what he was holding back.

Enrique’s gaze swept the table. “We proceed, then.”

Silence. The kind that meant agreement or exhaustion or both.

Yadriel felt the answer forming in his own chest—not like this—and swallowed it. He was a brujx. He knew what it meant to choose the living. He also knew the names that would get left behind if they did.

A chair creaked.

“What about Angel?”

The table stilled. Every eye turned to Julian.

And the floor under Yadriel’s feet felt even thinner.

TWENTY-SIXJULIAN

“What about Angel?” Julian repeated, looking around at everyone who only stared back. “And the others—Marisol, the quince girl, my ghost friends—everyone trapped in there with Bahlam. What happens to them if we break the dagger first?”

Enrique answered like he already knew it would land hard. “If the portaje breaks before the vessel is freed, the recoil drags the vessel down. The tethers don’t dissolve. They hold where they are.”

“What does that even mean?!” Julian barked, frustration mounting.

“Break the knife first, and Angel gets yanked into Xibalba,” Lita said gently, plainly. “And everyone she’s tied down stays trapped.”

Images rose whether Julian wanted them or not.

Marisol’s careful smile, the screams of the quinceañera. Angel at his door, gold eyes gone wrong and terrified underneath.

Xibalba pressed at the back of his teeth—cold, dark. No one deserved to be pinned there forever. Not even the one who’d thrown Luca in.

“We can’t win by leaving them behind,” Julian said, louder than he meant to. “There has to be another way.”

“Name it,” Doña Clara challenged, grief sharpening her voice.

Julian looked to Lita because if there was a way, she’d see the thread. “If we break Bahlam’s hold on her first—if we pull Angel back to herself—would the recoil hit only him when the dagger breaks?”

Lita didn’t look away. “It is dangerous. But—sí. If the vessel is no longer his, the blow lands where it belongs.”

Maritza flipped to a clean page. “Then plan A becomes: free the vessel, then unmake the portaje, then seal. We run it as one continuous ritual so he doesn’t get time to regroup.”

“How?” Enrique asked. Not dismissive. Demanding an answer that would keep people alive.

Lita set her beads down and spoke like she was arranging chairs around an invisible circle. “We build at the cenote. Wards first, to keep his teeth off us. I conduct the work at the center. The caller stands with me—the voice Angel will hear. Four anchors hold the caller to this world. Healers ring the room. Mateo’s trucks wait outside the gates. If the circle fails, we fall back. If Bahlam breaches, we pour.”

“The caller is Julian,” Yadriel said immediately.

Heat crawled up Julian’s neck. He didn’t argue. “She’ll hear me.”

“Anchors?” Maritza looked up. “We need people who can keep his head and heartbeat steady, and who won’t flinch when Bahlam approaches.”

“I’m one,” Yadriel said, already reaching for Julian’s wrist.

“I’m another,” Rio said from the doorway, voice quiet and iron. He stepped in far enough that the candlelight caught the scar under the Santa Muerte tattoo on his arm. “If he starts to drift, I’ll yank him back.”

Julian’s chest stuttered. Rio hadn’t been part of the talk until now and suddenly he was the anchor that mattered most.

For a second Julian was eight again, hiding behind him at a street fair, and now he was here, about to step into a god’s mouth. He wanted to say I don’t need you to—wanted to lie—but the truth hit harder.