Page 150 of Espíritu

“You were always the one who knew what was right,” he said quietly. “It’s my turn to do right.”

He turned back to Bahlam. The golden light around him flared like the sun.

TWENTY-EIGHTJULIAN

The golden light flared behind Julian, blinding and hot. He barely registered the roar, the crack of impact, or Yadriel’s sharp intake of breath.

He didn’t look back.

He trusted Yadriel to hold the line. So he kept his eyes down and breathed on Yadriel’s count.

A current had hooked deep into his chest—something ancient and heavy—threading him to the others. Yadriel, Maritza, Enrique. Their presence burned at the edges of his senses, anchoring him like points on a compass. If he moved, if any of them wavered, the tether could snap.

He knelt in the center of the circle, surrounded by salt, flickering candles, and a haze of sacred smoke. His fingers dug into the stone floor, the chill biting into his skin. But he welcomed the pain. It grounded him.

Julian closed his eyes.

And reached.

“Angel,” he whispered.

Nothing answered. Not at first. Just the distant shriek of spirits, the press of magic thick as wet concrete, the thrum of his own heartbeat.

But he pressed deeper, calling her name again. Louder this time. Not with his voice, but with whatever thread of soul he still had left. He wrapped memory around the name and hurled it into the dark.

“First time we met,” he said into the void, his voice thick, “it was behind that Jack in the Box, remember? You stepped out of the shadows like you owned them. Told me you were a bruje. That you could heal the living and release the dead.”

A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. “You were bleeding, barely holding it together—and still, you looked like the coolest person I’d ever met.”

A flicker in the dark. A tremor in the thread.

He kept going.

“Later that night,” Julian said, softer now, “you came to Yadriel’s. Lita made us dinner. You didn’t talk much, but you let yourself stay a little while.”

His throat tightened. “When I walked you out, I realized you were living in your car. You weren’t gonna say anything—you never wanted anyone to know. But I saw you. I saw how tired you were. How hurt. So I asked you to come home with me.”

The space around him pulsed—a flash of warmth, quick as a heartbeat.

“And then…” His voice faltered, then steadied. “Then you told me about your family. About what you lost.”

His fingers dug into the stone floor, grounding himself.

“I know what that kind of grief is like, how it fucks you up,” Julian said, his voice cracking. “I know what it’s like to ache so bad it eats you alive. To wish you could bring them back no matter the cost.”

The words scraped out of him like something half healed. Beneath his ribs, his Marca Hueca flared—not just a dull echo but a sharp, searing pulse, a reminder of everything he’d lost and never gotten back.

It burned with his father’s name, with the birthday mornings and quiet rides and crooked smiles that had disappeared in an instant.

“I would’ve done anything to save my dad, too.”

Julian pressed a hand to his chest, like it could dull the pain. But maybe it was better that it didn’t—because it meant he understood. It meant he saw her, really saw her, even through all the wreckage.

The light in the dark wavered.

“But that’s what Bahlam saw, isn’t it?” Julian said, eyes burning. “That grief. That love. That hole in you. And he used it. Twisted it. Made it feel like your pain was your power.”

He leaned forward, his voice breaking with urgency.