Chapter Twenty-Five. Yadriel
TWENTY-FIVE
YADRIEL
Enrique herded them back to the house. The long dining table had been cleared of its feast and repurposed for something far less celebratory. Candles, legal pads, and a chipped bowl of salt sat in the middle as if they all counted as tools.
Yadriel wasn’t used to being invited to this table. Not for real plans. Not with elders. There was a confusing mix of pride and the feeling that he’d stepped onto thin ice.
Dona Clara’s silver braid was looped over one shoulder, her mouth moving with a prayer she wasn’t saying out loud. Senor Mateo’s cane tapped too fast against the floor. Enrique stood instead of sitting. Lita’s rosary beads clicked softly in her hands.
Maritza slid in beside Yadriel, dropped a legal pad, and clicked her pen rapid-fire. Julian took the seat Yadriel pulled out next to him without a word, shoulders tight, a little pale in the candlelight. He didn’t look afraid. He looked braced for a crash landing.
“We don’t have time for speeches,” Enrique announced with a solemn expression. “Bahlam breached the boundary. He shouldn’t be able to walk in the world. And yet.” He swallowed.
Yadriel didn’t say anything, just glanced at Julian beside him. His boyfriend gave a small nod, eyes fixed ahead.
Enrique clasped his hands together on the table. “We need to talk about what comes next.”
Murmurs. The energy bit like cold.
Lita drew a small circle on the table with her thumb, thinking. “The current wards held long enough to keep the cemetery from cracking,” she said. “They will not hold if he decides to test them.”
The room quieted in a way that made sound feel heavier when it came back.
“What’s the anchor?” Senor Mateo asked. “He’s tried to cross before. But never like this.”
Maritza glanced at Yadriel, giving him a small nod.
“It’s the dagger,” Yadriel said, keeping his voice steady. “The obsidian portaje Angel was using—the one Bahlam corrupted. Every time she uses it to release a spirit, it feeds them to Bahlam instead. That dagger is how he’s been tethered to this world.”
The elders exchanged uneasy looks. Lita’s rosary clicked faster.
Dona Clara’s eyes sharpened. “That cursed portaje is the anchor.”
Yadriel nodded once. “Yes. And now it’s in the cenote. Last night, when the rift opened in the apartment, Julian saw the dagger fall through with Angel.” He didn’t look at Julian when he said it. He kept his eyes on his dad. “That’s our focus point.”
Dona Clara nodded once, sharp. “Then we meet him at the wound.”
“Agreed,” Enrique said. “We unmake the cursed portaje and force the rift closed.”
Julian let out a strained breath. “Cool, cool, cool, so we just enter the crypt and go ‘pspspsps’ until Bahlam pops out of the cenote?”
Maritza sharply turned her head toward him. “Julian.”
Yadriel closed his eyes, begging the universe for patience.
“It was just a suggestion,” Julian muttered, sinking into his seat.
Lita’s eyes softened, then narrowed, thinking already in layers. “Rompimiento. Salt, prayer, fire. Done on stone and water together. The timing matters.”
“It will draw him,” Senor Mateo warned.
“Let it,” Dona Clara said, her voice shaking with anger on the first syllable.
Yadriel’s stomach tightened. The elders were scared. It was the kind of fear that made people choose certainty over mercy.
His mother’s voice ghosted through him: We heal who we can reach.
“Contingencies.” Enrique pushed on. “If the rift will not seal, we collapse the entrance. Mateo?”
“My nephews. Two trucks. Rebar, sacks of cement. We wait at the gates,” Senor Mateo said. His cane stopped tapping. “If we hear ‘collapse,’ we pour.”
The room sprouted logistics like thorns. Evac routes. A chapel fallback. Healers staged by the door. Who would hold which quarter. Which wards would bite hardest if Bahlam tested them. Every plan was a way to keep people alive, and every plan sounded like a eulogy spoken early.
Maritza scribbled and translated the storm into columns. “Plan A: Unmake dagger, seal rift. Plan B: We concrete a god’s front door shut and hope he likes interior design.” She didn’t smile when she said it.
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.