Chapter Fifteen. Yadriel
FIFTEEN
YADRIEL
Yadriel swept the broom across the stone path with steady, deliberate strokes, the bristles scratching against dirt and fallen leaves.
Dried marigold petals clung to the edges of tombstones, but too many of the little offerings sat untouched—no coins gone, candles unburned, cups of café con leche still full.
“You’re gonna sweep a hole into the ground if you keep at it that hard,” Maritza said a few paces back, snipping at a stubborn vine with pruning shears.
He didn’t answer. The cemetery was all wrong.
Spirits weren’t just scarce, they were missing.
Tethers and portajes that had been left out for them were gone, too, or turned up bent and empty.
In a few places, the gravel told a story he didn’t like.
Scuffed shoe marks, petals churned up, a candle knocked over hard enough to crack the glass.
A flicker of cold brushed the back of his neck.
“Felipe?” Yadriel said, glancing toward a familiar headstone. The spirit blinked into view just long enough to look around, jittery.
“You seen Marisol?” Felipe asked, voice pitched low like the graves might eavesdrop. “I haven’t seen her since last night.”
“Marisol?” Yadriel’s stomach dropped. “Not today,” he said carefully. “I’ll check, though.”
Felipe nodded, flickered, and vanished again.
As he did, Yadriel noticed something new at the base of Marisol’s headstone—a battered, dog-eared Jujutsu Kaisen volume. He blinked, kneeling to brush away the bit of gravel clinging to the cover. It was one of his old copies, worn soft from use.
Julian must have swiped it and left it for her.
The thought hit him in the chest. Even scared, even overwhelmed, Julian had remembered and brought something just for her. The book sat there now like a small promise waiting to be kept.
Yadriel’s phone buzzed in his hoodie pocket, the sound shattering his fragile calm. He startled, tugging it free to see a missed call and a new voice memo from Julian.
“Julian, what now…” he muttered, lips twitching with tired affection.
“What’s he doing, skateboarding off another roof?” Maritza teased, tossing a clump of vine into the compost bucket.
“Maybe,” Yadriel replied distractedly, pressing Play on the voice memo.
Julian’s voice exploded from the speaker, frantic and breathless, like he was mid-sprint while recording.
Hey, babe, just casually being haunted again, no biggie! Kinda freaking out! I’m heading to your place! Anyway—miss you, call me back!
Yadriel blinked. Then played it again.
“Did he just say he’s being haunted?” Maritza asked flatly.
“Yeah,” Yadriel breathed, heart skipping. He hit Play again, hoping the words would make more sense the second time. They didn’t.
Maritza held out her hand for the phone. Yadriel passed it over numbly, brain still buffering. The sound of Julian’s panic kept replaying in his head.
Maritza listened. “Yeah, that’s bad,” she announced, handing back the phone. She looked far too calm for Yadriel’s liking. “You’re gonna wanna figure that out, ASAP.”
“I know,” Yadriel snapped, his voice tight. He immediately felt guilty for the sharpness and sighed. “Sorry.”
The wind picked up, rustling the leaves and shaking the marigolds on nearby graves. Yadriel glanced around instinctively, feeling the weight of the cemetery’s quiet like a shroud. Normally, the spirits who lingered here brought him comfort. Today, they made his skin prickle.
Maritza held the phone back out to him. “Just call him.”
He pulled up Julian’s contact and pressed Call, holding the phone to his ear.
It barely rang once before a frantic voice cut through the air behind them.
“Yads!”
Yadriel and Maritza both jumped, whipping around to see Julian barreling toward them at full speed, skateboard tucked under his arm. His breathing was heavy, face flushed from the run as he skidded to a halt.
“Julian?” Yadriel called. He stuffed his phone back into his pocket. “What the— You’re here?”
“Yeah,” Julian panted, doubling over with his hands braced on his knees. His eyes darted between Yadriel and Maritza, wide and frantic. “I didn’t know what else to do. We’ve got a problem. A big one.”
Maritza folded her arms. “What kind of problem?”
Julian ran a hand over his head, trying to steady himself. “I saw him!”
Yadriel felt the bottom drop out of his stomach. “Saw who?”
Julian winced, as if the name hurt to say. “Catriz! In the cemetery!”
The broom slipped from Yadriel’s hand, clattering to the path. The breath punched out of his chest.
The name hit like a splinter under Yadriel’s skin—sharp, buried, impossible to ignore.
“No,” he said automatically, but his voice barely carried.
Julian nodded vigorously. “Like, saw him saw him. He wasn’t flickering or see-through. He was just … there.” Julian’s voice was urgent, hands slicing the air in frantic gestures.
It had been months since Yadriel let himself even think about his uncle.
About the man who had once been his fiercest ally, who defended him when no one else would, who taught him how to draw protection sigils with a steady hand and gentler voice than any of the elders.
The man who used to bring him mango paletas when he had a bad day. Who made him believe he was seen.
And then tried to kill Julian.
Yadriel’s stomach churned. All three of them had watched Catriz get dragged into Xibalba. How could he be haunting Julian?
Julian stepped closer, eyes searching his face. “I’m telling you, it was him. That thing that’s been following me—it’s him!”
Yadriel blinked hard, like the motion could flush away the swell of emotion rising inside him—grief, anger, shame knotted so tightly he couldn’t separate one from the next.
Maritza’s voice cut through the silence, quiet but firm. “Catriz shouldn’t be here.”
Yadriel didn’t answer. He couldn’t.
Because some fragile part of him had never stopped hoping to see Catriz again—the uncle who once made him feel wholly, unquestionably loved. But that man had disappeared the moment he raised that dagger.
“Well, he is!” Julian said with a huff. “He said we’re in danger. That he’s coming.”
Maritza frowned. “Who’s ‘he’?”
“No idea!” Julian barked, frustration cracking through. “But it’s like Catriz is stuck between here and … I don’t know, the other side. He’s not like a normal ghost.”
“He shouldn’t be here,” Yadriel said quietly, the words barely escaping past the lump in his throat. “Spirits who go to Xibalba don’t come back.” But then he frowned. “Can they?”
Maritza shrugged helplessly.
Julian threw up his hands. “I HAVE NO IDEA! I’m not the one with a ghost rule book! We’re in the beast of the belly here!”
“Belly of the beast,” Maritza sighed.
Yadriel’s mind raced.
Catriz had broken the rules. Spirits who passed on weren’t supposed to come back on their own—not like that. Not solid. Not panicked. Not warning them.
“What do you think’s up?” Maritza asked, breaking the heavy silence. “Catriz just … stuck around? Hanging out?”
“No,” Yadriel said immediately, his voice sharper than he meant it to be. “No spirit can do that. Not without something anchoring them.”
Julian blew out a breath and dragged a hand down his face. “Well, congrats. He found a loophole.”
Maritza sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose. “Did you talk to Angel about this? Or do we loop in Lita and your dad?”
“Angel hasn’t texted me back since last night,” Julian said, deflating.
Yadriel shook his head, already seeing the fallout. “If we go to Lita and my dad right now, they’ll lock it down—separate us ‘for safety,’ confiscate anything that looks like a tether, and put us under house arrest.”
Maritza grimaced but nodded. “Yeah. They’d sideline us.”
Julian muttered, “Last time I told Rio anything, he benched me on the couch for a week.”
“We need proof and straight answers first,” Yadriel said. “Then we tell them.”
He was struggling to make sense of it all.
Catriz. His uncle. His betrayer. The one person who had been there for him when no one else had—before he’d turned into someone Yadriel couldn’t recognize. Someone who hurt him. Who hurt Julian.
The pain twisted inside him like a double-edged knife.
When Yadriel had come out, when the world had felt unbearable and cruel, Catriz had been one of only three people in the world who’d truly seen him.
The only one who stood by him when no one else did.
Even when his mother died, Catriz became the quiet presence who kept him from falling apart completely.
How could Yadriel reconcile that with the monster Catriz became?
The betrayal, the lies, the terrible choice his uncle made to please Bahlam—it all came rushing back, a current pulling him under.
And now, the very idea of seeing Catriz again …
of summoning him—what would that even look like?
Could Yadriel stand to face him again? To ask him for help, after everything?
But he had to.
The thought made his stomach churn. If Catriz was breaking the rules—if he was stuck somewhere between the living and the dead—then something was wrong. Dangerously wrong.
And Yadriel knew better than anyone that you couldn’t just ignore the dead.
“Spirits disappearing, tethers and portajes going missing,” he said quietly, gripping the broomstick like it might ground him. “And now my uncle is back?”
“How do we get rid of him?” Julian asked.
Yadriel closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “We need to talk to him,” he said definitively.
Julian turned to him, surprised. “What—you want to talk to him?”
“He’s already breaking through on his own,” Yadriel said. “That’s not normal. If he’s stuck between realms, something’s wrong. And if he’s trying to warn us, we need to listen.”
“You think we can trust him?” Maritza asked, eyes sharp and tone serious.
Yadriel shrugged miserably. “I don’t know, but it’s not like we can ignore him.”
“Yeah, I’d really like to not have him following me around and popping up when I’m in the bathroom,” Julian said with a scowl.
Maritza gave Yadriel a long, wary look. “You sure you’re up for that?”
He wasn’t. Not even a little.