Page 98 of Espíritu

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.

But he nodded anyway. “We need answers.”

Julian hesitated. “But I’m the only one who’s been able to see him—”