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“No, I can’t tell you anything about the place beyond,” his grandfather told him.

Santiago snapped his lips shut. It was what he was going to ask. Absently, he noticed a distorted haze several yards behind his abuelo, like a smudge on a windowpane, but he ignored it. There was another, more pressing question on his mind.

“Papá?” Santiago asked hopefully. He looked around, seeing nothing but his abuelo and the strange distortion in the distance, which appeared to be getting clearer. Or closer? Santiago couldn’t tell, but it wasn’t what he was searching for.

“Is he…” He swallowed. “Is he here, too?”

Manco’s face fell and, with it, Santiago’s hope.

“No, Santi, lo siento,” Manco responded, his voice heavy with regret. “Right now you are here because you are in a space of the Guardianes.”

“But you said we are in a space between the living and the dead,” Santiago argued, almost desperately. “Shouldn’t that mean he can be here, too?”

“This place is both infinite and intimate,” his abuelo answered. “And there is more that lies beyond. This space, the one we are both in right now, is reserved only for Guardianes.”

“And Papá renounced being a Guardian,” Santiago realized.

“Yes,” Manco said.

“But we sent his ashes to Peru,” Santiago insisted. “To you.” He remembered how conflicted Mami had been about the decision. Ultimately, she felt that his father would have wanted to rest back home. Or at least, that’s what she said.

“Yes, and his body was laid to rest in the tomb where yours is now,” Manco said. “But that doesn’t mean that his soul chose to remain tethered to it.”

That was a lot to process.

“When he passed, he went somewhere different. He is at peace, mijo. He simply cannot meet us here.”

Grief surged inside of Santiago, and he had to press his lips together to stop their trembling.

“What is that?” he asked Abuelo Manco, motioning toward the obscured shadows behind him. They seemed more solid now.

“That is Atahualpa’s army,” Manco answered.

Santiago’s gaze snapped back to his grandfather’s, then he swiveled to look directly into the haze. Now that Abuelo Manco had put a name to it, it was like the aberrations had always been there.

Santiago could make out the faded outline of men, amassed in formation. It was a lot like finding a shape in a cloud.

“What?” Santiago cried. “No, I did what I was supposed to. I laid you to rest in his tomb…”

“It was too late,” Manco replied softly. “You did so well, mijo. And I am so proud of you. But it was too late. He’s woken, and his followers with him.”

“So that’s it?” Santiago demanded. “There’s nothing more to be done? Atahualpa’s curse, his army, they’ll kill anyone who bears the blood of his enemies?”

“That depends,” his abuelo said.

“On what?” Santiago asked, panic clutching at him.

“On you,” Manco replied.

Santiago took a tiny step backward. What did that mean?

“I don’t understand,” he said.

“The emperor has been gone for a very long time. I don’t think he or his followers imagined the scope of what they were doing when they placed the curse,” Manco explained, though Santiago remained confused.

“So they don’t want vengeance?” he asked, trying to make sense of it all.

“Oh, most of them did, for a time,” his grandfather admitted ruefully. “But it has been centuries. Even the dead have things to do, you know.”