The brujx tried to band together and close their ranks. As a community that was already so close-knit and stuck to their own, it only exacerbated their fear of outsiders.
“They got scared the police would find a reason to deport them, so they left. I’m not even sure a police report was actually filled out, but they’re too frightened to go back.”
Catriz shook his head slowly, the corner of his lip curling in distaste. “Awful.”
“Santa Muerte, los ayude,” an older brujo muttered, crossing himself.
“Miguel will return on Día de Muertos,” a young woman insisted. “Then he will tell us what happened.”
“But what if he doesn’t?” asked another, and they all broke out into more questions until it was just an unintelligible cacophony of voices.
Yadriel gripped his empty plate, suddenly feeling sick to his stomach. The only new information they had was the police hadn’t found Miguel’s body, which wasn’t much to go on. He was still missing. They still needed to find him.
Even if Día de Muertos was only two days away, there was no way Yadriel was just going to sit around, twiddling his thumbs until Miguel showed up. And if he didn’t come back, then his spirit was somewhere, tethered and trapped. He hated the idea of Miguel being stuck somewhere, unable to contact them. Where had he ended up that no one could find him? It wasn’t like there were wells to fall down in East LA. There were no cliffs to be tossed off. If a building or something had collapsed, they would’ve heard about it on the news.
Gone without a trace. Just like Julian.
Yadriel was certain that wherever one was, the other was, too. He and Maritza did have a leg up on the rest of the brujx. They at least knew where Julian had gone missing, and tomorrow they would see if Donatello and Michelangelo could track him from there.
“Oh, good, you’re finished eating!”
Lita’s voice pulled Yadriel from his thoughts.
Before he could even respond, she’d taken the paper plate from his hands and pulled him toward the table of younger brujx. “You let them worry about Miguel,” Lita said sternly.
“Lita,” Yadriel said sharply. He didn’t want to get lumped in with the kids doing arts and crafts. He belonged with the adults. “I’m not a kid—”
“I know that!” Lita huffed, coming to a stop next to the crates.
Yadriel scowled, not believing her for a moment.
“But you’re the best at decorating the calaveras!” she argued, snapping her skirt.
Yadriel looked down at the boxes of blank sugar skulls and the mess of neon icing tubes that littered the table. The older kids sat around, looking bored out of their minds, maybe five completed calaveras between them that were lackluster at best.
Meanwhile, Leo and Lena, the six-year-old twins, sat on the end, squeezing neon blue and green icing into each other’s mouths. They laughed uncontrollably, their eyes wild, completely jacked up on sugar.
Decorating the small skulls made of white sugar was Yadriel’s favorite part of Día de Muertos, but right now, he had more important things to worry about.
“Lita, do I have to?” he said, trying really hard not to sound like a whiny child.
“Only two days to Día de Muertos!” Lita lamented, sitting heavily in the chair at the head of the table. “Still so much to cook and bake!” she continued.
The teen brujx kept talking among themselves. Leo and Lena were now chasing each other around, smearing icing on their arms.
Yadriel wanted to get out of there and go back to the house, where he could talk to Julian. He was probably still pissed off, but Yadriel hoped he’d had enough time to cool off and listen to reason.
When no one responded, Lita scowled. “Ay, yi, yi, how my back aches!” she announced, louder this time and with a big sigh. She looked around expectantly.
Alejandro, a thirteen-year-old brujo with a big ego and even bigger attitude problem, rolled his eyes. “Aye, Lita,” he said dismissively, taking a large bite out of a sugar skull.
With surprising swiftness, Lita had her chancla in her hand. “¡Cállate!” she snapped, whacking Alejandro in the back of the head.
“Ow!”
The others laughed.
Yadriel inwardly sighed. He wasn’t going to get out of there until he satisfied Lita’s demands. So he sucked it up and gave her a smile. “We appreciate all your hard work, Lita,” he told her, doing his best to sound as sincere as possible without being sarcastic.
“The supplies for the ofrendas this year are even more beautiful than last. You work so hard,” he repeated, sitting down and bringing forward a box of sugar skulls.
Satisfied, Lita smiled and waved a hand through the air. “¡Oh, gracias, mi amor! But I would never complain, I am happy to do it.”
Alejandro snorted, but it quickly turned into a cough when Lita’s eyes narrowed on him.
Yadriel picked out an assortment of neon-colored icing in tiny piping bags and got to work. The sooner he got some calaveras done, the sooner he could sneak out of there. With painstaking precision, Yadriel traced yellow flowers, purple eyelashes, and green spiderwebs onto a sugar skull for his mom.
There was one for each ancestor they would be welcoming back on Día de Muertos, their names written across the forehead of their calavera.
“You still need to help me look in the rafters,” Lita said to Yadriel, drawing his attention. “Still can’t find la garra del jaguar.”
“The what?” asked Ximena, a short bruja whose quinces would be happening next summer.
“¡La garra del jaguar!”
The younger brujx exchanged confused looks.
Yadriel shook his head but continued to work. He always knew when a Lita lecture was coming. He piped swirls of yellow and light blue onto the calavera’s bony cheeks.
Lita huffed, fully offended now. “Four sacred blades! They are ancient artifacts, used to perform the forbidden sacrifices.”
Alejandro gaped. “The what?”
Lita preened under the sudden undivided attention.
Yadriel carefully wrote his mother’s name in loopy handwriting over the calavera’s forehead in red icing.
Camila.
Gently, Yadriel put it in the box with the other completed calaveras. He picked out his next sugar skull to decorate, cradling it in his lap as Lita dove into her story in Spanish, not having the patience to stumble through the nuances of English for such an important retelling.
Lita had been telling the legend of Bahlam, the jaguar god, ever since he was little. He knew the story practically by heart.
Bahlam, the jaguar god, was the ruler of Xibalba. When you died, you had to travel through Xibalba to reach the peaceful world of the afterlife, where Lady Death ruled. Some people were granted safe and direct passage to the afterlife by Lady Death—like those who died in battle, at a young age, or during childbirth—but most had to endure the challenges of Xibalba.
In order to make it through Xibalba, you had to be clever and brave. Also known as the Place of Fright, Xibalba was filled with monsters and death gods you had to outsmart and defeat.
Bahlam ruled over Xibalba. He ate the spirits of all those who failed in their journey. Part man, part beast, he was fearsome and cruel and insatiable. Unsatisfied with the spirits of those he caught in Xibalba, Bahlam tricked humans into helping him cross to the realm of the living so he could feed.