Cemetery Boys(14)

He heard Maritza walk in behind him. “Yads?” she asked. “What are you doing?”

“Grabbing supplies,” he said. His fingers closed around the flashlight, and he yanked it out.

She frowned at him, her arms crossed. “For what?”

“If I have to prove myself in order to get them to listen, then I will.” He clicked on the light to make sure the batteries still worked. “If I can find Miguel’s spirit, figure out what happened to him, and release him to the afterlife in time for Día de Muertos, they’ll have to let me be part of the aquelarre.” Yadriel turned the beam on Maritza. “You coming?”

A large grin curled her burgundy-painted lips. “Oh, hell yes I am.”

Yadriel smiled back. He felt dangerous and electric, adrenaline tingling through his fingers. “Good.” He tossed her the flashlight, which she easily caught out of the air. Yadriel stuffed an LED camping lantern and box of matches into his backpack and double-checked that the candles, bowl, and the rest of the tequila were still in there.

He pulled his portaje out and removed it from the leather sheath Maritza had fashioned for it. He turned the blade over in his hands, feeling the even weight, running his thumb along the painting of Lady Death.

In a few short days, his mother would return for Día de Muertos. He would be able to see and speak to her. He would show her his portaje, and she would see he’d done it. All that was left to do was find Miguel.

Yadriel turned to Maritza. “You ready?”

She smirked, tipping her head toward the door. “I’ve got your back.”





THREE


By the time they went back downstairs, all the brujos had dispersed to help search for Miguel. While Lita was back to work in the kitchen, a handful of women remained gathered around Claudia. They were all too happy to look the other way as Maritza and Yadriel bolted out the front door. The brujx cemetery was right in the middle of East Los Angeles, surrounded by a tall wall that concealed it from prying eyes. Yadriel could hear dogs barking in the distance and the thudding bass of reggaeton blaring from a passing car.

They passed by some brujx still looking for Miguel.

“Anything yet?” an older one asked.

“Nothing behind the eastern columbaria,” said another.

“No sign of him near his family’s mausoleums, either,” said the spirit of a young bruja, a worried but determined expression on her faintly transparent face.

“What’s the plan?” Maritza asked, her long legs easily keeping stride with Yadriel. She wove between tombstones, careful to step around flower vases and framed pictures.

“Find Miguel’s portaje, summon his spirit, find out what happened, and release his spirit before Día de Muertos starts,” Yadriel said as they started jogging through rows of brightly painted tombs. “That way, he can come back to celebrate with the rest of the brujx, and I can be in this year’s aquelarre.”

“Uh, there’s a lot of gaps in your plan,” Maritza told him.

“I didn’t say it was a good one.”

“Where are we going to look?”

“His parents’ house.” Clearly the brujx weren’t having any luck finding Miguel in the cemetery, so where he lived was the next logical place to look. The quickest way there was over the abandoned back gate in the oldest part of the cemetery.

The closer they got to the original graveyard, the older the tombs and headstones became. By the time they were in sight of the old church, the cemetery was mostly a collection of simple, cross-shaped tombstones. On most of them, you couldn’t even read the names.

Yadriel and Maritza slowed to a stop. The old church loomed before them.

When the first brujx immigrated to Los Angeles, they had only built a small church and graveyard. But as the community expanded, so did the cemetery, and eventually, the original church was just too small to hold them all. Finally, a couple of decades ago, the new one had been built, along with Yadriel’s home.

In comparison, the old church looked like an ancient ruin. Wild vines had overrun the two brick walls that met behind the church, giving the building a backdrop of dense, shadowy green. There weren’t many street lights nearby, but it was East LA, where the sun never seemed to set. Hazy pollution and city lights washed everything in an orange glow, even in the middle of the night.

The church itself was made of a variety of differently shaped and colored stones, all patched together with clay. There was a small bell tower on the roof, directly above the wooden door, that didn’t seem to house an actual bell anymore. A small wrought iron fence about waist-high surrounded the church. A few headstones lined the inner graveyard.

“Mira, there.” Yadriel nudged Maritza and pointed to the back wall. There was a spot through the veil of ivy where the old entrance to the cemetery was located. Yadriel couldn’t help but grin as he jogged around the edge of the fence to the gate.

“See?” Yadriel shoved a fistful of ivy out of the way. The iron bars towered over them. Two handles met at a very sturdy-looking lock meant to keep non-brujx out, and their secrets safe. “Shortcut!”

Maritza let out a low whistle. “Good thing I’m not in a skirt,” she grumbled to herself before wedging her foot onto a crossbar and hoisting herself up.

Yadriel tightened the strap on his backpack, ready to climb up after her, when he got the feeling someone was behind him. It wasn’t an all-at-once realization, more like a slow creeping on the back of his neck. Yadriel turned, but there was only the old church and graves. The hum of traffic and the far-off sound of a car alarm drifted from the distance.