Inspired by Hispanic folklore, legends, and myths from the Iberian Peninsula and Central and South America, this fifth and final book in the Charlie Hernández series follows Charlie as he ventures into the Land of the Dead. The League of Shadows has done everything they can to keep the Land of the Living safe from La Mano Peluda, but it hasn’t been enough. The barriers between the worlds are falling, and the forces of the dead are only days away from launching an invasion. Only one hope remains for the living: unleashing the full power of the Morphling—all five of them, to be exact. But to do so, Charlie and his friends will have to journey into the very heart of the Land of the Dead to track down Charlie’s predecessors. Determined to fulfill his destiny as the final morphling, Charlie will risk everything to bring balance back to the realms. But the Land of the Dead is no place for the living. Danger lurks everywhere, from ancient malevolent forests to legendary beasts that haven’t been seen for millennia. Yet, in the end, it is death itself the friends will have to overcome in this epic conclusion to the Charlie Hernández series. Ryan Calejo is the author of the Charlie Hernández series. He was born and raised in south Florida, where he graduated from the University of Miami with a BA. He teaches swimming to elementary school students, chess to middle school students, and writing to high school students. Having been born into a family of immigrants and growing up in the so-called “Capital of Latin America,” Ryan knows the importance of diversity in our communities and is passionate about writing books that children of all ethnicities can relate to. Chapter One CHAPTER ONE There was no need to swim. We were all dead, so we just floated. Five minutes ago, we hadn’t been so dead. The five of us—that’s Violet, Raúl, Mariana, Esperanza, and yours truly—were steering a small Chilean fishing boat through a dark and stormy sea toward the spot we’d picked out roughly five miles from Chiloé’s rocky shores. That was when the argument about who would drink the Death Juice first started up. You could almost say it was like something straight out of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet . We had a sparkling vial of poison, and there was at least one pair of star-crossed lovebirds in our gang. But don’t get the wrong idea: This wasn’t some tragic romance or anything like that. We were on a mission. Boldly going where no living souls had gone before. (Or at least not very often.) We were on our way to La Tierra de los Muertos, aka the Land of the Dead …. The vial of poison had been witch-brewed, courtesy of the Witch Queen of Toledo herself. Joanna had cooked it up in this huge steaming cauldron, chanting incantations over the bubbling, hissing mess as she stirred. I didn’t know what was in it. I didn’t want to know what was in it. But I was pretty sure half of her carefully selected ingredients had been alive. Which, if you think about it, was kind of ironic for a death potion. If the stuff worked like it was supposed to, we’d all be dead (technically, at least) for about twenty minutes, then okay again. If it didn’t work, we’d die and stay dead. Permanently. I didn’t know about everybody else, but I had my fingers crossed that we’d dodge that second possibility. “Who’s ever heard of a plan where the best-case scenario is you wind up dead?” I’d asked my cousin as we all gathered near the front of the little boat, waves swelling around us in the dark, the wind howling, blowing sea spray in our faces. Raúl was shaking his head like he didn’t want to think about it. “I blame la bruja!” he shouted. Overhead, lightning streaked and sizzled across the angry sky. Down below, Violet held the vial of poison out between the five of us. A tremendous BOOM! ripped the clouds, and for a moment, in a flash of blue lightning, we could almost see our own half-terrified faces reflected in each other’s eyes. “Who wants to go first?” Violet asked. I swallowed hard and shook my head. “Not me. I’m scared of heights.” “What does heights have to do with anything?” snapped Mariana. So I explained: “If I’m scared of something like heights , just imagine how I feel about deadly potions .” Señorita Warrior Princess smacked me with an eye roll. “I’ll go first,” she said, blinking seawater out of her ojos. No big surprise there. The girl was as tough as nails, an elite chullachaqui warrior trained by my abuelo himself. We’d met her back in Cuba, about sixty years ago (long story), in the chullachaqui tribe led by my grandpa. Back in the jungles of Zapata, she’d paraded us up onto a giant carnival float and tried to burn us at the stake. Now we were all besties. Life is funny like that. Violet handed her the Vial o’ Death. Mariana’s dark eyes stared at the chunky pinkish juice like it was a one-way ticket to an early grave. But she grimaced and gulped some down anyway, growling low in her throat as sh