A Mixture of Mischief Read online

  DEDICATION

  To the readers, and my whole publishing family.

  Thanks, y’all.

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1: So Much to Learn

  Chapter 2: Piñata Cookies

  Chapter 3: Hopes and Herbs

  Chapter 4: Visitors

  Chapter 5: Logroño Magic

  Chapter 6: The Truth

  Chapter 7: Honeybees

  Chapter 8: Downright Snooping

  Chapter 9: Another Disaster

  Chapter 10: Abuelo’s Plan

  Chapter 11: Revelation

  Chapter 12: Practice and Plots

  Chapter 13: Unexpected Ally

  Chapter 14: Spice Magic

  Chapter 15: The O’Rourkes

  Chapter 16: Sneaky Spy Stuff

  Chapter 17: Disappearing Act

  Chapter 18: Caught!

  Chapter 19: Duen De Casa

  Chapter 20: Capiro-Ta-Da!

  Chapter 21: The Cleanup

  Chapter 22: Beyond

  Leonora’s Lucky Recipe Book #3

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Books by Anna Meriano

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  CHAPTER 1

  SO MUCH TO LEARN

  Amor y Azúcar Panadería had closed its doors for the night, but inside the warm kitchen, Leo Logroño’s work was just beginning.

  “I’m ready, Mamá,” she said, setting down her knife and wiping her hands on her apron, leaving dark wet streaks amid the generous dusting of flour.

  Leo’s mother perched on a stool in the corner near the large bakery ovens. She appeared to be focused on the day’s receipts, but Leo could see that her mother’s eyes were following her every move. “Don’t tell me about it,” she said, waving a hand toward the oven and lifting her papers closer to her face to hide her smile. “This is your independent baking test.”

  Leo took a deep breath and nodded. She lifted her tray carefully, forcing her eyes off her six oblong dough loaves so she could watch her step. Should she have made the loaves smaller? Had she given them enough time to rise so their insides would be light and fluffy? Her dough looked all right, and the tiny piece she’d snuck into her mouth, once she’d finished mixing and kneading it, tasted all right—much better than the first time she had tried to make this recipe from memory.

  But still, Leo wondered if it would be enough to pass Mamá’s standards. She slid her tray into the oven, set the timer and steamer for ideal crusty loaves, and breathed a small sigh of relief. If nothing else, she’d gotten this batch into the oven without dropping it, unlike the last one.

  Leo had spent weeks pestering Mamá to let her take on more work in the bakery, to give her a job in the kitchen with her older sisters instead of always sticking her behind the cash register. That’s how they had come to their current agreement: if Leo could bake a batch of the bakery’s basic bread loaf from memory, all by herself, then Mamá would put her on rotation to work in the kitchen. This was Leo’s third attempt, not counting one disastrous kneading session in the kitchen at home. She had started today’s dough just before the bakery closed, letting it rise while she helped her sisters clean and shut down the shop. The wait had made her hopes rise too, and now she felt ready to burst with anticipation.

  “How do they look?” she asked, bouncing a little on the balls of her feet.

  “We’ll have to see when they come out,” Mamá said, but her eyes twinkled, and Leo’s chest loosened. She climbed onto the second stool next to Mamá and let out a tired puff of breath, wiping wild tendrils of escaped hair off her forehead and back under her baseball cap. Sometimes her older sisters got away with tight ponytails and buns in the bakery, but Leo’s hair needed extra containment.

  “You know, if you start working during business hours, you won’t get much of a break,” Mamá reminded her. “There’s always a batch to take out of the oven, or a new one to start mixing, or—”

  “I know!” Leo laughed. “But since I won’t have you watching me and making me nervous, I won’t need a break.”

  Mamá clicked her tongue. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ve just been going over the books.” She conjured a mechanical pencil out of thin air and made a note in the margins of the paper in front of her just to prove her point.

  Leo copied Mamá’s hand motion, a pinch of her fingers and a flick of her wrist, imagining that she too had the bruja power of manifestation. Second-born daughters in the family—like Mamá, and like Leo’s sixteen-year-old sister, Marisol—could make small objects appear and disappear as easily as first-borns could manipulate emotions and third-borns could communicate with spirits from el Otro Lado.

  As the fourth-born daughter, the first of her kind in generations of Rose Hill brujas, Leo didn’t yet know exactly what her special power would be, though she suspected it might have something to do with her ability to see the veil between this world and el Otro Lado. She had discovered that power in January, when her friend Caroline had accidentally thrown open a gate between the world of the living and the world of the dead.

  The problem was, being able to see the veil wasn’t the most exciting kind of power. Sometimes, if Leo concentrated really hard, she could find the shadowy, shimmery veil and poke her fingers through it, but it wasn’t nearly as useful a power as making objects from nothing.

  “I know I can be a real baker,” Leo said, eyes on the oven door. Everyone else helped in the kitchen, even Marisol, who hated spending time away from her friends, and Alma and Belén, who were still in ninth grade. Just because she was young didn’t mean she couldn’t do the same. Mamá was giving Leo a chance to prove that she was old enough to take on more responsibility. It was the chance Leo had been waiting for. She just hadn’t realized it would be so scary.

  Mamá reached across the gap between the stools to give Leo’s shoulder a squeeze. “Always in such a hurry to grow up,” she said. Then she jumped to her feet. “Well, come on. We’ve left a mess, and real bakers clean up after themselves.”

  By the time Leo had wiped her work space, washed and dried all her dishes, and returned everything to its proper place, the air was thick with its normal daytime smell of warm yeast and flour. She paced in front of the glass oven door as her timer ticked down, peeking in at the lonely-looking tray in the big empty belly of the oven. She let out a squeal of excitement when she finally pulled out the tray and saw six beautiful golden bolillos, the crusty bread that made for a perfect side dish as well as the very best sandwiches.

  “They look wonderful,” Mamá confirmed, and she picked up one of the small hot loaves with her bare hand, something Leo would have gotten in trouble for. “Ready to try it?” She ripped the bolillo in half and offered one steaming end to Leo. On Mamá’s nod, Leo bit into her piece, teeth crunching through the outside and sinking into the soft middle. Buttery, fresh, and hot, the bolillo tasted like victory on her tongue.

  “Well,” Mamá said, chewing thoughtfully, “I’d be a fool to argue with that. Consider yourself eligible for back-of-the-house shifts. You can start tomorrow morning if you like.”

  Leo leaped into the air, bread raised in triumph. Tomorrow was Saturday, which meant she had two full weekend days to practice working alongside her sisters. She was going to be an expert baker in no time!

  Mamá held up a warning finger. “You’ll start off slow. Bolillos only for now, and just a couple of batches at a time.” Her face stayed stern for three seconds before softening. “Good job, ’jita.”

  “Thank you.” Leo couldn’t wait to get home and tell her sisters. Isabel would be proud like Mamá, and Alma and
Belén would claim not to be surprised. Marisol might pretend to wonder why anyone would celebrate having more work to do, but she’d probably be happy to swap baking for Leo’s shifts at the register in the front of the bakery. Leo nibbled her bread while Mamá shut down the oven for the night, her heart glowing like the fading light of the oven heating coils.

  But after her third bite, her jubilation faded. Something tasted . . . off.

  “Let’s bring these home,” Mamá said, packing Leo’s loaves into a paper bag and rinsing the tray in the oversized sink. “I’ve been craving capirotada now that it’s almost Easter, and these would be perfect for it.”

  Leo took the bag Mamá offered her with a frown. “Are you sure?” she asked. “Are you positive I got the recipe right?”

  “Sure I’m sure,” Mamá scanned the kitchen one last time. “Why, what’s wrong?”

  Leo shrugged. She bit off another piece of the bread. It tasted good, and it tasted like a bolillo, but something was . . . different. It didn’t taste like an Amor y Azúcar bolillo. It was like when Mamá bought store-brand cereal—similar, but not quite the same.

  “They don’t seem exactly right,” Leo said. “Should I try again tomorrow night? Maybe I added too much flour and dried out the dough. . . .” She pulled a tiny spiral notebook out of her back pocket, flipping through the pages to see her notes on this batch.

  “Wait, ’jita, slow down. You did great,” Mamá said. “Is this about nerves? You don’t have to start work tomorrow if you don’t want to. I know it can be a lot of pressure, but nobody expects you to keep up with everything your older sisters do.”

  “It’s not nerves.” Leo shook her head, disappointment weighing down the corners of her mouth. “I want to work in the bakery. I want to be a real baker. But I must have done something wrong. This bolillo doesn’t taste like yours.”

  To her surprise, Mamá laughed. “Well, of course it doesn’t. I thought it would be cheating to let you use the mixing bowl.”

  “The mixing bowl?” Leo knew which bowl Mamá meant—the extra-large wooden one in which Marisol or the twins usually prepared the oversized batches of bolillo dough. Leo had always assumed the bowl was used for its size, not as part of the recipe.

  “Indeed,” Mamá said, opening one of the tall wooden cabinets and taking out the mixing bowl. “I know that the baking equipment we use doesn’t usually make a difference. But this is a family heirloom. There’s power in something passed down through the generations.”

  “Power to make bread tasty?” Leo asked, running her hand down the smooth side of the bowl. She breathed deep and caught a whiff of her family’s spicy magic scent.

  Mamá nodded. “Power to make recipes turn out better than perfect.”

  “So it’s another type of relic,” Leo said. Tía Paloma, Mamá’s younger sister who helped in the bakery and with the magical education of Leo and her sisters, had taught her about objects that could be used to strengthen and channel magic. She just hadn’t mentioned that they used a relic to make the daily batches of bread.

  “Exactly right.” Mamá flipped the lights off, leaving the closed kitchen in darkness except for the dim office light by the back door.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “It never came up,” Mamá said. “It’s not like you needed to know it for your baking test.”

  Leo sighed. As far as Mamá was concerned, Leo never needed to know anything.

  “You’re taking to your lessons well, Paloma says. And your baking has improved so much. You have nothing to worry about, ’jita. Now come on.” Mamá held out her hand for Leo to take. “Let’s get to bed. We have work in the morning.”

  They were most of the way home, and Leo was watching the crescent moon follow them through the streets of Rose Hill when a question popped into her mind.

  “Mamá? When I’ve finished memorizing normal bakery recipes, will I have to memorize all the recipes in the spell book too?” The idea was exciting but daunting. The family spell book was an heirloom as old as the mixing bowl, and each bruja in the family added new magical recipes to the ever-growing compendium.

  “Oh no!” Mamá raised her eyebrows and laughed. “The uses of some of the items in the book are so rare, there’s no point in knowing them all by heart. That’s part of the reason we write them down, so the knowledge doesn’t get lost even if it’s used infrequently. After you master the basic recipes and spells we use in everyday baking, I might start you on learning spice magic, at least until we figure out what your birth-order power is and whether it requires special training.”

  “Spice magic?” Leo asked. “But I already learned the spices and herbs. Tía Paloma quizzed me on all their uses.”

  Mamá turned onto their block and into the Logroño driveway. “Those are the fundamentals, the properties that brujas and brujos of any discipline should know. I’m talking about studying the specific applications of spices in baking spells—the secrets of any family of brujas cocineras.”

  Leo’s heart beat faster—the same as it did anytime she learned about a family secret. “When can I start?”

  Mamá’s laugh broke the quiet of the stilled engine. “Let’s work on making you a ‘real baker’ first, ’jita. I know you’re in a hurry to learn everything at once, but I promise you, there’s no rush.”

  Leo jumped out of the car, barely hearing Mamá’s words. She slammed the car door behind her, head already scheming. Starting first thing tomorrow, she would prove she had mastered baking as soon as possible. Then Mamá would have to let her learn all the secrets of spice magic.

  Mamá didn’t understand how it felt, how Leo always got held back while her older sisters moved ahead. Leo didn’t want to be the extra tagalong sister, the unnecessary fourth-born who didn’t even have a birth-order power. She wanted to be a bruja, and a baker, and an important part of her family.

  She clutched her paper bag of near-perfect bolillos to her chest. This was a good step in the right direction, but she had much more work to do.

  CHAPTER 2

  PIÑATA COOKIES

  By Tuesday, Leo had hatched a plan to improve her baking. Like most of her good ideas, it involved her friends.

  “Tricia’s birthday falls during spring break next week.” Leo’s best friend and seat buddy, Caroline, was talking to Brent Bayman as their bus pulled away from Rose Hill Middle School. “And she and her family are going out of town. So we’re going to turn tomorrow’s snack-club day into a birthday celebration snack club!”

  “Sounds delicious!” Brent sat sideways with his legs in the aisle so he could face the girls. “So what are you making? A cake?”

  “We haven’t decided yet,” Leo said. “But it’s going to be something spectacular.”

  Brent glanced back and forth between his friends, excitement waning. “You mean ‘spectacular’ like a really great flavor and amazing decorations, right? Not ‘spectacular’ like—” He widened his eyes and wiggled his fingers like he was performing a magic spell.

  “We haven’t decided yet,” Caroline teased, wiggling her fingers back at Brent.

  Leo giggled. She wouldn’t be surprised if Brent was a bit nervous about his friends using magic. He had been stuck on the wrong end of a mistakenly cast love spell earlier that school year when Leo first discovered the family spell book, and later he had helped track down half a soccer team’s worth of spirits who Caroline had accidentally brought back to life—with the help of Leo’s family magic—in January. Brent knew more than anyone the problems magic could cause.

  To ease his mind, Leo leaned across Caroline and whispered, “We’re bringing them to school; they’re not going to be anything too spectacular.”

  “Okay,” Brent said. “Just please . . . utilize your critical thinking skills.” He borrowed the phrase that the sixth-grade teacher, Ms. Wood, had started using when her students made bad choices.

  “Critical thinking skills fully activated,” Caroline promised. The bus screeched to a halt in front of
her and Brent’s stop, but she stayed seated as Brent swung his backpack onto his back. “See you tomorrow.”

  “Thanks for inviting me over, Leo,” Caroline said as the bus pulled back into the street. “I love going to your house. There’s always something happening!”

  The Logroño house was happening, all right. The kitchen in particular was so packed that Leo and Caroline couldn’t even start their snack-club baking project until after dinner. First, Daddy made them do all their homework for the next day while he rummaged through the cookie jar for after-school snacks. Then they helped Marisol rip up piles of colored paper for her new art project, which she spread out across the whole kitchen table. Alma and Belén needed opinions on the costumes they were making to wear to a comic convention the next week, and by the time the fashion show was over, Isabel was ready to serve the tostadas Mamá had taught her how to make for dinner.

  “This is what I’m going to eat every day when I’m in college next year,” Isabel said. “It’s way easier than the spaghetti I made last night.”

  “And somehow less crunchy,” Marisol joked, cracking the hard tortilla between her teeth and smirking.

  Then there were dishes to do, and by the time Leo and Caroline had the kitchen to themselves, the sun was starting to set and Caroline would have to go soon.

  “Okay,” Leo said, pulling out bags of flour and sugar from the pantry at lightning speed and lining them up on the counter. “We can still make something spectacular. We just have to make something spectacularly speedy.”

  “I brought something that might help,” Caroline said, unzipping the hidden pocket in her sparkly green backpack. “It’s for . . . inspiration and clarity, I think.” She held up a purplish-blue candle with a slightly crooked base. “I made it myself! At my lesson with your aunt on Wednesday. It’s got rosemary, my favorite.”

  Leo nodded, leaning to inhale the familiar smell of herbs and wax and Caroline’s newfound power, a smoky scent that had grown stronger since Tía Paloma had started training Caroline in candle magic. “It looks great. And we need all the help we can get.”