A Mixture of Mischief Read online

  The girls had baked together for snack club before, mostly when it was Caroline’s turn to bake. Mr. Campbell was doing his best to stock their pantry and kitchen, but Caroline still came over to Leo’s when she needed cake flour, round cake pans, or an icing bag. Since they were founding members of the snack club, along with Tricia Morales and Mai Nguyen, Caroline said that she couldn’t show up with cake from a box or slice-and-bake cookies.

  “I’ve got some ideas,” Caroline said, pulling her blond hair back into a ponytail before striking a match and holding it up to the candle. The kitchen lights flickered and went out as the candle wick glowed.

  “That’s not going to be enough light to bake by, girls,” Mamá pointed out, peeking in to check their progress.

  “Sorry! I’m working on that.” Caroline shrugged at Leo with a sheepish grin. “Your aunt says I should be able to light a spelled candle without setting off an actual spell. . . . Hold on.” She blew out the candle. The lights came back on.

  Caroline stubbornly insisted that blowing out a candle wasn’t bad luck in the tradition of her family’s magic. Leo respected her friend’s difference of opinion, but it still made her cringe. Mamá and Tía Paloma had taught her their superstition as a baby, before she knew about magic. Birthday candles were the only exception. Even Daddy had been trained to douse candles by covering them, and he didn’t have any spell-casting abilities at all.

  After two more attempts, Caroline managed to light the candle without causing a blackout.

  “That’s pretty good,” Alma said, wandering into the kitchen and pouring two cups of orange juice. “Tía Paloma never taught us that.”

  Caroline beamed.

  “Hurry up,” Belén called from the other room. “I need you to find my blue leggings or else this is going to be the worst DragonBlood cosplay ever!” Alma balanced both cups in one hand while she returned the orange juice to the fridge and hurried out of the kitchen.

  Leo leaned in and took a deep breath of what she hoped was inspiration and clarity. “So you said you have ideas for the cake?”

  “Yes, I watched some YouTube videos and I made a list of options,” Caroline took a folded sheet of notebook paper from her pocket. “One: some kind of piñata cake—the ones where you cut into it and candy pours out, or sprinkles. Two: sugar cookies with frosting, because Tricia loves those. Three: puerquitos! It’s a little boring, but they’re her favorite order from the bakery, and they might be a good idea since we’re so short on time. Four . . . something magical.”

  “We want to eat them in the cafeteria,” Leo reminded her friend. “They can’t be too magical.” Tricia knew about the girls’ powers because she had helped them chase down the stray spirits a few months ago, but just because Leo trusted her friends with her family’s secret didn’t mean she wanted to bring powerful spells to school. “Plus, we sort of promised Brent.”

  Caroline nodded. “I was just thinking something small,” she said, but she pulled a pencil from the side pocket of her backpack and crossed the idea off her list.

  Leo considered the other items on the list. “I don’t know,” she said, “They’re all good ideas.”

  “Mamá doesn’t like piñata cakes,” Isabel’s voice behind her made Leo jump. “She says stuff like that is made for sharing on social media, not for sharing with the people you love. She hates anything trendy.”

  Leo wished she could shoo her sisters away from the kitchen like she shooed her black cat, Señor Gato, with a flick of water from the sink.

  Caroline moved her pen to strike that item out too, but Leo held up her hand. “Just because Mamá doesn’t like them doesn’t mean Tricia wouldn’t.”

  But, a tiny voice in her head reminded her, it might be better to pick something Mamá will like, to impress her and make her think what a great baker her youngest daughter is.

  She, Caroline, and Isabel stared at the list. Leo’s eyes skipped across the remaining items, her brain working as fast as a food processor as she spun them into the beginning of a thought. Slowly, she reached for the tall cone of piloncillo, the dark brown sugar that was used to make Tricia’s favorite treat from the bakery: pig cookies.

  “Isabel,” she said, “could you show Caroline how to make cookie icing? Just the powdered sugar and milk kind. The quicker the better, because we’re going to need a lot of different colors.”

  “Icing is such a hassle,” Marisol groaned from the living room.

  Caroline rolled her eyes so Leo didn’t have to, and smiled. “What are you thinking?”

  “I’m thinking this kitchen needs doors,” Leo grumbled. “Soundproof doors with big locks, and maybe a warding spell to keep away annoying sisters.”

  “Leo?” Mamá poked her head into the kitchen just over an hour later. “It’s getting late, and I’m sure Mr. Campbell doesn’t want to be driving over to pick up Caroline in the middle of the night. What’s the estimate on finishing your snack?

  Leo squeezed a final series of squiggles across her last cookie. She checked Caroline’s tray, which was nearly done and looked neater than Leo’s. Her arm was tired from squeezing the bags of icing, but the result looked even better than she had pictured in her head. “Come see,” she told Mamá. “We made piñata cookies!”

  “Oh.” Mamá joined the two girls at the counter and inspected the twenty-six colorful cookies. “That’s very festive.”

  “They just look like piñatas—they don’t break open or anything,” Leo explained. “We knew you wouldn’t like that.”

  “Well, I’m sure I would like anything you baked,” Mamá said, but she looked especially proud as she leaned over to sniff Leo’s tray. “The cookies, are they . . . ?”

  “Puerquitos!” Leo beamed. “I remembered the recipe perfectly, I’m pretty sure. Tricia loves them, and she loves icing, so we covered them!” The counter was a mess of half-empty icing bags, bright red and yellow and pink and blue. Each pig-shaped cookie sported multicolored lines of icing, looped to mimic the textured paper covering a piñata. “What do you think?”

  The corners of Mamá’s eyes crinkled with her smile. “I think this is wonderfully creative. You girls have both come a long way with your baking.”

  “It was mostly Leo.” Caroline blushed. “She knows all the recipe secrets. I’m just the assistant.”

  Leo’s chest swelled. “But you’re the best at measuring,” she reminded her friend. “And remembering to preheat the oven!”

  “Well,” Mamá said, “I think I’m allowed to be impressed with both of you. I’m sure Tricia will love them. Caroline, do you think you can ask your dad to head this way soon?”

  “Of course,” Caroline pulled out her phone and quickly typed a message. “Thanks again for having me.”

  “Thank you,” Mamá said, patting Caroline’s arm. “You’re always welcome, especially when your snack-club idea has Leo inventing original recipes. That’s the mark of a real baker in training.”

  Leo beamed down at her piñata puerquitos, pride heating her cheeks and her stomach. Leo had never seen Alma and Belén experiment with baking; they had taken more interest in the candle magic that helped them enhance their gift of communicating with the dead. Marisol wouldn’t spend one minute of her free time doing anything related to the family business. Even Isabel saved most of her outside studies for general spellcraft more than inventing recipes.

  In the days since she’d passed her test, she had probably made a billion bolillos, and she was proud of how she had fallen into the rhythm of keeping the trays flowing into and out of the oven and the bread flowing into customers’ hands and out the door. But this praise from Mamá was special. Leo was on her way to becoming a real baker.

  She was still thinking of Mamá’s compliment later that night, long after Caroline had left. Leo packed the cookies into a cardboard bakery box and changed into her pajamas. As she brushed her teeth, an idea popped into her head, so exciting it made her spit out her toothpaste immediately and run to Mamá and Daddy’s roo
m.

  “What’s up, Leonora?” Daddy asked, propping his binder of bakery invoices open on the bedspread and tucking his pencil behind his ear.

  Leo wiped her mouth on the back of her hand. “Can we put my piñata cookies in the recipe book?” she asked, pleading eyes fixed on Mamá’s surprised face.

  “Oh.” Mamá set down her magazine. “Well, I’m sure the cookies are delicious. . . .”

  Leo nodded. She had split one test cookie with Caroline, which still left plenty for the whole class tomorrow.

  “. . . But,” Mamá continued, frowning, “we can’t really put it in the spell book if it doesn’t cast a unique spell.”

  The bubble of excitement in Leo’s chest popped. Of course. The recipe book was for magical recipes only. But her emotions fizzed right back up again as she thought aloud, “Well, I could put a spell on them. Like, a luck spell. I’m great at those!”

  Mamá’s smile was soft. “You are, but that wouldn’t be an original spell, ’jita.”

  “Right.” Leo sighed.

  “Listen, most brujas don’t contribute to the book until they’ve been training for years,” Mamá said. “There’s no rush.”

  “Leo, I’ll have you know that I have never added a spell to the book, or even cast one, and I turned out okay.” Daddy spread his arms and smiled.

  But Leo didn’t feel any better. “Isabel invented a spell already.” She hated being told not to race toward her goals when she could see so clearly that she was barely keeping up.

  “I’ll tell you what,” Mamá said. “During your shift tomorrow, how about we whip up a few batches of your piñata cookies and sell them? Does that sound good to you?”

  Leo’s gloom vanished and her mouth dropped open. Her own invented treat on the bakery shelves? None of her sisters had ever done that before. “That sounds super-duper extra good!” she shouted, bouncing onto her parents’ bed to hug Mamá’s propped-up knees. “Can we really?”

  “Of course we can,” Daddy said, tapping Leo’s ponytail with his pencil. “If those cookies taste as good as they look, then it’s just good business. And I should know, I happen to be running a very successful business this quarter—maybe you’ve heard of it? It’s the best bakery in all of Texas!”

  This time, Leo grinned at her father’s joke.

  “Oh, one other thing, ’jita,” said Mamá. “Paloma’s taking the twins out of town for spring break, so you won’t have your normal lessons. I was thinking I could give you a quick lesson in spice magic next week. I think you’ve earned it. And besides, I’ve learned the hard way that it’s usually more trouble to keep you from trying to learn magic on your own than it is to just teach you myself.”

  Leo’s spirits soared. This was the most successful scheme ever. She let Mamá and Daddy wrap her up in a hug before she practically skipped down the hall to her bedroom. She couldn’t wait to tell Tricia tomorrow that her special birthday treat would soon be the newest seasonal dessert at Amor y Azúcar. She couldn’t wait to tell Caroline that she was moving on to spice magic. Most of all, she couldn’t wait for the day when she was grown up and running the bakery with her sisters, juggling magic and sugar and loving every minute of it.

  She fell into bed and dreamed of round pig piñatas that spilled sweetness from their broken bellies.

  CHAPTER 3

  HOPES AND HERBS

  In just a few days, Leo’s piñata pig cookies became the most popular new item at Amor y Azúcar. They sold so well that, even though Mamá rolled her eyes at all the pictures people kept taking and posting on Twitter and Instagram, she set aside one whole rack in the ovens just to make sure the shelves were stocked. Marisol, on the other hand, jumped at the opportunity to set up an online presence for the bakery, and soon dubbed herself social media manager.

  “I don’t mean to alarm anyone,” Daddy announced at family dinner on Friday, the night before the twins left for their comic convention with Tía Paloma, “but your mamá and I have a special announcement. Your cousin JP is going to spend spring break week here with us while Margarita goes to a conference in Chicago. She’ll be dropping him off tomorrow!”

  “Hmm, we won’t get to see him,” Belén said. Alma nodded sadly. JP was thirteen, the nearest in age to Leo of all her cousins, though he usually stuck close to Alma and Belén at family gatherings. Leo hoped he wouldn’t be too disappointed to leave his friends in Austin and get stuck in Rose Hill without the twins for spring break. Maybe Caroline could help her make a list of fun activities they could do together. She had lived in Houston, after all, so she would know what things cool kids from big cities liked.

  “Huh,” Marisol said casually. “I thought you were going to tell us about how you and Daddy were going to buy a new house.”

  “What?” Mamá looked at Marisol with wide eyes. “How did you—I mean, why do you think that?”

  “I started getting a bunch of Realtor ads on the office computer,” Marisol said. “And the bakery email had spam from one of those real-estate websites. That’s what happens when you search for new houses on the internet. Have you found a place? Are we moving?”

  Leo stared at her sisters in shock. A new house had been Mamá’s dream for so long that Leo had given up on it actually happening. Mamá and Daddy, meanwhile, shared a nervous glance.

  “Wow, the tables have really turned,” Marisol teased. “Are you two hiding things? Because usually that’s my job.”

  “We . . . didn’t want to get your hopes up,” Daddy said. “In case things don’t work out. But yes, we’re hoping to make it happen. Soon.”

  “We were planning to wait until the end of summer to see how we do in the slow season,” Mamá said, “but with business doing so well lately, we think it’s time.”

  Leo clapped her hands. “Will the new house be closer to school?” she asked. She would love to be in walking or biking distance from Caroline and Brent.

  “Can we still share a room?” Alma and Belén spoke in unison.

  “Are you sure we can afford this, even with college and everything?” Isabel frowned.

  “Does this mean you can help me buy my car too?” Marisol asked.

  “Yes; yes; we’ll make it work; and probably not.” Daddy answered the questions in rapid succession. “Sorry, Marisol, but if anyone’s getting a car, it’ll be Isabel, so she can come home from San Antonio next year whenever she needs to.”

  As Marisol grumbled about the unfairness and Mamá talked about all the things they’d been looking for in a new house, Leo held in a secret smile. Daddy said this was all happening because business was good. Business was good because of her cookies—sure, it had only been a few days, but Leo was still happy to take credit for the recent business. Plus tomorrow Mamá was going to teach her spice magic, and then later she would get to show her cousin her town.

  This was going to be the best spring break ever.

  It came as a surprise, then, when Leo woke up the next morning feeling unsettled, with a bad dream hovering at the edge of her memory. The anxious feeling refused to budge, even when Leo rubbed the sleep from her eyes and shook her head. She checked the corners of her bedroom before throwing off the covers. She felt like she was being watched.

  Leo was still dazed when Marisol sleepily rattled the bathroom door. Leo was so surprised that she jumped and dropped her toothbrush in the sink.

  “You’re up early,” Marisol said when Leo let her in. “Excited about your magic lesson?”

  Leo just sighed, rinsed, and left the bathroom to her sister.

  “Oh, good.” Isabel caught hold of Leo’s ponytail in the hallway. “I was about to wake you up. Mamá wants to get an early start so that you have time for your lesson before JP gets here. Do you want me to braid your hair?”

  Leo shook her head and slipped out of Isabel’s reach. Determined to shake her bad morning mood, she pulled on a sunny yellow shirt and headed to the kitchen.

  “Thanks for telling me,” Mamá said, telephone held between her ear an
d her shoulder. “And drive safe. Please make sure the girls spend some time learning from the coven up there. They can take one day away from that convention.” Mamá hung up the phone and smiled when she saw Leo. “Good morning, ’jita! Ready to get going?”

  “Was that Tía Paloma?” Leo asked. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing’s wrong,” Mamá said, waving her hand. “She was just letting me know that they were on the road. And it seems like they’re starting some new construction at Donatello’s, over by the freeway. They passed it on the way out of town.”

  Leo shrugged. She knew the empty building with the fading cursive sign. Why would Tía Paloma think it was worth interrupting her road trip to tell Mamá?

  “They’re not reopening that old pizza place, are they?” Daddy asked, entering the kitchen blowing on a cup of coffee. “The crust was like cardboard. If the town wants pizza so badly, I bet we could cook up a decent one.”

  “Now, now.” Mamá patted Daddy’s shoulder. “No reason to get into a competition with another local business. We’re not trying to run anyone out of a job.”

  “So they’re really reopening?” Marisol asked, walking in and stealing a sip of Daddy’s coffee before he could stop her. “I used to love that place when I was little.”

  “No, someone else bought the building.” Mamá picked up her own coffee mug and took a long sip. “Some store called Honeybees.”

  Leo felt a shiver at the name, and the sense that she was forgetting something important grew stronger. Had there been bees in her dream last night? She couldn’t remember, and the frustration felt like an out-of-reach itch as her family finished breakfast and piled into the car.

  When they reached the bakery, Leo moved automatically to her work station, pulling out the mixing bowl to start the first batch of bolillos, still looking over her shoulder for some unpleasant surprise.

  “Leo?” Mamá put a hand on her shoulder. “What are you doing?”

  “I don’t know,” Leo’s voice whined. She wondered if she was getting sick; that could explain why she felt so terrible.