A Mixture of Mischief Read online

  “Come to the office, ’jita. Isabel and Marisol can handle the bolillos today; I want to get you started on spice magic.” Mamá looked down at Leo, her mouth pressing into a worried line. “Unless you’re not up for it? We can always—”

  “No!” Leo didn’t know if magic lessons could sweeten her crab-apple mood, but she knew she would feel a lot worse if she missed her chance to learn. “I’m ready. Let’s go.”

  She followed Mamá into the bakery office, where shelves of cookbooks and binders lined the walls. Mamá’s and Daddy’s desks normally overflowed with papers and receipts and delivery order forms; today, though, Mamá had cleared her desk, and on it she placed two glass jars from the spice rack and an odd-shaped object covered in a silk cloth.

  The mystery on the desk made Leo forget about her bad feeling, just a bit.

  “All right,” Mamá said. “An introduction to spice magic. First: everything you’ve learned with your tía is going to form the basis of what you’re doing today.”

  Leo nodded. She had studied all the magical properties and uses of different herbs and spices for Tía Paloma’s quiz. “Am I going to have to memorize more spices?” she asked. She wouldn’t mind, but it wasn’t quite the excitement she had hoped for to get her mind off her forgotten dream.

  Mamá shook her head. “Spice magic will draw on what you know, but it works a little differently. A last resort, a cheat even, for brujas like us. You’ve seen how our recipes come together: a mix of baking and herbs and candles and magical items and different sources of sugar. The reason we combine so many different processes is because of the specific challenges we have, making spells that are also edible. That is the spice problem.” She opened the lids of the two glass jars, wrapped her hands around the labels, and held them out to Leo. “What’s in these?” she asked.

  Leo leaned forward and sniffed. “Cinnamon,” she said, pointing at the first one. “Good for strengthening spells or protection. Good for winter recipes.” She leaned over the second jar. “Peppermint. Helps with stomach problems, used for general healing spells, and very strong in flavor. Mamá, these are too easy.”

  Mamá laughed. “You’ll be glad they’re so distinctive in a minute. Now, imagine I had a healing recipe for mint chocolate cookies. And I wanted it to be extra strong, and a little protection couldn’t hurt either. Could I add cinnamon to the recipe?”

  Leo hesitated. She knew by Mamá’s teacher tone of voice that she shouldn’t answer yes. “I guess . . . I guess it would taste kind of funky?” she said.

  Mamá nodded. “Right. And let’s say I wanted to add lemongrass to prevent illness as well. And lavender, for relaxation.”

  Leo made a face. “You wouldn’t be making very good cookies anymore.”

  “Exactly.” Mamá set the jars on the desk with a clink. “There’s an extra dimension to our spells, one that requires flexibility and creativity and a strong list of potential substitutes, like how honey can serve some of the same purposes in a spell that cinnamon normally would. But sometimes you just really need the power of one thing with the taste of another. And that is how we discovered spice magic.”

  Mamá pulled the silk cloth off the desk with a flourish, revealing a black stone bowl and a round stone tool. Now that it was uncovered, Leo could smell the magic of the molcajete even before she leaned close to examine it. “Another heirloom?” she guessed.

  Mamá’s smile matched her own. “Your great- grandmother would use this practically every day to make masa, salsa, or ground spices. We can buy all of those things at the store or make them in the food processor now, but the power of the molcajete still helps when we need to call on spice magic. The bowl stores power from everything it touches, and we can use that property to transfer power from one type of spice into another. This also lets us combine the powers of herbs to strengthen one particular property that they share. Let me show you how to get started. . . .”

  Mamá demonstrated a few different motions with the grinding stone, and soon Leo had had gotten the hang of infusing peppermint with the power of cinnamon and vice versa, grinding a tiny pinch of one spice into the bowl to release its power and then adding the second to absorb it.

  Mamá checked the clock. “We have time for at least one more trial before your aunt gets here with JP,” she said. “Do you want to keep trying with these two, or use a new spice?”

  Leo considered a moment, and an idea popped into her head. Good thing Tía Paloma had drilled those lists of spice uses into her head so carefully. “Can I check the cabinet?” she asked.

  “Sure, help yourself. I’ll just check on your sisters, and you can show me what you come up with.”

  Mamá left, and Leo rummaged through the bakery’s supply of spices until she found the jars she wanted. She returned to the molcajete and added a tiny pinch of rosemary. Leo rocked the grinding stone slowly, breathing evenly as it pushed the spice around the bowl. The stone warmed in her hand. When she had finished thirteen clockwise and seven counterclockwise turns, she added a handful of bay leaves, crushing them down to dull green dust.

  “About ready?” Mamá asked.

  Leo tilted the molcajete. “I’m not sure. I think so.”

  Mamá licked her finger and dipped it into the bowl, bringing a smidge of the powder to her tongue. A smile broke over her face as she nodded. “Bay leaf infused with rosemary, and you kept the power of both. Insight and clarity, an interesting combination. Have you been having bad dreams?”

  Leo ducked her head. “I thought I had one last night. I thought I might figure out what it meant.”

  Mamá gestured at the bowl, so Leo dipped her finger in and tasted her infusion. The powder stuck to the roof of her mouth and she coughed, but she felt a jolt, like cold water in her face. The fog in her brain did seem to clear, at least a little bit. But she still couldn’t remember her dream. She looked at Mamá and shook her head.

  “Well, it was good work anyway,” Mamá said. “I think that’s all we have time for right now, but once you get the concept, it’s just a matter of practice, so the next time we have an order that needs any spice magic we can put you in charge. You’ll get the hang of it quickly, I’m sure.”

  Leo beamed. Mamá shook Leo’s dream spice into a tiny plastic bag, then wrapped the molcajete in its silk. “Put the spices back, will you? Better not to leave them out when a member of the nonmagical side of your family is about to arrive.” She flipped the office light on her way out the door.

  In the suddenly dim room, Leo froze in place. Even though light still streamed through the doorway, the darkness paralyzed her, and the eyes she had felt watching her all day seemed to pierce holes in the back of her neck.

  A voice, a memory, echoed in her brain as last night’s dream finally came back to her.

  “Is that any way to treat your abuelo Logroño?”

  CHAPTER 4

  VISITORS

  In a corner of her bedroom that had been empty a minute before, there now stood a shadowy figure. The man stepped closer to the bed, and Leo could see his thick silver hair, parted on one side. The style was familiar, forming the same wavy lines as Daddy’s black hair.

  “Is that any way to treat your abuelo Logroño?” he said.

  Leo’s heart thumped loud in the dark bedroom. “You’re my abuelo? Are you from el Otro Lado?”

  The man laughed. “I see they are trying to teach you something. No, I’m still part of the living world. I came from El Paso to see you.”

  “Oh.” Leo didn’t know anything about El Paso except that it was so far away from every other Texas city, it might as well be in a different state. “Okay. Um, why?”

  The man—her father’s father, apparently—wore a funny dark coat that looked like the graduation gown Isabel had ordered online for her senior photos. “I came all the way here”—Abuelo Logroño paused, raising one eyebrow—“because I know about what you can do.”

  “What I can do?” Leo asked. “Oh, you mean magic? Yeah, we’re a whole
family of brujas. If you stay until morning, Mamá will tell you all about it. It’s only sort of a secret.”

  “I’m not looking for the folk wisdom of a bruja cocinera.” The way he said it, Leo’s family magic sounded almost like an insult. “I came to talk about real power. The power I think you have. You’re very special, Leonora Logroño.”

  There was something silky in his voice, and the way he smiled at Leo gave her the same warm feeling she got when Mamá trusted her with more responsibilities or when Marisol asked her opinion on an outfit. “What do you mean?” she asked, leaning forward. She wanted to know what was special about her. She wanted to earn that warm feeling.

  But Abuelo Logroño shook his head, smile vanishing. “First things first. Let’s see how strong you are. I would hate to find that I’m mistaken.” He reached into a pocket of his long robes and dug out a handful of something pale pink and powdery. Holding his palm up to his mouth, he blew it into the air with a puff of breath.

  “Call me as soon as you can,” he said. “If you remember, then we’ll see.”

  The powder sparkled in the air, bright lights dancing across Leo’s vision. She covered her eyes with her hand, but it didn’t help. And then everything was dark.

  It had been a nightmare, hadn’t it? It couldn’t have been real.

  With her vision ended, Leo stared into the dark corner of the office, biting her lip. Daddy never talked about his father. None of the Logroños did, not even Abuela Logroño.

  But Leo’s other abuela had told her—before her spirit was put to rest by Caroline’s spell in January—that Daddy’s family had hidden magic.

  Had Leo dreamed up a mystery, or had one dropped into her lap?

  “A-Abuelo?” Leo whispered into the dim office air. “Are you . . . here?”

  Her voice faded, and the silence was impenetrable. She stared so hard at the darkness that her eyes started to water.

  The bright tone of a bell made Leo jump like Señor Gato avoiding a puddle. The front doorbell. Leo rolled her eyes at herself, trying to summon a dream in the middle of the day.

  “They’re here!” Mamá’s voice called. “Come say hi, girls.”

  Leo shook her shoulders and scampered out of the office. Trying to summon a dream relative wasn’t going to make her feel any better, but her real-life relatives might.

  “I’m so sorry; we’re closed right now,” Daddy joked, leaving the cash register to hug his sister, Leo’s aunt Rita. “Come back later.”

  “Closed in the middle of the day?” Aunt Rita teased back. “And here I was thinking you’d finally developed some business sense, Luis.”

  Leo lined up behind Isabel and Marisol and Mamá to get her own crushing hug from her aunt, who smelled like flowery soap.

  “My goodness,” Mamá said. “JP, you’ve grown!”

  Mamá always said that whenever she saw one of Leo’s cousins, but when JP entered the bakery after his mom, Leo could see that it was true. She had last seen JP at Christmas, when he had been his normal stocky self, and since then it looked like someone had left him in a warm oven to double in size. He had outgrown Mamá already, but now he seemed to have passed Aunt Rita and was gaining on Daddy, with big hands and feet hinting at even more growth to come. He looked like he belonged on the eighth-grade football team with the cool kids, and for a minute Leo felt especially young and shy.

  But then she saw him catch the front door behind him and shut it extra carefully, and he turned back into just being her cousin who Mamá had once threatened with stories of vengeful duendes who would steal his toes if he kept slamming doors. She smiled.

  “Hey, Leo.” JP hung back from the family bustle, avoiding hugs now that he was officially a teenager. “Happy cousins.”

  “Happy cousins!” Leo was pleased he’d remembered. When she was little, she had gotten so used to seeing her relatives on holidays that she had started thinking that anytime she saw her cousins was a holiday.

  “Jablo Puan,” Daddy delivered the silly nickname with a solemn face as he offered his hand to JP.

  “Uncloo,” JP responded, shaking the hand with equal fake seriousness.

  “I’d better get going,” Aunt Rita said, eyes flicking from her watch to JP to Daddy to her car parked in front of the curb outside. “You have all your diabetes stuff, sweetie? Pump supplies and emergency glucose tablets, and test strips, and—”

  “I’m fine.” JP shrugged his mom’s hand off his shoulder. “I have everything.” He patted the black fanny pack around his waist, where he kept his blood sugar meter, needles, and usually a few handfuls of candy.

  “We’ll take good care of him, Margarita,” Mamá soothed. “And here, for the road.” She held out a paper bag of orejas.

  “Oh, thanks, that’s so nice.” Aunt Rita took the pastries, then winked. “Are they going to help me with my presentation?”

  Mamá winked back. After the episode with the spirits, when Leo’s friends had proved trustworthy enough to handle magical phenomena, Alma, Belén, and Leo had convinced her that they shouldn’t hide their brujería from the rest of Daddy’s family. Mamá agreed, and they had proudly announced their secret at Aunt Rita’s birthday party in February.

  But the Logroños treated it like one of Daddy’s jokes, all the aunts and uncles smiling like they were playing along with a prank. Mamá hadn’t helped at all, nodding and raising her eyebrows and hiding a smile behind her hand. She had known they would never believe them. She liked to keep her half secrets.

  “If you need anything,” Aunt Rita said, “I’m a phone call away.”

  “Go show those academics who deserves tenure,” Daddy said with another hug.

  The bell tinkled goodbye, and Aunt Rita pulled away from the curb, an oreja already stuck between her teeth.

  Isabel took JP’s backpack to the office and his medical supplies to the walk-in fridge, while Mamá made him choose breakfast off the bakery shelves.

  “I’ve seen these online,” JP said, reaching eagerly for a piñata cookie. “I’ve been wanting to try one. Did you really make them up yourself?”

  Leo grinned and puffed out her chest before modestly answering, “Well, they’re mostly normal puerquitos.” And then she added, “But I did invent the icing.”

  “That’s the same as a marranito, right?” JP eyed the cookie, reaching into his pocket to pull out his insulin pump and tapping buttons. “Plus extra sugar, maybe fifteen more grams? Something like that?” He dropped the pump back into his pocket and took a big bite out of his piñata’s head. “Hey, that’s really good! Do they have candy inside?”

  “Oh, they don’t, no.” Leo’s pride wilted slightly. “We thought about it, but—”

  “They’d get all ruined in the oven, right?” JP guessed. “Or can you put them in after you make them?”

  “Well, there’s a way to do it with three layers of cookies with the middle cut out, but Mamá thinks—”

  “So, JP,” Daddy interrupted her explanation, coming up behind them to clap his nephew on the shoulder. “I’m sure you don’t want to be stuck in the bakery all day talking about frosting techniques.”

  Leo frowned. Was she annoying her cousin? Sometimes she forgot that not everyone wanted to discuss the finer points of baking all the time (even if she did), but she didn’t know why Daddy was acting like it was a totally boring topic when he knew as much about frosting techniques as anyone else in the family.

  “Why don’t I take you and Leo to the movies?” Daddy said. “I know Alma and Belén have been excited about the one with the dragons.”

  “DragonBlood: Whispers of Dragons?” JP’s eyes lit up. “Definitely! I’ve been begging my mom to take me all week.”

  “Now that you mention it, she might have told me you wanted to go. . . .”

  Leo’s frown slowly turned into a smile. Daddy didn’t really think the bakery was boring, he was just excited about the plan. Normally she wasn’t allowed to see PG-13 movies, but the twins had shown her the DragonBlood boo
ks and counted down the days to the release. “Yeah, let’s do it!” She was excited to have JP here, and excited for spring break, and as they drove, JP’s contagious excitement made her even more excited for the dragons.

  Still, in the dark of the movie theater, she caught herself checking the corners for hidden figures, and at least once she could have sworn that she saw a pair of laughing eyes peering back at her.

  That night, Leo tossed beneath her orange comforter. Every time she started to doze, sparkling pink lights danced against her eyelids, and it was getting annoying. Sitting up, she rubbed her eyes until they watered.

  Señor Gato was locked in her room for the night so he wouldn’t sneak into Alma and Belén’s room, where JP was sleeping, and start his allergies acting up. Leo wasn’t allergic to cat dander, but she felt like something was irritating her eyelids and tickling the back of her throat.

  “Is this your fault?” Leo asked the black cat, whose bright green eyes blinked at her from the foot of her bed. Then she glanced at the corner of the room. “Or is it . . . something else?” She had spent most of the day convincing herself that the dream hadn’t been real, but the darkness made it all seem suddenly possible. “Is . . . is somebody there?”

  Señor Gato turned his stare on the corner. The hair on Leo’s arms prickled up in goose bumps and something like a voice in her head whispered, “Not good enough.”

  Leo’s breath caught. “Abuelo,” she said, as clearly as she could in a whisper. “Abuelo Logroño.”

  Because she was watching for it, this time she noticed the tiny shimmer in the air as Abuelo Logroño stepped out of nothing and into her bedroom.

  “Well done, young Logroño,” he said softly. “Very well done.”

  Instead of feeling proud, or relieved that she hadn’t been so out of sorts over nothing more than a dream, Leo felt mad. She yanked the chain to turn on her bedside table lamp, making Abuelo Logroño wince at the sudden brightness.

  “What did you do to me?” she demanded. “It won’t let me sleep.”