A Dash of Trouble Read online

  “Cheer up, Leonora.” Daddy poked the corner of Leo’s mouth. “Put on a happy face. It’s a celebration!”

  Stomping away, Leo crashed into the corner of the not-very-sturdy folding table. Mamá gasped as several of the sugarcoated orejas fell to the ground. The ear-shaped pastries were quickly covered in dirt, but Leo didn’t turn around. She tossed the uneaten half of her breakfast taco into a plastic trash can and pushed her way through the crowd.

  The morning had started off cool and bright, but the clear sky offered little shade, and Leo started to feel drops of sweat drip down her face. Summer in Texas hung around like a stray cat, disappearing for a few days at a time only to show up again when you thought it was gone for good. Leo shuffled past the long table of ofrendas, pretending to admire the altars decorated with flower petals, pictures, candles, and food.

  Behind the candles, a hunched woman approached Alma and Belén’s tent. Leo craned her neck and recognized one of the old women who used to gossip with Abuela after mass. Leo’s curiosity rose.

  If no one was going to tell her anything, her only option was to snoop. And she would start with the twins.

  Leo ducked and tugged at her shoelace as if tying it, then ran in a crouch behind the table and across the parking lot until she was safely hidden in the back of the tent. A quick peek made sure that no one had watched her run—Leo didn’t think that anyone but Mamá would stop her from hanging around the tent, but she didn’t want to take any chances, either.

  Oddly, a banner was draped along this side too, even though the back of the tent faced a plain brick wall. The banner on the back had no price, but in addition to promising messages, it also read Welcome—Bienvenidos.

  Strange.

  Leo had missed the days of setup this year, but she had been with Daddy last year when all the tables and booths went up. She knew that under the beige plastic canvas of this tent stood a house-shaped skeleton of metal poles, and she knew that the canvas laced together at each corner. Which meant that if she inspected the nearest corner, it would be easy to find a spot where the lacing was loose, where she could peek inside.

  Leo peeked.

  The visitor was Mrs. Gomez, a short old lady with cropped gray hair and children who had all moved to New York or Chicago or some other big faraway city to be doctors and lawyers. Leo remembered seeing pictures of Mrs. Gomez’s youngest daughter when she had gone with Mamá to bring a special box of bread and cookies over after Mr. Gomez had died from a heart attack two summers ago.

  Leo leaned to get a view beyond the entrance flap. The space glowed brightly from a skeletal standing lamp that Leo recognized from Tía Paloma’s living room. Alma and Belén sat at a little square folding table on one side; next to their table was one of the rolling metal shelves from the bakery, full of pan de muerto. The warm plastic smelled musty, but the inside of the tent made Leo’s nose tingle in a familiar way.

  Mrs. Gomez walked to the table and sat on the stool Belén nodded at. Leo couldn’t see the old woman’s face, but she saw the wrinkled hands tremble as Mrs. Gomez fumbled through her purse for her wallet. Alma and Belén smiled encouragingly from their side of the table, but their smiles were less comforting than usual, decorated as they were with skull paint and flowers.

  Mrs. Gomez handed Alma a folded bill, and Belén struck a match to light the thick white candle in the center of the table. The lamp went dark, just like the lights in the bakery the day before. Leo struggled to adjust her eyes, but Mrs. Gomez leaned forward on her stool in the flickering light, blocking Alma’s face and most of Belén’s body except for the arm that reached to the shelf for a piece of bread.

  Leo grew tired of looking through cracks and only seeing tiny pieces of what happened. She tugged at the laces of the tent until she had made a big enough hole to stick her head all the way inside, trusting the darkness of the corners to keep her hidden.

  Belén put the pan de muerto on the table next to the candle. Belén and Alma shared one of their looks, and after a slight pause, Alma nodded and broke the bread in half, offering one piece to Mrs. Gomez. Belén held her right hand over the flame of the candle and held Alma’s hand with her left. The dark made the shadows of their skeletal face paint look like real holes and hollows where their eyes and noses should have been. Even though most of her body was still outside in the sun, Leo shivered.

  Alma nodded again. Both she and Mrs. Gomez raised their piece of bread to their mouths. They bit, chewed, swallowed. In the space between Leo’s breaths, Alma’s eyes turned bright white like two full moons shining out of their dark pits.

  “Llama.” Belén’s fingers still hovered over the candle flame, which danced wildly as though it were being blown by a strong wind.

  “Vicente.” Mrs. Gomez’s voice was soft. “Vicente Gomez.”

  The flame stopped flickering. The spicy smell grew strong. Alma began to shake.

  Belén spoke again, but it wasn’t her voice that came out. It was a man’s voice, and it came out of Belén’s throat. “¿Hortensia? ¿Cómo estás, mi amor?”

  Mrs. Gomez’s shoulders bounced as she spoke in soft, laughing Spanish, and Belén answered with the deep voice. Alma didn’t move, didn’t speak, just sat with her eyes shining and her body trembling, looking like a jammed machine.

  This was magic. Her sisters were doing magic.

  Magia.

  Even though she had heard the word yesterday, it sounded out of place in Leo’s head. She tested it like a loose tooth: the tent was for practicing magic. The bakery was magic. Leo was seeing—and hearing, and smelling—magic right now.

  Leo stared at the back of Mrs. Gomez’s pale-blue blazer for a few more seconds, waiting for her thoughts to make any kind of sense. When that didn’t work, she pulled her head out of the tent, turned around, and ran as quickly and quietly as she could toward the bakery.

  CHAPTER 6

  RECIPE BOOKS

  Leo ran straight past Mamá and Daddy at their booth and barged through the line of people inside the bakery. Isabel and Tía Paloma bustled behind the front counter, taking orders and swiping credit cards and complimenting guests on their costumes, switching easily between English and Spanish. Marisol leaned in a corner behind the display case, tapping at her phone.

  “What’s up, cucaracha? Why aren’t you playing with your friends?”

  Leo stomped past her sister, barely hearing the question over her own racing heart.

  “Mamá said I could help,” Leo lied to Isabel. “If you’re busy here, I can help take trays out of the oven.”

  “Leo.” Isabel tried to frown without dropping her salesperson smile.

  “I want to help,” Leo repeated with a stubborn frown.

  Isabel kept smiling. “It’s nice of you, Leo, but you don’t need to worry about business. You should be outside having fun.”

  “Fine.” Leo puffed out her chest. “Then I guess I’ll just go see if Alma and Belén need anything.”

  Just as she’d hoped, Isabel and Tía Paloma stopped, frozen. “Don’t do that,” Tía Paloma blurted, at the same time as Isabel said, “You can take trays out if you want.”

  Leo nodded and stomped past her aunt and sister, ignoring the guilty twinge in her stomach. She marched through the swinging doors into the back of the bakery, and nobody stopped her. Perfect.

  Isabel and Tía Paloma had set up row after row of trays ready for baking in a line across the counter, and the timer on the oven showed that Leo had ten more minutes before this batch of cookies was done. The preparation would make it simple for Isabel or Tía Paloma to switch trays in and out of the oven—they really didn’t need Leo’s help. They never did.

  Leo spun in a slow circle, inspecting the red-brown tile floor, the sunny yellow walls, and even the bumpy white ceiling for anything suspicious, anything that would explain what she had seen at the bakery yesterday or in the tent just now. She checked under the counters and inside all the drawers. She ran her hand over every inch of the big wooden table, lookin
g for carvings or secret compartments. Her inspection turned up nothing but a few wads of gum that someone (Marisol) had stuck under various surfaces.

  She tried the walk-in next. It was too cold to spend much time in the refrigerated pantry, and Leo was always afraid of the heavy metal door slamming on her and trapping her inside, but she poked her head into the cold room and looked around for anything suspicious. Unless magic users needed egg cartons and jugs of milk, she saw nothing.

  What sorts of things would they need? What kind of magic was going on in that tent? Leo recalled Alma’s white eyes, Belén’s croaking voice. She had seen part of a movie about a possessed girl once, before Mamá caught her and sent her off to bed. Were Alma and Belén possessed?

  Leo let the walk-in door creak shut and faced the kitchen again. This time she turned to the big cabinets on either side of the room. She started with the left side, the one she had hidden in and the ones that held the most common kitchen supplies. It didn’t take her long to inspect the bags of flour, spatulas and whisks and spoons, waxed paper, and jars of fruit filling.

  The cabinets on the right side of the room were used less frequently, but when Leo pulled open the door of the first cabinet, the contents of its shelves were disappointingly ordinary, though more cluttered than the other cabinets. Leo saw some of the less-common baking supplies, like cloves for the Christmas specials, and macadamia nuts. One shelf held extra office supplies and one whole cabinet carried all the holiday decorations, minus the ones that were up around the bakery now. Leo’s heart pounded when she found a bag of chocolate coins next to a bundle of dried plants she didn’t recognize and a collection of half-burned candles in all shapes and sizes, but those hardly counted as proof.

  What was she looking for, anyway? She’d spent hours watching Mamá and Tía Paloma in the bakery mixing dough, shaping pastries, and arguing about prices and ways to attract new customers. She had chased Alma and Belén around every counter and corner and had found all the best places to hide when Marisol needed someone to fight with. If there were any dark passageways to underground caves or secret cauldrons full of bubbling potions, Leo would know about them already.

  But she had seen the candles, the knife, and the dough.

  Even now, staring at the burned candles and tinfoil coins, she felt it like the way you can feel a thunderstorm before it happens. Her family was keeping secrets, big ones, and there had to be proof of it somewhere.

  There was one place where Leo wasn’t allowed to run, explore, or poke around: the office. Past the walk-in, the door to the bakery office was cracked open, an invitation Leo couldn’t resist. The closetlike space was crowded with two desks, two mismatched filing cabinets, and an ancient computer that Mamá never stopped complaining about. Shelves high out of Leo’s reach held binders that were labeled by year and that strained to contain too many papers and receipts. Half hidden behind the door stood the shelf of cookbooks, magazines, and index cards with recipes for everything the bakery had ever made or ever imagined making.

  Leo checked all the drawers, flipped through the piles of stacked paper, and even pushed the rolling chairs aside to examine the space under each desk. She found a lot of boring numbers on a lot of boring papers, and she found pens, pencils, paper clips, and rubber bands. Not a single thing caught her eye until she knelt to read the titles of the cookbooks on the bottom shelf.

  One book leaned diagonally to fit the shelf, tall and thick with a cover of faded red leather. As soon as she saw it peeking out of its dark corner, Leo had to touch it. The spine was cracked and blank, and there was no title on the front cover, but Leo carefully pulled the book into her lap and opened to the first dusty page, where she read in what looked like handwritten cursive:

  Recetas de amor, azúcar, y magia.

  Recipes. Leo made what her teacher would call an educated guess. Recipes of Love, Sugar, and Magic. The back of her neck prickled.

  Leo pushed the office door closed with her back so that she was better hidden from the rest of the kitchen. The bakery was busy, and the timer on the ovens hadn’t gone off yet. The prickling spread down to her fingers and toes. This was what she had been looking for. She turned the page.

  The first recipe in the book included an inky black-and-white drawing of round rolls topped with doughy Xs to indicate crossed bones, the same rolls that Alma and Belén were selling in their tent.

  PAN DE MUERTO MENSAJERO

  PARA HABLAR CON LOS ANTEPASADOS

  INGREDIENTES

  ¼ taza de azúcar

  1 cucharadita de levadura

  ½ cucharadita de sal

  2 cucharaditas de semillas de anís

  1 cucharadita de canela

  2 cucharaditas de hueso en polvo

  3 tazas harina

  ¼ taza de leche

  ¼ taza de mantequilla

  ¼ taza de agua

  2 huevos

  1 cucharadita de ralladura de naranja

  2 gotas de tinta

  PREPARACIÓN

  Combina los ingredientes secos en un tazón, menos 1½ tazas de harina. Calienta la leche, la mantequilla, y el agua en una cacerola, y agrega las gotas de tinta cuando la mezcla está hirviendo. Pon la mezcla de leche en el tazón, y agrega los huevos. Mezcla con ½ taza de harina, y agrega más harina lentamente mientras recitas los nombres de tus seres queridos muertos, hasta que la masa se ponga suave y un poco pegajosa.

  Amasa por diez minutos. Debe tener una consistencia suave y elástica. Déjala reposar en un tazón cubierto por dos horas. Haz formas de huesos con la masa, para poner encima del pan. Hornea durante de 45 minutos.

  “Para hablar con los antepasados,” Leo read aloud. To talk with . . . someone. The recipe called mostly for the things she expected: flour, milk, butter, water, sugar, eggs, and salt, and she knew that bread of the dead usually included anise and cinnamon and orange flavoring, but Leo stared for a long time at the word “hueso,” which she thought meant bone.

  The next page had the title Tartas de la verdad—para obtener respuestas verdaderas. The picture showed a woman standing over another woman in a chair, leaning over her and pointing a finger as if she was demanding la verdad, the truth.

  Pastel para pelo showed tufts of hair sprouting from a bald head, while Azúcar de la amistad showed two women hugging over cups of tea. Leo turned the page and found Pan de la suerte, with instructions that included the words “luna,” “chocolate,” and “oro.” The words stood under a picture of a white rooster, like the statue Mamá had on her bedside table that was supposed to bring good luck.

  Leo leaned closer to the page, close enough to smell the dusty paper and the hint of that now-familiar spicy scent. It was the smell of her family and their secrets. The smell of magic.

  “Leo? Where did you go? Didn’t you hear the timer beeping? Leo?”

  Leo wanted to move, to shove the book back onto the shelf or cover it with one of the other cookbooks, but she couldn’t act fast enough. Isabel was already pushing open the office door. She found Leo sitting with the book in her lap, the drawers of the filing cabinets and desks still wide open.

  Leo looked at Isabel. Isabel looked at Leo. Although she felt frozen in place, Leo’s mind flashed through several thoughts:

  Mamá would be furious if she found out. Which meant that . . .

  Mamá couldn’t find out. And so . . .

  Leo needed Isabel on her side.

  Leo wasn’t sure if she was faking or not, but it was easy to call tears to her eyes. “I’m sorry!” she cried out before Isabel could do anything but stare, mouth open, at the recipe book. “I didn’t mean to sneak around, but no one tells me anything. Pleeeease, Isabel, don’t tell Mamá. I just want to know what’s going on.”

  “Leo.” Isabel sighed, her eyes turning as soft as melted chocolate chips. “Sweetie, put that away. You don’t need to worry about it right now.”

  “You have to tell me.” Leo didn’t bother to keep the whine out of her voice. “It’s not fair!”
/>   “I know, but if you just wait a couple of years . . .”

  Leo sniffled, trying to keep her tears from spilling over onto her face paint.

  “Isabel?” Marisol’s voice droned from the front. “Where’d you go?”

  Isabel threw up her hands, pursed her mouth, and spun around. Her heels click-clacked as she walked to the front of the bakery. “I have a special customer on the phone. Will you be okay here for a few minutes?”

  “I didn’t hear the phone—” Marisol started; then her voice cut off. Isabel must be giving her best Mamá glare. “Sure, whatever. We can manage.”

  “Thank you.”

  Isabel click-clacked back to the office, looked around, shut the door, and handed Leo half of a large sugar cookie. She started closing drawers and straightening the desks.

  “Okay, little Leo, I’m not promising anything, but if you want me to keep your secret, you have to tell me what you know so far.”

  CHAPTER 7

  FLOUR SNOWFLAKES

  Leo took a huge bite of the cookie and ticked the points off on her fingers as she chewed. “The bakery is magic,” she said, trying to look sure and determined and not let her voice drift up into a question. “Alma and Belén and Marisol and you and”—she paused for another bite of cookie—“and Mamá and Tía Paloma are all magic. The twins are doing something scary in the messages tent. That book had magic recipes for luck and growing hair.” Leo thought about the past few days to see if she was missing anything. “Oh, and magic smells kind of like cinnamon, or cloves, but better and more spicy.”

  Isabel sat down in Mamá’s rolling chair. She rubbed her forehead with her thumbs. “Did you know you’ve been snooping since before you could talk? I used to catch you crawling into the cabinets at home and pulling out all the pots and pans.”

  Leo tried to look very surprised, as though crawling into cabinets was something she had done a long time ago instead of something she had done just yesterday.

  “You were always asking questions, too,” Isabel continued, “and you wanted to do everything we all did. Remember you cried because Mamá wouldn’t let you go to school when Alma and Belén did?”