by Anna Meriano
Señor Gato padded up the bed to stand beside her, tail puffed and ears folded back, protecting her. Leo made a mental note to feed him treats in the morning.
Her grandfather waved his hand, and Leo flinched, thinking he was throwing more sparkly powder at her. He was dressed in the same black robes with sleeves that puffed wide around his hands. “Settle down,” he said, “It’s only a simple illusion spell. You were able to see through it easily enough, so removing it shouldn’t be a problem.”
“But I don’t know how to remove it,” Leo whined. “It’s your spell.”
Abuelo Logroño raised his eyebrows. “You can’t remove an illusion spell? Someone has neglected your education. A young brujo should learn to defend himself.”
“Herself,” Leo corrected. “I’m a bruja.”
“I was speaking of the principle.” Abuelo Logroño waved a hand, sleeve flapping. “But that’s all the more reason for your teachers to make sure you aren’t left vulnerable to attack.”
The lights still winked at the corners of Leo’s eyes, making it hard to focus. “Why would anybody want to attack me?”
“That’s one of the things I wanted to talk to you about, now that you’ve proven your talent.” With another wave of his hand, Abuelo Logroño created a fluffy white cloud that floated over and engulfed Leo’s head. It felt a little like spiderwebs tickling her skin and eyelashes, but when the cloud dispersed, the lights and the restless feeling from the day were gone. Leo breathed a sigh of relief.
“Well?” Abuelo Logroño said. “Aren’t you going to say thank you?”
Leo absolutely was not going to thank someone for fixing a problem he had caused in the first place. She crossed her arms over her chest. “How do you keep appearing in my room?”
A smile crept onto the old man’s face. “That, young Logroño, is the other thing I’m here to tell you about.”
CHAPTER 5
LOGROÑO MAGIC
Abuelo Logroño clapped his hands, and the air around Leo’s bedroom rippled. “That’s better,” he said, speaking in a loud voice instead of a whisper, “A silencing spell will make sure we’re not overheard.”
“How did you . . . ?” Leo began. “You can cast spells, just like that?”
Abuelo Logroño laughed. “I can do a lot more than that, young Logroño, and so can you. You see, you are heir to a very old line of magic.”
“I know,” Leo said. “My great-great-great-great-great-grandmother was the first bruja in our family to open a bakery, and—”
“No, no.” Abuelo Logroño looked like an oversized crow flapping his wings in annoyance. “Not your mother’s family. The Logroño legacy stretches back so much farther, long before our ancestors came across the Atlantic as explorers in a new world.”
Leo frowned. “Ms. Wood—that’s my teacher—said we shouldn’t call it a ‘new world’ when there were already people living on it.”
Her abuelo made the wing-flapping motion again. He sort of looked like he was swatting away her words like flies. “We have been a powerful brujo family for countless generations. Your great-grandmother on your mother’s side was . . . creative, anchoring her magic the way she did. Maybe in a few hundred years, her magical legacy will grow strong enough . . . but it’s such an odd case, and so unstable. Likely it won’t last long enough to find out.”
Leo was feeling a lot better without the illusion spell hanging over her head, but this was still the second night in a row of interrupted sleep, and she wasn’t at all sure she liked the way Abuelo Logroño talked about her family magic, or the way he talked at all—speaking at Leo, instead of listening to her.
“Are you getting to the point?” she grumbled. “Why did you come here? What do you think I can do?”
Abuelo Logroño ruffled the sides of his robe as he stepped toward Leo’s bed. His eyes crinkled with excitement the way Daddy’s did when they’d come out of the dragon movie, or the way Isabel’s did when she researched a new magical theory.
“You carry the powers of the Logroño legacy, the first in two generations. We have powerful brujería, the kind that obscures what we don’t wish to reveal. We can bend what others see, sense, or remember. And most powerful of all, we have the ability to touch the shadows between worlds.”
Leo didn’t understand every word in that speech, but the last part at least sounded familiar. “Are you talking about the veil?” she asked. “I already learned how to do that in January. I had to help pull a bunch of spirits out of the living world and back into el Otro Lado.” Leo didn’t quite trust her visitor enough to tell him about Caroline’s magic, so she didn’t. “Ever since then, I can see the veil sometimes, and even touch it. Well, my fingers go through.”
As she spoke, Abuelo Logroño’s smile widened and the creases around his eyes deepened. Leo felt that same warm pride color her cheeks, and soon her smile matched his.
Mamá and Tía Paloma had made Leo sit down and talk with them after she had jumped through the veil to save the spirits. They said she should be careful with unknown magic, and that she had acted rashly. Because they were so worried about the “potential consequences” of Leo interacting with the veil, she hadn’t exactly gotten around to telling them how she could sometimes see and reach for it. But now, with her abuelo smiling at her, she found she almost felt excited to share the secret.
“Amazing,” Abuelo Logroño said. “Absolutely improbable. Such great power, with no training at all. You must have a natural ability stronger than we’ve seen in a hundred years.”
“I have been training,” Leo reminded him, but it was hard to stay annoyed in the face of such glowing compliments. “Do you really think I have great power?”
“I do. And I was talking about real training, in your Logroño powers.” Abuelo Logroño clapped his hands together, making Señor Gato startle and jump off the bed, flicking his tail at Leo as he went. “That settles it,” the old brujo said. “You must start training with me immediately.”
“What?” Leo said.
“You’re already quite far behind, and raw power can’t make up for that. But I hope you won’t give up. Logroños don’t shrink from a task just because it’s challenging.”
This conversation felt like a mixer turned on too fast, with puffs of flour flying in every direction. “Of course I won’t give up,” she said. “But—”
Abuelo Logroño nodded before she could go on. “Excellent. I’m counting on you to keep that promise.”
Leo wasn’t sure she had made any promise. “I . . . I need some time to think about all this,” she said. “I mean, I’m already in the middle of magic training.”
“Think about it?” Abuelo Logroño ran his hand through his gray hair, looking so much like Daddy for a second that Leo felt guilty disappointing him. “Young Logroño, there are forces at work here you can’t begin to understand.” He sat down on the edge of the bed, collapsing as if a weight had fallen on him. “The old traditions are weakening, dying. Not a single one of my children carries my power. Everywhere, brujos who fight the good fight are becoming less common—and less powerful.”
Despite her misgivings, Leo felt bad for the sad old man. “Fight?” she asked. “What fight?”
“The fight against supernatural beings!” Abuelo Logroño practically shouted. “Surely you know that humanity is not the only intelligent and magical species to share space on this earth.”
Leo shrugged her shoulders up to her ears. She knew about ghosts and spirits, but she didn’t think they counted as not human. A flash of the movie she’d seen earlier flickered in her brain. “Like dragons?”
“Dragons?” He scoffed. “Those glorified grass snakes are the least of our worries. Animal control is for lesser brujos, or any nonmagical youth with a big enough stick.”
Leo racked her brains for any mention of dangerous magical creatures. Of course she’d heard legends of duendes, Bloody Mary, el chupacabras—scary stories Marisol told to keep her up at night. But Mamá and Tía Paloma had
never mentioned any of those in her magic lessons. Abuela had talked about La Llorona once, but she was just a ghost who’d had the bad luck of getting stuck with unfinished business on the wrong side of the veil.
Leo remembered that when she’d needed to help trapped spirits cross the veil in January, they almost hadn’t made it. Spells to cross between worlds didn’t work without a guide, and guides were dangerous nonhuman creatures. Tía Paloma had forbidden Caroline and Isabel to mess with any of the spells that told them how to summon those guides, even though they risked keeping the spirits trapped and suffering. Luckily, Leo had been able to act as a guide herself using her birth-order magic.
“Is it like . . .” Leo didn’t know the name of the creatures Tía Paloma was so afraid of. “Like the guides that you can summon to cross through the veil?”
Abuelo Logroño nodded. “Evil specters,” he said. “Creatures that never knew life. Very tricky to control if you do summon them, but I can teach you how. And they’re not the only ones. Sirens, and bloodsuckers, and shape-shifters of all kinds. Goblins and elves and a million more species of hidden parasites. The world needs your power, and you need me to train you for the things you’ll face. You were impressed by my spell casting, but you, mija, will be able to do more than cast simple spells. I believe you have the capacity to master the most difficult of the Logroño powers—to become a saltasombras, like me.”
“Salta . . . sombras?” Leo broke the Spanish word apart to try to understand it. “Jump and shadow?”
Abuelo Logroño stood up, his dark robes swirling around him. “A saltasombras. He who jumps through shadows—though, taking a few grammatical liberties, ‘shadow hopper’ might be a better translation.”
SHE who jumps through shadows, Leo thought stubbornly.
“The shadow between worlds, what you call the veil? We have the power to move through it at will. You can hide yourself and your movements. Or at least, you might someday. If you train with me.” He smoothed down his hair, which he had ruffled in his enthusiasm. “Think about it, young Logroño. When you’re ready to begin, call me, just as you did tonight.”
“My name is Leo—”
In a shimmer of darkness, Abuelo Logroño was gone.
Leo pulled the covers up to her chin and stared for a long time at the shadows into which her grandfather had melted.
CHAPTER 6
THE TRUTH
Leo watched the wind shake the branches outside her window, the shadows of the leaves shifting across her desk in the early-morning light. Everything about the magical visitor replayed in her head, as confusing and thrilling and annoying as it had been when it happened. All night she had drifted between restless worry and restless excitement, her dream self hopscotching through dark puddles, splashing Mamá’s and Tía Paloma’s white aprons as they followed her.
Abuelo Logroño promised powerful magic, but Leo didn’t like the way he talked about her mother’s family.
Sleep had disappeared for good this time, so Leo sat up. It was too early even for Mamá to be awake, but her alarm would go off soon now. Leo wasn’t scheduled to open the bakery today, but with Tía Paloma and the twins gone, Mamá probably wouldn’t turn away an extra pair of hands. Leo kicked off her covers and stood, checking all four shadowy corners of her room before moving to her closet to pick out shorts and a T-shirt for the day.
She brushed her hair and teeth in the dark, turning the bathroom sink on to just a soft drip. The house was never this still, and it made Leo shiver. She snuck down the hallway, past Alma and Belén’s room where JP softly snored, past Señor Gato, who eyed her suspiciously before returning to grooming himself. In the kitchen she checked the clock again . . . 4:05. Just under half an hour until Mamá would rise.
The streetlamp shining through the blinds made streaks of light and shadow on the counter. Leo waved her hands through the pattern, watching them change colors. If she went fast enough, the rippling effect made her fingers look like they were shimmering. Or maybe . . . Leo stopped moving to check whether her eyes were playing tricks on her. The shadows didn’t look unusual, but when she dipped her fingers in, she thought she saw a shimmering ripple.
Someone who jumps through shadows, who can appear and disappear in an instant . . . a saltasombras. Leo set two fingers on the countertop to make her hand into a person, standing on two finger legs, and hopped them into a line of shadow.
She let out a squeak when the tips of both fingers vanished into thin air.
When she had managed to do that before, she had thought she was reaching into el Otro Lado, stepping through a gate like the one she had used to take the spirits home. She wasn’t even sure she wanted to practice doing that. But Abuelo Logroño had said that one day she might be able to hide in shadow.
She did have the power her abuelo described. With the right training, could her whole body jump in and out of shadows that easily?
If she did that, could she still be a bruja cocinera like her mother, aunt, and sisters? Or would she have to leave her bakery training behind?
Leo’s fingers came back into sight slowly, tingling at the edges like they had fallen asleep. She didn’t know what to think or feel, so she stood up and wandered to the refrigerator. There was plenty of milk and a whole carton of eggs, but the cereal boxes above the fridge were all down to the very last crumbs except for Daddy’s fiber crunch, and Leo still didn’t know how to cook anything on the stove. But she knew how to use the oven.
Leo didn’t know what she should do, how she wanted to answer Abuelo Logroño’s offer, or why she had this ability to disappear into the shadows, but she was still a bakery bruja in training, and she knew how to keep herself busy in a kitchen.
“Leo, what’s all this?” Mamá came into the room just as Leo popped the biscuits into the oven.
“I couldn’t sleep,” Leo explained. “I thought you might like to eat breakfast before work.”
“But that’s . . .” Mamá watched Leo rinse mixing bowls and measuring cups in the sink. “Oh, ’jita,” she sighed.
Leo stiffened. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, nothing,” Mamá helped Leo wipe down the counter and hugged her around one shoulder. Leo thought she heard her sniff. “It’s just that one minute I’m watching to make sure you don’t crawl too close to the hot oven, and the next minute you’re old enough to use it to bake surprise breakfast biscuits. . . .”
“Mamá,” she whined, shrugging out of the hug, “I’ve been using the oven for months.”
“I know.” Mamá sat down at the kitchen table, smiling at Leo with suspiciously watery eyes. “I forget sometimes how much you’ve grown since last November, that’s all.”
Last November Leo hadn’t known as much about baking, and she hadn’t known anything at all about magic. She had been sneaky about what she learned, keeping secrets from her family and trying to learn magic without letting them find out.
She had grown since then.
“Mamá, I need to tell you something.”
Mamá raised her eyebrows. “Oh no. These aren’t bribery biscuits are they? What did you do?”
“No, it’s not that.” Leo said quickly. “I had a . . . um . . . visitor. In the middle of the night. It was . . . Abuelo Logroño.”
Mamá’s teasing smile disappeared, and she straightened in her chair. She stayed still and quiet long enough that Leo almost repeated herself, but she was afraid of making Mamá angrier.
“Visited from el Otro Lado, you mean?” Mamá finally asked. “He’s crossed over to the other side of the veil?” If she was sad about the idea that Abuelo Logroño might have passed on, she didn’t show it; her tone was flat and serious.
Leo shook her head. “Alive. He wanted to talk about my magic.”
Mamá’s hand slammed against the kitchen table, making Leo jump.
“That old vulture,” she muttered. “I told Paloma that a blood curse would last longer, but she was so sure he’d lose interest. Luis!” Mamá sprang to her feet, wrap
ping her bathrobe more tightly around her before pulling Leo against her side and shepherding her out of the kitchen and down the hall. “Luis! Wake up!”
Isabel poked her head out of the bathroom, a toothbrush hanging out of her half-open mouth. An annoyed grumble floating out of the older girls’ bedroom meant that Marisol was also awake.
“Luis!” Mamá pulled Leo into her and Daddy’s bedroom and slammed the door behind her. Daddy sat on the edge of the bed, reading one of Alma and Belén’s comics he had promised to finish before they got back from the convention.
“Elena?” he asked, voice still a little deep with sleepiness. “Leo? Is everything okay?”
Mamá took one deep breath—the kind she always tried to teach Marisol to take before saying something she might regret. “Álvaro came into Leo’s room last night,” she said, her voice quiet and sharp. “Apparently he had something to say about magic.”
Daddy’s face scrunched like he was smelling a rotten egg, or watching the news. He slowly closed the comic. “How did he get in?” he asked, eyes on the book as he laid it carefully on the bedside table.
“¿Con fe y esfuerzo?” Mamá sighed. “How should I know? He might have come through the front door, because clearly the wards are failing. I don’t even know if it’s sabotage or normal wear and tear; it’s been years now.”
“Almost fifteen.” Daddy ran a hand through his hair. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “I thought we had put a stop to this nonsense.”
“What nonsense?” Leo was more confused than ever. Nothing about her parents’ reaction was what she’d expected. She had thought the hardest part to explain would have been—
“Wait, you knew?” she asked Daddy. “That Abuelo Logroño had magic?”
Daddy dropped his head and cleared his throat.
“But . . . you lied!” She gulped and tried to quiet her loud voice and louder pulse before she continued. “You said your family didn’t have any . . . you said that—” A terrible idea entered her head. “Are you a brujo too? Were you ever going to tell me?”
