by Anna Meriano
Belinda O’Rourke cared about family traditions—did that mean she could ally with someone like Abuelo Logroño? But, Leo thought, Mamá would probably agree about the importance of honoring your roots. In fact, it sounded like Mrs. O’Rourke wasn’t as much of a big-city snob as Mamá thought. Or was all the love for Rose Hill just a lie she was telling for the interview?
Rose Hill Chronicle: There’s a food component to your café as well. Can you tell the town what they can expect from that side of the business?
Belinda O’Rourke: I think they can expect to see familiar favorites with an updated twist. I didn’t want to serve the same things your grandmother would eat—I want to bring all my life experiences together to create a real fusion of flavors and culinary traditions from the places I’ve seen in my travels. We’re mixing up something very special for y’all here.
“Um, is everything okay?” JP interrupted Leo’s researching, startling her.
“What? Yes, why?”
“I don’t know, you looked really annoyed,” JP said, holding out his hand for his phone.
Leo quickly closed the interview. “Oh, yeah, no. I just . . . couldn’t find the opening time. But Caroline will probably know it.” She passed the phone back to her cousin, forcing a smile.
Never mind what she’d thought a moment ago. Mamá was right about Belinda O’Rourke. She was nothing but a snob who cared about Rose Hill only enough to want to change it to be more like somewhere else. She could definitely be Abuelo Logroño’s accomplice. They both even liked to insult other people’s grandmas!
Riding to the bakery with Daddy, Leo kept chewing on the words from the interview. Something else was bothering her about the cheery way Mrs. O’Rourke ended her answer. But it wasn’t until she stepped inside the bakery and smelled the fresh bolillos coming out of the oven that it occurred to her.
We’re mixing up something very special.
Of course. Mrs. O’Rourke had every reason to steal Amor y Azúcar’s mixing bowl. Not only would it help Abuelo’s plot to hurt the bakery, but it would also give a boost of stolen magic to Honeybees’ baking.
“Still no luck with the bowl,” Isabel told Daddy in a hushed voice, “But even so, I think these bolillos are looking okay.”
Leo eyed the big plastic bin of bolillos. They did look like they usually did, but there was something a little less inviting about the colors and shapes of this batch—like Leo had baked them instead of Mamá. She leaned over and sniffed. Not bad, but not quite perfect.
She would just have to get the mixing bowl back as soon as possible. And now she knew where to look.
In an effort to be more welcoming to JP, Leo had decided to give him a guided tour of the kitchen. He thought the walk-in fridge was super cool, and was fascinated watching Mamá making conchas.
“So you make a whole other dough to put on top of the first dough? Does that mean a concha is secretly a sandwich?”
Leo decided not to tell him about ojos de buey.
Marisol generously offered to let JP help with her job of taking cooled pastries out to the shelves, and Isabel showed him how she piped frosting onto the border of a tres leches cake. Mamá even let him stir one of her batters, just like Leo used to do when she was tiny.
“How’s it going?” Daddy asked JP when he emerged from the office to open the store for the morning. “The girls aren’t overwhelming you with all the kitchen talk, are they?”
“Daddy.” Marisol rolled her eyes. “You’re not going to pretend to be all macho just because JP is here, are you?”
“Yeah, that was sort of sexist,” Isabel said.
“I like cooking,” JP said. “And I want to learn more about baking; it seems really cool, even though it’s hard. And you didn’t think I was overwhelmed by kitchen talk when we made quesadillas.”
Daddy shook his head fast back and forth like Señor Gato when he got water on his whiskers. “You’re right! Sorry, everyone. I thought Rita and Elena had trained all the gender stereotyping out of me, but I guess there’s always more to chip away at.”
“Keep up your guard, friend of dragons,” JP said, making Daddy laugh. He patted Leo’s baseball cap, and just like that, a feeling of calm replaced the gnawing hurt that had been lodged in Leo’s chest. It almost felt like Isabel’s power of influence changing Leo’s emotions, but the only magic her sisters had used was the magic of speaking up when something didn’t sound right to them. It was a power Leo was eager to learn.
A few minutes later, Isabel was supervising Daddy and JP’s cookie-cutter contest, making sure that in their race to finish the most puerquitos they didn’t roll the dough unevenly or cut off any tiny pig legs. Leo jumped up from her post at the register when Caroline and Brent burst into the bakery, bringing the warmth of the spring morning in with them.
“How’s business?” Caroline asked when Daddy came out to say hello. “Did Leo give you my candle?”
Daddy tapped the burning green candle in the tall glass on the counter. “Not much to report since yesterday, but we’re confident that everything will go in our favor.”
“Oh, good,” Brent said. “Does that mean my breakfast can still be on the house?”
Once they each had a concha in hand, Leo and JP led their friends out to sit on the curb so nobody would spy on them and they wouldn’t bother the customers. “What’s the plan for today?” JP asked.
“Well . . .” Caroline looked at Leo, who looked back at Caroline blankly. How were they going to ditch the boys long enough for Leo to explain her new power and plan a top-secret investigation mission?
“We could go to Caroline’s house,” Brent said. “It’s not too far, and she has a trampoline. Plus I’m next door so we can play Mario Kart at my house.”
“Sounds good.” JP smiled. “You’re coming this time, right, Leo?”
“Yes . . . but why don’t you and Brent go ahead of us? I have to show Caroline . . . something. We’ll catch up! Soon!”
Both Brent and JP fixed their eyes on her with matching suspicious expressions.
“What do you want to show Caroline but not us?” Brent asked.
“Brent.” Caroline put her hand on his elbow. “It’s not a big deal. It’s just a . . . special thing that Leo only wants to talk to me about.”
Brent raised an eyebrow in confusion for a moment, then seemed to realize something. “Okay!” he squeaked in a terrible attempt to sound casual. “Catch y’all later!”
“Wait—is that all?” JP said. He unzipped a side pocket of his fanny pack and pulled out a square of wrinkly pink plastic wrapping. “I can help with that.”
“JP,” Leo groaned. “I do not need a pad.”
Her cousin shrugged and returned the menstrual pad to his pouch. “My friends from school sometimes need them, so I started carrying one, for emergencies. What else are you being so secretive about then?”
“Not menstruation.” Caroline’s face was red again, but she shot Leo a nod before she continued. “It’s actually a . . . present. That we were planning for a friend. That we have to do this week before he, uh, I mean they, leave.”
Leo could see what Caroline was trying to do, and played along. “Shh!” She giggled, elbowing Caroline. “You’ll ruin it!”
“Okay, um, sure,” Brent said. He wasn’t quite as good at catching on to Caroline’s schemes, but he knew enough to support them. “JP, let’s . . . go play video games. They’re being weird anyway.”
JP looked at them all awkwardly, then turned to follow Brent.
“See you in a little bit!” Leo called after them. Once they were a block away, Leo and Caroline looked at each other and burst into relieved laughter.
“I guess now we have to make JP a present,” Leo said.
Caroline giggled, “Oh, darn, I have no choice.”
“Ugh, don’t be weird about it.” Leo sighed. “I have enough terrible things happening already.”
“Okay, okay. So what were you going to tell me?”
“
I think it might be easier if I just show you,” Leo said dramatically, watching the shadows of leaves on the sidewalk. She reached for the feeling of slipping into them, wrapping herself in the veil between worlds that Caroline had first showed her with her spell months ago. She closed her eyes and let out a deep breath, just like she’d practiced this morning.
“Uh . . . is the idea to just sit here doing nothing?” Caroline said.
Leo’s eyes shot open, and she frowned. She was still visible. The sun was so warm and the day so lovely, and the excitement of showing off her power made her stomach light and bubbly instead of heavy. She tried again, scrunching her eyes closed and clenching her fists, but the feeling she had so easily conjured this morning was nowhere to be found, and Caroline shifted on the curb next to her, probably confused and maybe even bored and annoyed.
Leo tried to feel sad that she was letting her friend down—sadness seemed to be the missing ingredient she needed to turn invisible—but it was like trying to tickle yourself; her brain just couldn’t fall for its own trick.
“So,” Caroline said finally. “Is this supposed to be a magic thing? Do you want me to help?”
“No, it’s—I mean yes, but I shouldn’t need any help,” Leo said, her voice dangerously close to a whine. “I was trying to show you my birth-order power, except I . . . I guess I can’t do it on command.” She crossed her arms and huffed, feeling childish and powerless. Usually when someone told her she couldn’t do something, she would try even harder to do it. But she wasn’t sure what to do when the person limiting her was herself.
“Your birth-order power? What is it?”
“Invisibility,” Leo replied. “It kind of comes and goes, but this morning I was—”
“Wait, invisibility?” Caroline’s ear-to-ear grin didn’t match Leo’s mood. “That’s so cool! How long have you known? Is it fun? Can you still touch things when you’ve disappeared? Have you spied on anyone yet?”
Despite her frustration, Leo smiled as she caught some of Caroline’s contagious excitement. “It wasn’t that fun,” she said, “because I didn’t know how it happened at first. But yeah, I guess I did do a little spying.”
“No way! On who?”
“Um.” Leo squirmed a bit. “You and Brent and JP, at the library. Sorry.”
“That’s. So. Cool!” Caroline’s eyes were wide. “I mean, it would be great if you could promise not to spy on me without permission anymore? That’s a little bit creepy. But it’s still amazing.”
“I promise,” Leo said with a laugh. “It was an accident anyway. I mostly just saw you playing Catan.”
“Even worse,” Caroline said, face serious. “Now you’ll know all my secret strategies.”
“I turn invisible; I don’t read minds.” Leo laughed again. “Your secrets are safe unless you write them on your palm and don’t know that I’m behind you.”
Caroline laughed too. “So cool.” The two girls sat in silence for a moment. “So why can’t you control it?”
“I don’t know!” Leo groaned. “It’s only worked so far when I’m sad, which is why I’m having so much trouble. I mean, nobody else’s birth-order magic depends on their feel—” Leo’s mouth dropped open midsentence. “Oh. Except . . .”
Caroline nodded in understanding. “I guess we’re going to have to talk to Isabel.”
CHAPTER 13
UNEXPECTED ALLY
“Please don’t tell Mamá yet,” Leo begged her oldest sister. “I just want to understand what I’m doing first.”
Standing in the office in front of the door Leo had closed behind her, Isabel was teary eyed and beaming. “But Leo, you’re coming into your birth-order power! This is a huge moment that everyone should celebrate!”
“We can celebrate eventually,” Leo said, “but I don’t even know if I have it right yet. It only worked once.”
“That’s perfectly normal,” Isabel assured her. “Mine was a little spotty for the first couple of months too.”
Months? Leo’s eyebrows shot up. She didn’t have months to get a handle on her powers. The bakery could be closed by then.
“Leo came to you because she knew you would understand,” Caroline said sweetly. “She’s so lucky to have older sisters to help her through all these confusing things.”
Isabel softened at Caroline’s charm. “All right, Little Leo, I’ll keep your secret for now. So, what do you need from me?”
Leo slumped into Daddy’s desk chair in relief. “You know how you have the power to control people’s emotions? Do you ever have to be feeling a certain emotion yourself in order to make others feel it?”
Isabel’s mouth quirked into the same smile she got when Leo asked her for help with her social studies homework—the smile that meant she was about to launch into a lecture. “Actually, I don’t control emotions, exactly. That’s how you perceive it, of course, but I’m really influencing . . . I guess you could call it your aura. I feel the energy around people, including myself, and then I can change the way the energy is moving, and that’s what makes you feel different.”
Leo didn’t exactly see how that was different from controlling people’s emotions, but she shrugged and nodded.
“As for needing to feel a certain emotion to use it . . . I don’t anymore, but I think when I first started out I could only really use my power when I was very angry. So, fights with Marisol, mostly. I’d get angry, and then I’d accidentally make her angry, which would make me more angry . . . you get the idea. I didn’t really know what I was doing or how I was doing it, and I couldn’t tell her about my powers yet anyway.” Isabel sighed. “When she found out, she didn’t talk to me for a week. Another strike against magic in her book.”
“So how did you learn to use it properly?” Leo asked. “When you were calm?”
“Just practice, I guess,” Isabel said. “And time.”
“But I don’t have time!”
“What’s wrong?” Isabel put on a frown borrowed straight from Mamá. “You just have to be patient.”
“I can’t be patient when Abuelo Logroño is scheming to close down the bakery and destroy our magic!”
Caroline and Isabel both reeled back. “Leo, are you serious?” her sister asked. “He told you this?”
Leo nodded.
“Well, you have to tell Mamá.”
“She already knows.” Bitterness stung Leo’s throat. “The landlord is raising the rent on the bakery, and there’s going to be competition from Honeybees—the bakery is in serious trouble, and she isn’t even telling us anything about it. But I know Abuelo has something to do with it, and if we’re going to fight back, we have to do it on our own. So please, Isabel, can you help make me sad so I can use my powers?”
Isabel shook her head. “I don’t think that’s a good idea, Leo.”
Leo’s heart sank down to her toes. Her family was impossible. Did they want to sit here and do nothing and let the bakery—let the magic—fail? Why wouldn’t they trust her, or at least help her?
“Leo,” Caroline whispered. “Leo!”
“What?”
“I think you’re doing it.”
Leo looked down at her arms. Sure enough, they sparkled and swirled in and out of sight. Leo clapped, and the magic faded away.
“Wow,” Isabel whispered. “That’s . . . very interesting. I can’t wait to see you once you get the hang of it.”
“So you’ll help?” Leo asked.
Isabel took a long breath. “I would love to experiment with you. I don’t know about all the rest of it.”
“Isabel,” Leo wheedled, “I just want to gather information. I have a plan. I just need to be sad.”
“I’m sorry, Leo,” Isabel said. “I don’t think I’m suited for this.”
“But—” Caroline began.
Isabel stopped her with an outstretched hand. “What I mean is, my influence doesn’t last long enough for you to do any real sneaking or spying. It would be better to use something more portable, lik
e an herb pouch.”
Leo’s discouraged frown twisted into a grin as Isabel winked at her.
“I know you, Leo. If you say you have a plan to fix a problem, it’s a safe bet. Plus, if everything Mamá said about our abuelo is true, I’d like to make sure we have a few tricks up our sleeve, something that gives us the upper hand.”
“An herb pouch . . .” Leo considered. “What would I do with it?”
“There are different varieties, but I was thinking you could put pinches of herb on your tongue to get the effect. We’re so used to eating our spells. And I don’t know if chasing sadness is the answer. We want you to move beyond your power being tied to an emotion. Maybe cinnamon to give you more strength, or something to give balance and stability, or . . .”
“Acónito!” Caroline piped up. “Aconite, also called monkshood. It’s used for invisibility spells! I just finished memorizing it for my quiz before your aunt left.”
“Perfect!” Leo leaped out of the chair with enough excitement to send it spinning.
“Hold on.” Isabel held out a hand. “Aconite or monkshood, also called wolfsbane. Wolfsbane is one of the most toxic plants in the world. I wouldn’t want Leo touching that, let alone eating it.”
“Oops.” Caroline’s eyes grew wide. “I guess I should review that packet one more time.”
“It was a good thought,” Isabel murmured. “Feminine energy, protection, invisibility. Maybe we could use it in a different type of spell . . . a candle or something, except you can’t really carry a lit candle with you while you’re sneaking around, and it would have a time limit, and that’s not great for—what are you planning again?”
