“Oh, I’m kidding.” He raised his arm over the pillows so she could snuggle into him and lay her head on his chest. With his lips pressed against the top of her head, he chuckled again. “I guess if anything’s gonna sway someone’s decision about having kids, it would be this.”
“Yeah, it’s a very effective deterrent.” She poked him in the ribs and he jerked away with a muffled laugh before he drew her against him again. “As long as he doesn’t crawl up onto the bed in the middle of the night. I don’t handle surprise wakeups very well.”
“Oh, I know.”
Twelve
Lily woke to the sound of two people snoring in her bedroom and it took her a minute to remember Filipe’s late-night sleepwalking appearance. Now that the heavy shush of the rain had faded with the storm, the snoring might have been what woke her up. She tossed the covers aside and crawled to the edge of the bed to see the boy still curled on the floor. Yep. Definitely snoring.
Quietly, she inched off the side of the bed and walked out into the short hall. Before she reached the bathroom, she noticed Rosalía seated on the pull-out mattress and reading a book balanced on her lap. “Oh.” She stopped. “Morning.”
“Hi.” The girl didn’t look up from the open pages in front of her.
“What are you reading?” It was a normal, simple question and it didn’t even occur to her that of course, the girl wouldn’t have brought her own book with her.
“Your magic book.”
“My—” She, spun frantically and stared at the open duffel bag on the floor beside the bed. Her mom’s grimoire no longer sat on top of the pile. “Rosalía!” She whirled and ran toward the girl on the pull-out mattress. “Stop. You should not be reading—” Finally, the girl looked up at her with wide eyes. Lily dropped onto the mattress in front of her and took the grimoire as quickly as she could without snatching it out of the girl’s hands. She closed the book and pressed her hand on the cover—as if that would draw all the information out of Rosalía’s head and back into the pages—and studied the girl’s confused frown. “This book is way too dangerous. Especially for witches who haven’t covered the basics of this kind of magic.”
Rosalía blinked. “I was only reading. I didn’t even try any of the spells.”
Lily lowered her chin and held the girl’s gaze. “Can you honestly tell me, without bending the truth at all, that you won’t remember a single thing you’ve seen in here?” The child pressed her lips together but didn’t say a word. Yeah, I used to plead the fifth all the time too. And I bet her memory’s as good as mine. She sighed and tried another tactic. “You know, until I was eighteen, I couldn’t even touch this book.”
The disappointment in the girl’s eyes wasn’t aimed at herself but at Lily. “Because someone else told you not to.”
She snorted and shook her head. “No. Because every time I tried, it literally shocked me.” Rosalía frowned and cocked her head. “Like a lightning bolt. This book hurled me across my mom’s room more times than I can count. She even tried to hide it in the kitchen cabinets once to keep me from hurting myself.” She lifted the back of her tank top and pulled down the top of her leggings on the right side to reveal a small, roundish scar. After five years, it was almost the same color as the rest of her lower back but still had the telltale sheen of burned and healed flesh. “I landed on the stove and almost covered myself in boiling water.”
“Hmm.” Rosalía glanced at the book in the older witch’s protective hands, then shrugged. “Maybe you weren’t ready.”
“I wasn’t—” Her eyes widened and she shook her head. I’m clearly not getting through to her. “No, I was as ready as you are right now. Which is why my mom kept a ward on this book to make sure I couldn’t open it because nothing was going to stop me from trying to read it. Even if I hurt myself.” She studied the girl and hoped at least some of this would sink in. “Look, I couldn’t open this book until my mom knew I was actually ready for the stuff in here. She was my teacher. I’m yours, at least for a little while, and I’m telling you that you’re not ready for it right now.”
The girl swallowed, then met Lily’s gaze again. “I know how to make it better.”
“Make what better?”
“The magic you did yesterday.” Rosalía pressed a finger to the center of her forehead, then her lips. “So you can hear everyone and everyone can hear you.”
“Oh.” She tried to still her racing thoughts and glanced at mom’s grimoire in her lap. The student teaches. And now, I feel like an idiot. “What did you find?”
“The…” The child closed her eyes and frowned, searching through the information she now proved was stored away in her head. “Patefacio. Put it with the spells you did yesterday. Then you won’t have to touch everyone.” She grinned and poked her finger in a line through the air. “Everyone in my village always wants to talk.”
“Right.” Lily slid her hand over the hard, worn dark-purple cover of the book and nodded. She means when we take them home. I’ll have to check that. “Rosalía, I need you to promise me that you won’t try any of the spells you read—wait. You understood the spells in here?”
The girl shrugged and nodded. “I think your magic works for books.”
“I guess so.”
They sat on the bed for a while longer and she felt one-upped by a tiny, skinny witch with a powerful command over the cycle of life—or at least of plants. Her student, however, felt sufficiently scolded by her new teacher yet still wholly unsatisfied.
“Can we practice more?” the girl asked.
“Um…” She glanced down the hall and into her bedroom. “Yeah. While they’re still asleep. But when they wake up, we’re gonna stop, eat something, and probably get back on the road again.”
“Okay.” A tiny smile crept across Rosalía’s lips.
“Okay.” Lily stood with the book and set it far back on the counter against the wall. Not that she can’t reach it but at least she’ll know I’m not being careless with it. I might actually have to hide this thing later.
When she returned to the bed, Rosalía sat straight, her open palm resting in her lap as she waited. “Ready,” she said without being prompted.
She flashed her a quick smile, then nodded. “Okay. Let’s see what you got.”
When the girl managed to conjure the ball of light in her hand, raise it half a foot above her hand, and intentionally snuff it out again three times in a row, she decided her student had a good enough handle on it. “Good. You can practice that on your own. That light will do whatever you want it to, eventually, so keep playing with it to learn what that is.”
“Will it hurt someone?”
She frowned. “Not unless you make it really bright and throw it in someone’s face.”
Rosalía shook her head. “That’s not what I want. I want to hurt people.”
Swallowing thickly, Lily took a deep breath. This is gonna be a tricky one to navigate. “Why do you want to hurt people?”
The girl raised her eyebrows and leaned forward. “So people doing bad things will stop.”
“You’re talking about protecting yourself, right? And your brother? Your family?”
“Everyone.”
“Right.” The older witch paused. “Well, not all defensive magic hurts people. That should always be a last resort. Do you understand?”
“But what if you already know that nothing else will work?”
“That doesn’t matter. If you’re gonna learn any offensive magic at all—”
“What’s that?”
“Attacks. Magic that hurts people.”
Rosalía nodded.
“If you’re gonna learn any of that, you have to learn how to defend yourself first. You must learn how to use every other option before you hurt people to make them stop.”
“Like when you made it so that woman couldn’t move.”
She smiled. Finally. “Yep. Exactly like that. I didn’t hurt her first. I didn’t hurt her at all, right? It’s so,
so important to know how to handle a dangerous situation without hurting anyone first.”
The child’s eyes darkened beneath a frown and she stared at the bed between them. “You should’ve hurt her.”
I’m not even gonna touch that one. “So I’m gonna teach you how to cast an illusion charm, okay? It’s one of my favorites.”
The girl closed her eyes in disappointment before she raised her shoulders and lowered them with a sigh. “Okay.”
They had a little under an hour of practice time for a tiny version of the illusion charm Lily had cast around Melissa Bore’s burned-down house in Colorado. Then Romeo rolled out of bed and stumbled into the bathroom the same way Filipe had stumbled into the bedroom. The minute he closed the door, Lily and Rosalía exchanged a glance and the girl rolled her eyes. “Take a break.”
“Yep.” She patted the girl’s knee and stood. “Time for breakfast.” She stepped across the few feet into the kitchen to look through what they had to feed four people again instead of only two.
The werewolf stepped out of the bathroom, wearing only his shorts from the day before, and stopped. “Buenos días,” he muttered. Rosalía merely laughed. Lily turned to watch them as he said something else in quick Spanish and waved across the room. The girl slid off the bed, giggling, and they got to work stripping the sheets and putting the couch back together.
She glanced at her mom’s grimoire on the counter. Patefacio, huh? I kinda hate that I think she’s right.
With limited choices, she selected the half-dozen eggs, small four tortillas, and salsa they’d purchased at the store in Córdoba and decided those would make as good a breakfast as any. The minute she finished scrambling the eggs, Filipe rose from the bedroom floor like a bear stirring from hibernation before he shuffled into the kitchen. He stopped in the bathroom first, slipped into the booth at the tiny kitchen table, and sat there with his hand in his lap and stared at the table.
“Perfect timing.” Lily smiled at him but he didn’t seem to hear anything.
“Filipe, stop being so rude!” Rosalía leaned forward where she sat with Romeo on the couch—he’d been showing her the GPS map on his phone and the route they’d be driving to get the kids home—and gestured toward Lily. “You should at least look at her when she talks to you.”
His head barely moved side to side in a poor attempt at shaking his head. “No mames, guey,” he muttered.
“Woah.” Romeo glanced at Lily with wide eyes.
Rosalía’s mouth dropped open. “What? You’re crazy!” The boy shrugged.
“Um…” Lily glanced from the boy to his furious sister. “Okay, breakfast is ready. You guys can help yourselves. I’ll be right back.” She turned off the burner beneath the egg pan and retrieved her mom’s spellbook before she hurried into the bedroom and closed the door behind her.
It took her thirty seconds to find the Patefacio spell and less than half that time to realize that Rosalía had been completely right about how much it would improve her magical translator. With a sigh, she closed the grimoire again and gazed around her room for somewhere to hide it. “Maybe I should put a bookshelf in here. With locking cabinets.” Without any better ideas, she dropped to the floor and shoved the spellbook as far under the bed and she could. She zipped the duffel bag and slid that in place too. “If these kids are gonna be with us for more than a few hours, yeah, I’d probably spend some time on wards.” She stood and shook her head. “I don’t know how my mom put up with me like that.”
With a deep breath, she shook her hands out and repeated the series of mixed spells she’d used with Rosalía the night before and slipped the Patefacio in there before the illusion-reversal. This time, casting the spells only on herself, she didn’t need the water to help focus the target. The pink light spread between her hands, grew, and flashed brightly to fill the bedroom in a wave that seeped through the door and out into the rest of the Winnie.
“Uh, is everything okay in there?” Romeo called from the kitchen.
“Yep!”
“Oh, I know what she’s doing,” Rosalía added.
Lily took the opportunity to change into a fresh tank top and navy Chinos shorts before she opened the door into the hall. “All good.” From where he stood in front of the stove, he stared at her and her student flashed her a wide grin. She pointed at the girl. “Don’t say anything.”
“Okay…” Romeo glanced at Rosalía beside him. “What was she up to in there?” The girl merely shot him a sideways glance and smiled at Lily. “All right. I know she can understand you, so I’ll ask you questions, yeah? You can answer yes or no.”
“That’s probably not a good idea.”
Lily folded her arms and leaned against the narrow strip of wall between the laundry closet and the bathroom.
“Nah, it’s fine.” Romeo turned to the pan of eggs like the conversation wasn’t even happening. “Obviously, it was a spell. Pink. Another illusion-thingy?” Rosalía didn’t say a word, and Lily raised an eyebrow at her before she stared at the back of Romeo’s head as he served the small amount of scrambled eggs into four tortillas. “I’ll take your silence as a no.” He shrugged. “Okay. Some kind of protection spell, then? No? Yeah, she would’ve told me if we needed one of those. Wait, did it have anything to do with me?”
“Well, it does now.”
He startled a little at Lily’s statement and eggs plopped out of the hovering serving spoon in his hand. “What?” He looked at her with a goofy smile.
She pursed her lips and gestured toward the girl. “At least when I ask Rosalía not to do something, she listens.”
The spoon clinked into the pan and he turned to lean back against the edge of the stove. He looked at Rosalía, then Lily. “I was speaking Spanish, right?”
“Yep.”
“Which you don’t understand unless it’s Rosalía.”
Her grin was wide. “Until about two minutes ago, yeah.”
“You… I only…” He sucked in a sharp breath. “Oh…” He turned a mock frown onto the small witch beside him. “Thanks for the heads-up.”
Rosalía burst into laughter and took two plates of eggs in tortillas from the counter. With a shrug, she turned toward the kitchen table. “My teacher told me not to say anything.”
Romeo narrowed his eyes at her as she set the plates on the table and moved across the kitchen again for the plastic container of fresh salsa—diced tomatoes, green chili peppers, onions, garlic, and cilantro stirred together without any of the sauce. “Yeah,” he muttered as she crossed in front of him one more time. “I bet that’s the only time in your life you’ve ever done what someone else told you to.” The girl grinned but didn’t look at him again.
“You’re all crazy,” Filipe murmured, his hand already stretching for the salsa.
His sister smacked his hand away, which was the only thing that made him look at her. “I’ll eat all your food if you can’t be nice.” They glared at each other before he grasped the container and tipped a huge pile of it onto his eggs.
“Okay.” Romeo turned to Lily again with a sheepish smile and spread his arms. “You got me, Lil. Sorry.”
“You know I would’ve told you what the spell was if you’d asked, right?”
“Yeah, I know that.”
“I always tell you.”
He sighed, gave her a smaller, more serious smile, and stepped toward her. His expression a little sheepish, he put both hands gently on her shoulders and nodded. “You do.”
“And if I don’t tell you something right away, there’s a reason for it.” She maintained her slightly challenging look.
“Yeah. I know, Lily. I was only messin’ around. And honestly”—he glanced over his shoulder at the kids and lowered his voice, even though they didn’t speak a word of English—“I was only trying to make things seem normal. Like what we talked about last night, you know? Making it all…a little better. I guess talking to them in Spanish feels like part of that.” She opened her mouth to speak but he b
eat her to it. “I know. I didn’t exactly choose the best topic of conversation.”
Lily snorted. “Not exactly, no.”
“I’m sorry.” He studied her eyes until she finally caved in with a smirk.
“Lucky for you, I’m better at casting spells than I am at holding a grudge.”
He grinned. “And that’s why I—” His mouth hung open for a second too long before he finished. “Am constantly impressed by your magic and…your ability to put up with me.”
She laughed and looked away. He was definitely about to say something else. “Well, good.”
With a gentle hand, he cupped her cheek and turned her face toward him. “Is everything okay?”
“Yeah. I’ll explain it to you later, okay?” She gestured toward the table and held his gaze, hoping he picked up on the fact that she didn’t want Rosalía to hear. I can’t talk about her when she can hear everything.
Romeo nodded and mouthed, ‘Rosalía?’
She merely smiled.
“Okay.” He pulled her toward him and wrapped his arms around her shoulders. “Thanks for makin’ eggs. Are you hungry?”
Lily hugged him around the waist and leaned back to look at him. “Yeah, I could eat.”
Thirteen
They cleaned up after breakfast and prepared to travel again. According to Rosalía—and as much as Romeo could confirm of it—the kids’ village was about half an hour away from Plan de Ayutla, though it didn’t show up on his GPS. “Five-hour drive, here we come.” He slid into the driver’s seat and started the engine.
Lily gave Rosalía a big smile as she walked toward the passenger seat. Filipe had returned to the corner of the couch, where he’d curled up again and apparently fell back to sleep after eating. His sister leaned against the other corner, her thin legs stretching almost far enough to touch Filipe, and practiced the illusion-reversal she had been taught. The girl glanced quickly from the faint pink glow that appeared less than an inch between her palms and smiled in return, but her attention went quickly back to her spell.
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