A Sprinkle of Spirits

by Anna Meriano

  “Abuela?” she asked. “Did you go outside at all this morning?”

  Abuela’s hands cupped her coffee mug as she inhaled the scent of the drink. “No, I told you, I was pulled into your room. I woke you up as soon as it happened.”

  “Weird.” Leo stood on her tiptoes to lean over the sink, looking past Mamá’s mini herb garden to inspect the distinctive orange petal stuck to the outside of the glass. She was going to ask another question, but a knock on the front door interrupted her.

  “I’ll grab it.” Marisol jumped in front of Abuela as she turned toward the front of the house. “You stay here and drink your coffee.” She didn’t exactly say “Make no noise and pretend you don’t exist,” but Leo was pretty sure Abuela got the message anyway.

  Leo turned her attention back to the marigold petal on the windowpane. In January, even with the mild Texas weather, most flowers wouldn’t be blooming outside.

  “Hello?” Marisol’s voice came from the front room. “If you’re looking for my mom, you’re better off going to the bakery during business hours.”

  “My goodness.” It was the voice of an old lady, probably a friend of Mamá’s coming to place a special order. “Isabel?”

  “Nope, I’m the other one,” Marisol said. Then, in a more polite voice, she added, “I’m her sister Marisol.”

  Leo tapped the window where the petal was, a terrible thought working its way into her head. Holding up a hand to keep Abuela where she was, Leo ventured out of the kitchen and toward the front door.

  “My goodness,” the old woman repeated, looking Marisol up and down. Her dark brown skin wrinkled into deep laugh lines around her mouth, and her white hair curled in a puff above her head. Growing up in a town as small as Rose Hill, Leo was used to seeing the same faces week after week at the bakery, church, the grocery store, and school. Tourists would sometimes come to the Day of the Dead festival in November, or stretch their legs by wandering down Main Street during a summer road trip, but mostly Rose Hill was quiet and familiar. And Leo was sure she’d never seen the woman standing at the door before.

  “Isabel isn’t here right now, and neither is my mom,” Marisol explained. Leo could hear irritation creeping into her voice. “If you’re looking for them, you should head over to the bakery.” She made to close the front door, but the woman didn’t move. In fact, she held herself unnaturally still, not even shifting her weight.

  “But you know . . . you must be fifteen, at least?” the woman asked, squinting from behind the large square rims of her glasses. She definitely knows about brujería, Leo thought.

  Marisol huffed, her eyes narrowing like Señor Gato when Leo petted his fur the wrong way. “I’m almost seventeen.”

  “So you can help me,” the woman said quickly. “I need your help.”

  Marisol blinked and didn’t answer, but Leo stepped closer to the door. “Help with what?”

  The old woman’s eyes flicked to Leo, but her body remained stiff and still. “You’re definitely not fifteen,” she said with a slight frown.

  “It’s okay,” Leo said. “I’m initiated.”

  “Oh.” The woman looked to Marisol, who nodded. “Well, if you’re sure . . . I need your help . . . with this.”

  All at once she lifted her arms, kicked her long flowing skirt, and shook her head. An avalanche of orange flowers blew into the house. Marisol yelped and jumped back.

  It was another spirit.

  Leo’s heart sank.

  “Leticia Morales?” At the smell of marigolds, Abuela must have decided it was safe to peek her head around the kitchen doorway. “Leti, I should have known! You always did like to make an entrance.”

  The spirit stepped inside, beaming wide. “Lucy! Thank goodness!” She swept past an ashen Marisol and into the house, leaving a trail of orange as she pulled Abuela into an embrace. “And don’t start with me,” she warned. “I mean, tell me this doesn’t make you feel fabulous.” She wiggled her arms again to release another shower of golden orange.

  A streak of black fur swept past the two spirits, under Marisol’s legs, and out the door, yowling as it went. Señor Gato curled up under his favorite bush in the front yard, his ears laid back as he eyed the two spirit invaders in his house.

  Marisol looked at Leo. Her eyes were huge and her forehead wrinkled. “Leo, what did you do?”

  CHAPTER 6

  DEL OTRO LADO

  Abuela and her spirit friend sat at the kitchen table, sipping coffees and shedding flower petals and chatting in fast Spanish.

  “ . . . del Otro Lado . . .”

  “ . . . Diez años . . . me morí . . .”

  “ . . . la magia . . .”

  “¿ . . . Y Nalleli? ¿Anda echando flores por el ombligo como nosotras?”

  Marisol paced from the table to the stove, her restless steps kicking up the petals left on the floor until she almost looked like a spirit herself. “Obviously we can’t hide them,” she muttered. “There’s no way we can figure this out on our own—I mean, I’m definitely not messing with it, and you’re . . .” Marisol glanced at Leo. “So that means we need to call Mamá.” Her voice rose with determination. “Right now.”

  She paused, spinning her cell phone in her hands, but didn’t dial.

  Leo watched her sister do another lap around the kitchen. Marisol’s anxiety made her feel calmer by comparison, but she had to admit that the appearance of Abuela’s friend was alarming. Nobody else’s birth-order power got away from them like this, did it? She had never heard of young Mamá or Marisol making objects pop out of thin air uncontrollably. She wondered if her family would be disappointed in her, if they would agree with Marisol that her birth-order power was a problem that needed to be solved.

  She wished she could talk to Caroline.

  “Give it to me; I’ll call.” Leo’s stomach twisted with nerves, but she had learned her lesson about keeping spell problems to herself instead of asking for her family’s help.

  Marisol clutched her phone to her chest. “You don’t understand,” she snapped. “I used to study with Alma and Belén when they were first learning their powers. Tía Paloma was . . . very clear on raising the dead.”

  “They’re spirits, not zombies,” Leo reminded her sister, but the idea still made her shiver. “What . . . what did she say?”

  “Nothing good,” Marisol whispered while Abuela and the other spirit laughed. “We should fix this, fast. And also, it’s really important that nobody outside of the family recognizes them. Okay, Leo? That would be a serious disaster.”

  Leo scowled at her sister, though she wasn’t sure if she was mad at Marisol for suggesting that she couldn’t keep a secret or at herself for thinking of calling Caroline for help.

  “So let’s stick with the plan,” Leo said. “Get to the bakery, get everyone’s heads together, and figure out a way to make them ghosts again. The invisible kind.” She caught Marisol by the wrist as she passed. “Now let me call.”

  “Wait!” Marisol chewed her lip. “I thought of another problem.”

  Leo couldn’t say that she was surprised. She threw up her hands, catching Abuela’s attention enough to finally draw her away from her old friend.

  “What is it, Marisol?” Abuela asked. “We’re ready to go when you girls are.”

  “Well,” Marisol said, “I know the bakery has the ingredients we might need to reverse this, but maybe it’s irresponsible to run right into the center of town with all of this going on. I mean, if ghosts are going to pop up next to Leo, it’s better for them to do it here than in the middle of Main Street, right?”

  Leo’s stomach dropped. Abuela pursed her lips as she considered. The other spirit looked around, her face confused. “But I didn’t pop up next to Leo. I came from my son’s house, on Wide Oak Lane. In the dark, he was convinced I was a burglar. Scared me out of the house with his banging and stomping around.”

  Marisol and Abuela stared at the old woman.

  “That doesn’t make sense,”
Marisol said.

  “That does make sense.” Abuela nodded slowly.

  “What does that mean?” Leo asked. “If you came here from Wide Oak Lane, how did you get there?”

  “I told you,” Abuela said, rising from her stool to refill her coffee mug. “I was just pulled through, into your room, with no warning. I’m sure it was the same for you, Leti, no?”

  Her spirit friend nodded.

  “Pulled from where?” Leo demanded.

  Abuela thought for a moment, then said, “I always called it el Otro Lado. The other side, the spirit world. It exists alongside this one, but separated. The boundary can be malleable, stretching or thinning on Día de los Muertos, and on death anniversaries and birthdays. It can be seen through by brujas like your aunt or your twin sisters, and can even allow communication on special occasions and with the right spells. But it shouldn’t break. It shouldn’t let things, especially spirits, slip through. That’s a type of magic our family has never meddled in. The boundary exists for a reason.”

  “Well, Leo’s never met a boundary she didn’t ignore,” Marisol said.

  Leo shook her head. “I didn’t break any boundaries,” she said. “I didn’t do anything.” She felt like her brain was trapped in a microwave, spinning around and around. How could this be her birth power if she didn’t know she was doing it? How could she bring spirits to life all the way across town? What if the words she kept repeating were really true—what if this wasn’t her fault?

  If Leo hadn’t caused this, something must have. Even if no one else believed her, Leo was determined to get to the bottom of the mystery.

  “Abuela,” she said, “and . . .”

  “Mrs. Morales,” Abuela said, at the same time the other spirit introduced herself as “Leticia, but call me Leti.”

  The introduction clicked a connection in Leo’s brain. “Morales? Do you know Tricia Morales?”

  Abuela smiled, and Mrs. Morales laughed loud as she nodded. “My granddaughter,” she said. “Such a good girl. Of course you two would be friends!”

  Leo smiled. Tricia was in her reading group at school, and one of the founding members of the lunchtime snacks and baking club. The girls had known each other since kindergarten, but Leo had never known their grandmothers were friends.

  “It was so hard to leave her,” Mrs. Morales said softly, not really speaking to Leo anymore. “She was only a toddler, but she was there in the hospital at the end of my life, crying because she couldn’t climb into the bed with me. There were so many people there, doctors and nurses and things, and I wanted to tell her that I loved her, that I would stay with her if I could, but . . .”

  Mrs. Morales sighed. Leo’s chest ached as she pictured baby Tricia in the hospital.

  “I’m sure she doesn’t remember,” Mrs. Morales continued. “She’s so smart and so good on the clarinet. And she’s handling things with her parents so well. . . .” Abuela patted Mrs. Morales’s arm.

  Leo knew Mrs. Morales was probably right that Tricia didn’t remember her grandmother’s passing. Like Leo, Tricia probably had no memories of her grandmother at all. Was it better or worse to not even know the sadness of losing your loved one? Leo shook her head to clear it. She needed to be an investigator. She didn’t need to be sad for her friend and the grandmother she barely remembered.

  But . . . the boundary kept Leo from knowing Abuela, and Tricia from knowing Leticia Morales. It took Tía Isabel away from Tía Paloma, and Mrs. Campbell away from Caroline. When Leo thought about it, this boundary didn’t seem like such a great thing.

  “Was there anything you were both doing in el Otro Lado?” Marisol asked, twisting her fingers through her hair. “Something you have in common?”

  The two women exchanged glances. “It’s difficult to explain,” Mrs. Morales said slowly. “El Otro Lado is . . . different.”

  “Please, can you try?” Leo looked at Abuela.

  Abuela set down her coffee mug. “In el Otro Lado,” she said with a sigh, “the easiest thing to be is, well, everything. Being one specific thing, being just yourself, takes so much effort. It’s exhausting. But I was being myself when I was pulled through.”

  Leo wasn’t sure how spirits could exist without being themselves, and Marisol’s tilted head suggested that her sister was just as confused.

  “Me too!” Mrs. Morales said. “I had just drawn myself out of the everything and had taken this form.” She smiled the same hopeful smile that Leo’s teacher, Ms. Wood, always gave after explaining a problem.

  “What does that mean?” Leo asked. “‘Being everything’?” She had never thought much about what happened to someone after they died. She had worried about losing her family, especially when Caroline’s mom got sick, but it was always from the viewpoint of the living people being left behind. For as long as she could remember, Mamá would mention spirits the way everyone talked about them on Día de los Muertos, like they were just normal relatives coming for a visit from far away. Learning about her family’s magic, seeing Alma and Belén chat with Abuela and other ancient family members, had confirmed Leo’s belief that death wasn’t that much different from life. She remembered being in church once, hearing the padre mention heaven, and asking Mamá about it after mass. She had imagined that heaven was like a mirror image of Earth built out of clouds. She never imagined that you could stop being yourself when you died.

  “I’m sorry,” Mrs. Morales said. “It really is impossible to describe to people who are alive.”

  “Everything is so rigid on this side of the veil.” Abuela nodded in agreement. “And you have to use human languages to communicate everything, which is so limiting.”

  “Oh, I know!” Mrs. Morales slapped the table, raising a puff of petals. “I had so much trouble trying to express myself that I left a note for my son, Freddy. Now, how did I describe it . . . ?”

  “You did what?” Marisol’s mouth hung open. “You wrote him a note?” Her voice jumped higher with each sentence.

  “Yes,” Mrs. Morales said. “And I’m sure I explained it better than we’re doing now.”

  Leo looked at her older sister, her low-level worry finally coming to a bubbling boil. “You wrote him a note about coming back from the dead?”

  “From el Otro Lado,” Mrs. Morales corrected.

  Marisol whimpered.

  “Did he read it?” Leo asked. Maybe there would be a heartwarming story, just the thing to prove that the spirits being here wasn’t such a huge disaster. Or maybe he had called the police and they were coming to get Leo right now and arrest her for summoning spirits.

  “Well, I’m sure he hasn’t seen it yet. I snuck back into the house and left it on the counter after he went to work.”

  Abuela gave her friend a steely frown. “Leti, how could you be so reckless?”

  Mrs. Morales huffed in response. “What should I have done? I didn’t want him to spend all day worrying about home invaders! And there’s something . . . very important I need him to know. You don’t know what it’s like, Lucy. You get to speak to your girls whenever you want. This might be my only opportunity.”

  Mrs. Morales had a point. After dealing with her family’s lying and hiding their magic for years, Leo understood being fed up with secrets. But still, Mamá and Tía Paloma had both asked Leo not to spread word of the family’s powers, and Isabel had explained why it was important. How angry would they all be if it turned out that Leo had summoned a bunch of blabbermouth spirits and let the magic out of the bag?

  Well, maybe summoning the spirits wasn’t Leo’s fault. But if she didn’t do something to stop Mrs. Morales now, it would be her fault if Tricia’s dad traced all this magic back to the Logroños. Had the family ever uninitiated someone?

  “Okay.” Marisol’s face was grim. “New priority. We’re getting that note.”

  “I can do it,” Leo said. “I’ve been to Tricia’s house. It’s only a few minutes from here, if you can drive me.”

  Abuela picked up her coffee an
d drained the mug with a determined nod. She hushed Mrs. Morales when she started to grumble. “Leti, te quiero mucho, but you have to know that this isn’t right. A note is just going to confuse and scare Freddy, maybe his whole family. These things have to be done delicately.”

  Mrs. Morales still looked like she wanted to argue.

  “Once we get rid of the note,” Marisol told her, “we can ask Tía Paloma how to get a message to your son in a less startling way. She’s an expert at ghost communication. She’ll know what to do.”

  Mrs. Morales hesitated, then shrugged. She let herself be towed by Marisol, who grabbed each spirit by the elbow and rushed them toward the back door.

  “We can discuss this in the car,” she said. “Oh, and here.” She let go of Abuela to toss Leo her cell phone. “While we’re driving, text Isabel that we’ll be on our way to the bakery soon with a . . . magical problem. And maybe tell her that if she can start softening up Mamá and Tía Paloma, that would be great.”

  Leo’s mouth dropped open. Marisol was asking Isabel to use her powers?

  “Oh, don’t look at me like that,” Marisol grumbled. “We have enough to worry about right now. Might as well use whatever advantage we’ve got.”

  CHAPTER 7

  THE HEIST

  The Morales’s house wasn’t far from Leo’s—walking distance, if they hadn’t been trying to keep two spirits out of sight. Leo had been visiting Tricia ever since they had all started a lunchtime snack club in November. Usually the walk was a comforting tour of the short brick houses that made up Leo’s neighborhood. She would wave at Mrs. Jones, who always sat in her rocking chair, her white hair and skin making her look like a larger version of the stone statues filling her front yard. She would cut across the empty lot on Elm Drive, hopping over the tall grass and trying to spot the stray cat that lived in the bushes. But today they needed to get there fast.