by Anna Meriano
Leo frowned. “But you’re going to let her go, right? You have to.”
“Of course.” Mrs. Campbell and Tía Paloma pressed their hands to their hearts. “I’m not trying to harm her, I just needed a chance to explain myself. But now I’m explaining everything all wrong.”
The tightness in Leo’s chest settled a little. She understood Mrs. Campbell’s rushed, muddled explanation. She even understood doing something a little bit wrong when you were scared of getting caught. And this was Caroline’s mom, who had made Leo pancakes after her first-ever sleepover and driven her home from countless playdates, parties, and swim lessons. She wasn’t scary, or evil, or trying to hurt anyone. She was nervous and confused, like all the spirits. Like everyone was today.
Leo sat down on the side of the couch that wrapped sideways so that she could see both dark-haired women. “Okay,” she said. “It’s okay. Just tell me why you’re hiding.”
Two sets of shoulders sagged in relief. “I was pulled through the veil a few minutes after midnight last night,” Mrs. Campbell explained. “And although I didn’t know what was happening exactly, I had a decent theory. Caroline told you about my family magic, after all. I’d heard all the stories, even if I didn’t believe them completely. And I’d just seen Caroline light the candle before going to bed. So it wasn’t too much of a leap to assume that she had inadvertently brought me back.”
“You saw her?” Leo asked. “How?”
Mrs. Campbell wrapped one hand around the opposite wrist, twisting the silver bracelet she wore. “I watch her,” she said, “from el Otro Lado. She was upset, and I like to be there when she’s having a hard time. I know I can’t really help her, but . . .”
Leo nodded.
“At any rate”—Mrs. Campbell cleared her throat—“I’ve heard enough family lore to know the dangers of bringing spirits back to the realm of the living. It’s not just a problem for us, you know; the living spell casters who try it often suffer adverse effects. These spells can go wrong in so many ways and hurt the caster, but even if they go right . . . it takes a mental toll. Especially for a loved one, especially for someone who’s still grieving. So I knew I couldn’t let Caroline or my husband know I was here.”
“Why?” Leo asked, her jaw clenching stubbornly. “She would be happy to see you. My family sends messages back and forth for people who have lost loved ones, and it never hurts anybody.”
Mrs. Campbell shook her head. “Your family is careful about their messages. It happens only once a year, only for the span of a few minutes, and only for spirits who have been gone long enough for their loved ones to heal. It’s a comforting moment, not a total reversal of the boundary between life and death.”
Leo clicked her tongue. The boundary again. “I don’t get why you care more about the importance of some magical boundary than you do about your daughter,” she snapped. “But I know that my mamá would never hide away and leave me to figure out dangerous magic by myself. She would help me.” It wasn’t a nice thing to say, but Leo didn’t feel like being nice.
She noticed the tears on Tía Paloma’s cheeks first, the twin tracks catching the light of the candle flames. Her stomach curled in on itself as Mrs. Campbell sniffed and wiped her face, but she held her chin high. “I didn’t mean . . . I just think you’re worried about the wrong thing,” Leo said. “If you’ll just let me go get Caroline, she can tell you that she’s not going to have any mental toll. She wants to see you.”
“She always wants to see me,” Mrs. Campbell whispered. “She woke up every day for months, and it was the first thing she’d say, even before she opened her eyes. She would wish for it to be a dream. That it never happened. She didn’t want to accept it; she still doesn’t—that’s why she cast the spell.”
“She cast the spell so she could see you again,” Leo said. “So she could feel better.”
“It’s not about feeling better,” Mrs. Campbell argued. “If Caroline sees me now, then all the progress of the past months—the friendships she’s rebuilt with you and Brent, the new home she and her father have made, her interest in her schoolwork—all of that will be shaken. She’ll be back to wishing for a life she can’t have, for all the things I can’t give her.”
Leo dropped her eyes to her toes, sadness prickling the back of her throat. “She might think it’s worth it,” she said.
“She might,” Mrs. Campbell agreed. “I don’t.”
Leo watched the white candle flicker in its shallow tin, almost all liquid by now, its wick standing upright in the clear puddle. Being sad and angry at the unfairness of life and death wouldn’t help Mrs. Campbell, or any of the spirits, and most important, it wouldn’t help Caroline. She blinked and swallowed until the threat of tears retreated.
“Okay,” she said softly. “Okay. So that’s why you hid.”
“That’s why I hid.” Mrs. Campbell nodded. “I didn’t realize that while I hid, the candle was still burning, pulling others across the veil. I only figured it out when I saw Mayor Rose wandering down the street, hours later.”
Leo’s eyes widened. “You sent him to Caroline,” she said. “That’s why he and the other spirits knocked on the door.”
“I told him to wake her up and tell her that he had crossed the veil,” Mrs. Campbell said. “I thought she would blow out the candle, and that would be enough to end the effects of the spell. Then I thought we might need to gather all the spirits together, so I intercepted Mr. Nguyen and Mr. Pérez. And when that didn’t work . . . I tried to help as much as I could, although I didn’t realize just how complicated the spell was or how much work it would take to undo it.”
Leo worked her way down a mental checklist of small mysteries. “The board game pieces,” she said. “The phone calls.”
“Caroline got all the information she needed.” Mrs. Campbell’s smile was small but proud. “She barely needed my help. I have no doubt she’ll figure out how to send everyone back, and soon. But . . .”
“She doesn’t know she’s sending you too.” Leo’s toe scratched lines into the carpet.
“She can’t know,” Mrs. Campbell said. “Leo, please say you understand. I need your help if I’m going to pull this off.”
Leo didn’t answer right away. She was thinking about secrets. Why her family kept so many of them, and why it bothered her so much when they did. She hated when her older sisters babied her, made decisions that they thought were for her own good that really just kept her feeling frustrated and confused. She didn’t want to keep Caroline in the dark.
But even more than that, she didn’t want to do anything to hurt her.
“What do you need me to do?”
Mrs. Campbell’s face relaxed. “I think a distraction should be enough. They’re doing a portal spell, so I’ll need to slip through unnoticed once the portal is opened. It will be good to tell your aunt as well, so she can take the number of spirits into account when planning.” Mrs. Campbell twisted her hands together. “I have to let her go, of course. She won’t remember the details of this conversation, but she’ll know what happened. She’ll be tired, disoriented. That’s another reason I need your help.”
Leo nodded. “I’ll make sure she doesn’t tell Caroline, even by accident,” she said. “Don’t worry. She’ll understand.”
“Thank you,” Mrs. Campbell said. “I have one last thing to organize, but I can handle that myself, and then I’ll go back to hiding in the yard where it’s not so crowded. I’ll wait for your distraction when the portal opens.”
“I’ll do something dramatic,” Leo promised.
Mrs. Campbell smiled. “I’m glad Caroline has you as a friend.” She hesitated. “Watch out for her? The spells they’re looking at, opening portals to other realms, they can be volatile.”
“Of course,” Leo said, making a mental note to look up that word too. “My family will make sure she’s okay.”
Mrs. Campbell nodded. She closed her eyes, let out a long breath. Tía Paloma blinked and took a shud
dering breath on her own while Mrs. Campbell watched, biting the nail of her thumb.
“I’m sorry,” Mrs. Campbell said softly, bracing Tía Paloma as she tilted sideways. “You’re okay.”
“Tía Paloma?” Leo asked. “Do you need anything?”
Tía Paloma groped around the top of her head until she found her glasses and pushed them down over her eyes. “Leo? What happened? There’s another spirit loose, and we need to . . .” She turned her head toward Mrs. Campbell, but the spirit had already ducked and disappeared into the shadows of the room.
“We found the other spirit,” Leo told her, “but we have to keep it a secret for right now. But everything’s going to be fine.”
“Okay. Good.” Tía Paloma rolled her eyes all the way back in her head and massaged her temples. “In that case, do we have any water? And something to eat.”
Once Tía Paloma had been brought up to speed, fed a large plate of eggs (Leo added a big pile of cheese on top, in true Logroño style), and sworn to secrecy, they joined Isabel and Caroline in the bedroom. The brown candles were out and the lights were on, and Caroline met Leo with a wide and only slightly exhausted-looking grin.
“We think we have it,” she said. “The basic concept, anyway.” Caroline wiped her bangs off her forehead and brandished a piece of notebook paper filled with scribbles and scratch outs and a sketched round shape with tiny notes written all around it.
Leo beamed. “That’s amazing.” She remembered how scary it was to invent a spell, the uncertainty of making decisions you barely understood. “So should we get started?”
Caroline nodded. “We don’t know exactly how much time the spirits have, but my dad’s been leaving work early this week, so we have to be fast.”
“It’s not quite that easy,” Isabel said, sighing. “We need a lot of ingredients and relics, and we have to prepare everything just right. I already sent Alma and Belén a list, but we still have to roll each candle and . . .” She sat heavily on the bed. “We can’t use Abuela or the spirits to help, either, because their energy is from the wrong side of the veil and won’t work right.”
“Well.” Leo looked from her sister to her aunt. “We have a lot of other helpers here who aren’t spirits.”
Isabel looked at her like she had just suggested that Señor Gato could wash the dishes. “Your friends? Leo, don’t be silly.”
“It’s not a bad idea,” Tía Paloma mused. “Magical ability isn’t needed for most of the preparation.”
“Really?” Isabel asked. “Tía Paloma, they’re sixth graders! Isn’t it bad enough she got them involved in the first place?”
Leo winced. She had worried what her family would think and imagined what they would say. But Tía Paloma was the one to speak first.
“They’re a good group of kids,” she said with a hard look at Isabel. “When I was your age, two of my best friends didn’t even believe me when I told them I was a bruja, and the one who did would never have helped me with my . . . well, she used to call it my ‘freak stuff.’”
Isabel glowered. “You told people too?”
Tía Paloma sighed. “Everyone tells someone, my dear. Marisol’s on her third or fourth boyfriend; so far, none of them have taken it that well.”
“She never told me that she . . .” Isabel frowned at the hallway carpet. “I’ve never told anyone.”
“Well, you do take rules so seriously.” Tía Paloma patted Isabel’s arm.
“Didn’t Abuela talk to you?” Leo asked Isabel. “Didn’t she tell you”—She tried to remember Abuela’s words—“that magic should strengthen relationships instead of ruining them?” It didn’t sound as inspiring when she said it.
“I guess.” Isabel still scowled. “She told me to stop giving you bad advice, but I’m only telling you what everyone always told me.”
“Isabel,” Tía Paloma said. “You were the first girl to turn fifteen. We needed you to keep the secret from your sisters until they were old enough to learn, and we wanted to protect you from the pain we sometimes felt. People aren’t always kind to others they see as different—high schoolers least of all. It seemed like a good rule at the time, to keep things under wraps until your sisters got older. I’m sure your mother never meant to cut you off from your friends.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Isabel said, in what was a shockingly good impersonation of a sulky Marisol. “I didn’t have any in the first place.”
“Don’t be upset right now, Isabel,” Caroline said softly. “Be upset later, after you save the day.”
“Yeah.” Leo nodded. “You can yell at me for a whole week for all the mistakes I’ve made, once we get the spirits back where they belong. I won’t even tell Mamá.”
Isabel groaned. She still didn’t look happy, but she held up her hands. “Fine, whatever. If you want to let them help, they can help. It’s Tricia and Mai who are here?”
“And Brent,” Leo said.
“Brent is here?” Caroline’s face turned three shades of pink. “Did you tell him . . . what I did?”
“Um, yeah.” Leo hadn’t thought much about the fact that sharing her secret also meant sharing Caroline’s without her permission. “It sort of came up. Sorry.”
“No, it’s okay. I’m glad, I think. Now that people know, it’s like it’s official.” She nodded at Leo, smiling. “And I’m about to reverse a spell, just like you. I’m really a bruja, I guess. Unless I totally ruin it.”
“You’re going to do perfectly,” Leo told her friend, locking eyes with Caroline and using her most serious-business voice. When she had started her first reversal spell, Caroline’s confidence had given her courage. “I know it.”
Caroline looked down at her pajamas, swiped her sticky bangs off her forehead. “If a bunch of people are here, maybe I should change. I’ll meet you out there.” Caroline turned to her closet and started pulling out shirts, leaving Isabel, Tía Paloma, and Leo to back into the hallway and close the door.
“Isabel . . . ,” Leo started.
“No, don’t.” Isabel ruffled the top of Leo’s head. “I’m being a jerk. It’s like Tía Paloma said. You have good friends. And today, we’re lucky you do.”
“Right,” Tía Paloma said, clapping her hands together. “And let’s hope they’re good workers too, because we have enough for a whole bruja convention to do, and not much time to do it. Alma and Belén will be here any minute—let’s inspect our troops.”
CHAPTER 17
SPELLCRAFT
“We’re following this outline to form the gate,” Isabel explained, holding up the sketch she and Caroline had made, a ring of candles connected by dotted lines of sprinkled herbs, salt, and sugar. “We can handle the arrangement, but each candle needs to be prepared before we can start. Cleansed, carved, and rubbed with oil and spices—oh, and we’ll need to chop up at least a few of the herbs fresh, because we don’t want to take chances with stale ingredients.”
“Sounds like a sandwich,” Brent whispered. “Speaking of which, Caroline, you don’t have any peanut butter and jelly around here, do you? Somebody really failed to follow through on her promise of pastries.”
He sat across the Campbells’ dining-room table from Isabel, with Tricia and Mai on one side and Leo on the other. Leo kicked his foot under the table, but Isabel had already stopped to frown at him.
“Time is against us here, but more important than speed is intention. You can’t simply follow the directions; you have to put your heart and your will into it. If you think this is some big joke”—her eyes turned steely as they focused on Brent—“then you’d better go home now. You’re endangering the work the rest of us are doing.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Brent ducked his head. “Sorry, ma’am. I don’t think it’s a joke.”
Mai raised her hand, like they were in school, which made Leo want to laugh (although she didn’t dare risk the death glare Isabel would give her if she did).
“Um, is it okay if I just help with chopping the herbs?” Mai ask
ed. “I’m not sure how my mom would feel about me doing witchcraft.”
Leo opened her mouth to ask what she meant by that, but Isabel spoke first.
“Of course, Mai. You don’t have to do anything you’re not comfortable with.”
“But I do want to help,” Mai said quickly, smiling at Leo. “And I cut herbs and vegetables all the time at home. It’s not magic, but it’s a useful culinary skill.”
“I think I’d be good at the cleansing part,” Brent volunteered. “My mom does a lot of juice cleanses, and they’re actually tasty sometimes.”
Leo leaned her elbows on the table and buried her head in her hands.
“I don’t think it’s that kind of cleanse,” Tricia hissed. “It’s probably like, magical cleansing, right?”
“We’re using smoke,” Isabel said, “since the original spell and Caroline’s magic is all fire based. Sage smoke, to free the candles of any previous magical contamination.”
“Even better,” Brent said. “I love burning stuff!” He paused, glanced around the table, and grimaced. “Okay, I’m sorry. I promise I’ll stop messing around if you let me help.”
Abuela, who had been banished to the living room with the rest of the spirits and Mr. Campbell’s bag of adult coloring books, poked her head into the dining room. The golden glow of her trail had faded almost completely as the spell from the ojos de buey wore off.
“Are you using rosemary or dragon’s-blood oil to prepare the candles?” she asked. “You know, when I was young, no one could dress a candle like I could—”
“Abuela, we told you, no spirits.” Isabel sighed. “Your magic is different now. It will mess with the spell. Plus, working magic might make you disintegrate faster!”
“So—what? I can’t even hear what ingredients you’re using?” Abuela frowned. “I’m the one you’re going to push through this gate you’re creating—I just want to know how it’s being made.”
“It’s going to be fine,” Isabel growled. “We don’t need any advice.”