A Sprinkle of Spirits

by Anna Meriano

  “I mean . . . I might need some advice,” Tricia spoke up. “I don’t know what I’m doing, and I don’t want to mess it up if my grandma’s afterlife is at stake.”

  “See?” Abuela beamed. “Smart girl.”

  “Mami, are you bothering Isabel?” Tía Paloma leaned out of the kitchen doorway with her hands full of the contents of the Campbell pantry, which she was raiding for anything that looked useful. “Go back to your coloring.”

  “I was only offering.” Abuela pouted, her face young enough that for a moment she could have been the long-haired, sweater-wearing twin of Mamá.

  “Abuela, enough,” Isabel sighed. “I have too many headaches to deal with already.”

  “Is she talking about us?” Brent fake-whispered, loud enough to be heard all through the house. “That seems uncalled for.”

  Tricia shushed him, and Mai defended him, and Abuela kept arguing with Isabel until Caroline joined the gathering to see what the commotion was. Leo felt the energy and purpose in the room splintering, stirring, swirling into a mess that would soon be too big to clean up.

  “Hey!” Her voice got lost in the general muttering. “Hey!” She had never needed a big silver coach’s whistle so badly. “Would y’all listen up?”

  Her friends and family settled like a flock of birds on a telephone wire, and Leo knew they were only one squawk or squabble away from starting up again.

  “Look, we need to be ready to start as soon as the ingredients arrive,” she said. Isabel opened her mouth, but Leo pushed on. “We have a good plan. Mai will chop, Brent will cleanse. Tricia and I can prepare candles, and Abuela can supervise us. Just supervise.” She held out a warning finger to Abuela. “No touching. Pretend you’re still in . . . cor . . . por . . . um . . .”

  “Incorporeal,” Caroline offered.

  Leo clicked her tongue but smiled at her friend. “Yeah, that. Pretend you still have no body. Caroline and Isabel will set everything in place and light the candles. Tía Paloma will make sure everyone is doing their job right, and troubleshoot. Oh, and the rest of the spirits will color until we’re ready for them. Does that sound like a plan?”

  Abuela nodded. Brent, Tricia, and Mai nodded. Tía Paloma had a funny smile on, like she was watching one of those reality show YouTube clips where the quiet old lady in slippers suddenly sings the best opera anyone’s ever heard—but she nodded. Isabel shrugged. “That’s basically what I said.”

  “Great,” Tía Paloma said. “Caroline, does your dad have some old newspapers? It’s good to lay them down wherever you’re setting up the candle ring. You don’t want to be cleaning wax off hardwood floors.”

  As Isabel set up Leo’s friends in different parts of the kitchen, Leo saw Mayor Rose, his hair dark brown and his face unwrinkled, looking at her from his seat in the living room. He winked at Leo and gave her a thumbs-up with a hand full of colored pencils.

  By the time Alma and Belén knocked on the front door, the whole Campbell house had transformed into a bruja workshop.

  “So we want this symbol carved on each candle,” Isabel explained to Leo and Tricia as they smoothed cling wrap over the wooden kitchen table to protect it from oil and herbs and candle wax. “It’s like an upside-down U, see? And then the rosemary oil gets rubbed in.”

  “You want to start at the middle and rub the oil up to the top,” Abuela added, “since you’re sending us away, not drawing us closer. And keep that in your head too. You want to open a door for us to return to el Otro Lado. Concentrate on that.”

  Leo watched Brent drop a burning bundle of sage into the sink and scramble to pick it back up. At the counter, Mai sneezed and scattered chopped lemongrass across the floor, mixing with the marigold petals. Panic squeezed Leo’s throat shut, and she fought the urge to throw up her hands and tell everyone to stop, that her friends should go home now because this had all been a big mistake.

  “Intention,” Abuela whispered to her as Alma dropped two cleansed candles on the table between Leo and Tricia, and Belén handed Brent two new ones. Leo swallowed and nodded. She couldn’t do her job while she worried about everyone else’s. She closed her eyes and took one long breath in and out.

  Her candle was tall and yellow, thin enough to fit in a candlestick and be used to decorate a fancy dinner table. According to Isabel’s sketch, there would be three candles like this, three of the fatter yellow candles that stood on their own, and one white candle in glass. Yellow for the dead, the same color Caroline had used in her spell. Two different types used together to bring together the two different worlds. White to unite all the complicated different parts of the spell, as well as all the different spell casters. To purify all their intentions, to focus them on the goal. To open the gate. Would one white candle be strong enough to do all that?

  Intention. She scratched the doorway symbol into the thick end of the candle with the pointy end of a dried-up pen from Caroline’s junk drawer. She tried to focus on that curved shape in the yellow wax. She needed to think about doorways? Was that right? If she looked out the kitchen doorway, she could see into the living room where the spirits milled around, comparing coloring pages and craning their necks to see how the spell was going. They were starting to look so young that they could have been a group of high schoolers loitering at the Dairy Queen on the interstate.

  If the spell didn’t work, would they eventually have a room full of baby spirits?

  Focus, Leo told herself. She dripped oil onto her candle and breathed in the rosemary smell. Think of opening el Otro Lado. Think of doors.

  Her mind found the swinging blue doors of the bakery. They opened in both directions, in and out, so that you could always push through if your hands were full. There was a chip on the bottom of the left door where Leo had crashed once when she was little while running away from Alma and Belén in some game, knocking out a baby tooth. The doors kept the front of the bakery—where the customers were—away from the back, where you could be angry or tired or a bruja or whatever you wanted.

  She thought about boundaries, how they separated loved ones but kept the spirits safe. How breaking them could be happy and heartbreaking. She thought of everything that had been gained by the spirits coming through the veil, and everything that might still be lost. The rosemary smell picked up a hint of spice as Leo settled into the quiet area of her mind where her magic came from. She forgot about the rest of her friends, about the long day of confusion and worry. When she focused on a spell, she wasn’t worried or confused or stressed or embarrassed. She wasn’t a baby sister or a mess maker or a secret teller or a young leader. She was Leo. She was a bruja. And she had a job to do.

  When they had finished, Leo carried the candles to Caroline and Isabel. She knelt on the living-room rug where Alma and Belén had settled in to watch the excitement. Caroline set the candles up in their spiral pattern, with the white veladora in the center. Mai passed Caroline a bag of fresh lemongrass, which Caroline sprinkled in a circle around the outside of the arrangement while Isabel sprinkled an intricate spiral design between the candles in brown sugar.

  “How will we know if it’s working?” Brent whispered on Leo’s right. Leo shrugged. Aside from the smell of magic that lingered in her nose, her only hint that the spell was working would show up when the candles were lit.

  Isabel looked at the setup, glanced at her sketched paper, and then stood up and put her hands on her hips. “What do you think?” she asked Caroline. “We’re not summoning a guide, so it looks a lot simpler than the picture, but that’s good, I think. It’s less chance for things to go spectacularly wrong. And it’s closer to how you started the spell, just one candle.” Isabel’s words tumbled out fast, betraying her nervousness. “Anyway, you’re the primary caster, so it’s up to you to say when it’s ready. . . . So what do you think?”

  Caroline’s hazel eyes flicked nervously around the room like a mouse caught by a cat. Leo met her friend’s gaze, smiled encouragingly, and winked. You can do this, she thought loud
and clear in her head.

  Caroline drew herself up to her full stand-up-straight height, which was almost as tall as Isabel. She nodded. “It feels right,” she said. “Let’s light it up before we lose any more time.”

  “I’ll get everyone!” Alma jumped to her feet and darted into the dining room, where a few of the spirits were still coloring. Those who had already been watching inched closer to the portal spell. Leo’s magical sight had worn off, and she could no longer see the spirits’ glowing lights, so she could only hope that Mrs. Campbell was somewhere nearby, hiding.

  When the living room was crowded with the living and the dead, Isabel took Brent’s long-necked lighter and handed it to Caroline. Leo held her breath as Caroline pointed the flame toward the wick of the white center candle.

  One heartbeat passed. Two. Three.

  The wick caught, and the hum of the air conditioning cut off, along with all the lights in the house. Mai squeaked, Caroline blinked at her hand, and Leo grinned in relief. Caroline’s magic was real, and it was working.

  Caroline lit the rest of the candles, working her way out from the center. Bent over the newspaper-lined altar, her face glowed with orange light and gray shadows, and her tall frame pulled inward with the same focused energy she had when taking a test at school. She spun a plastic ring around the finger of her free hand, and her hunched shoulders and twitchy movements made her look like a candle flame herself—bright and burning and full of power.

  She was a bruja.

  The last candle caught the flame. Caroline leaned back on her heels. There was a flurry of rustling as everyone in the room shifted at the same time, glancing around at each other.

  Brent said, “So now wh—”

  That was when the altar exploded.

  The crack was lightning and the crash was thunder and the wind spat orange petals into Leo’s eyes and mouth as she scrambled back and tripped against someone else. By the time she and Tricia untangled themselves, the wind had died and the petals were settling slowly, all the candles knocked over and doused, the protective newspapers crumpled and scattering herbs, salt, and sugar across the floorboards.

  In place of the ruined altar, a glowing cross-hatch of orange, turquoise, pink, and red lights traced the patterns Isabel had sketched. Two columns of light rose up to the ceiling, and the air between them shimmered like a waterfall of glass or clear liquid silk. It almost hurt Leo’s eyes to look at the blur. She wanted to touch it.

  “Is that . . . what’s supposed to happen?” Brent asked.

  Leo stepped toward the veil. Tricia put a hand on her elbow, but she shook it off and took another step toward the inviting colors.

  “It’s . . . ,” Belén said. “It wasn’t . . . I’m not sure.”

  “Do you think something went wrong?” Mai asked. “Maybe I messed it up by being nervous.”

  “Maybe I messed it up by being hungry,” Brent piped up. “Ow! Cut it out.”

  “Tía Paloma? What do you think?” Isabel asked. She gathered her sheets of drawings and ingredient lists and sat on the couch.

  Leo stepped into the circle of light, feet passing through the colorful design just like the golden spirit trails.

  “I don’t think this was the expected result,” Tía Paloma said. “I’m sorry, kids, I don’t blame any of you, but I think we should maybe try again, have just the brujas help this time. We’ll hope that will solve whatever— Leo, what are you doing?”

  Leo heard her aunt’s voice, but her fingers were just inches away from the veil, and the urge to brush her skin against the shine was too strong to stop. It felt cold and fluid, and it tickled the roof of Leo’s mouth, like allergies. Without thinking, she plunged her hand through up to the elbow.

  “Leo!” Isabel jumped up from the couch, scattering papers and petals in every direction.

  “Whoa whoa whoa!” Brent windmilled his arms and then wrapped them around his torso like he was wearing a straitjacket.

  Leo drew her arm back. “What?” she said, finding her voice with only a little bit of difficulty in the buzzing excitement flowing through her body. “It doesn’t hurt.”

  “Your arm disappeared!” Alma said, words tripping over Belén, who said the same thing.

  “Leo?” It was Abuela who took a step closer when everyone else was shrinking away. “What are you seeing?”

  Leo turned back to the tall, glowing, shining gate. “Are y’all telling me you’re not seeing this?”

  CHAPTER 18

  THE GATE

  “It’s right there,” Leo said. “There’s a gate with a veil in the middle, and I’m pretty sure it leads to el Otro Lado. And it’s glowing. How are y’all missing it?”

  “How are you missing that it might not be a great idea to stick your hand into an actual gateway to death?” Tricia responded, eyes wide. Mai nodded along, and Brent shuddered.

  “It’s the veil,” Leo said. “The spirits have already passed through it twice, and they’re fine. It’s not going to hurt anyone.”

  “I think you’re forgetting that the first time they passed through it, they died,” Brent muttered.

  “Could this be a side effect of the ojos de buey?” Caroline asked. “I never saw those glowing orange trails everyone was talking about either.”

  “But none of us see what Leo sees,” Tricia said.

  “Brent ate the most of the muffins, so he should be the one with lingering side effects,” Mai added.

  Leo tapped her foot. “Can we figure out the why later? The portal is open, so we should be getting the spirits through as fast as we can.” She would have thought her friends and family could stay focused on their time-sensitive issue instead of getting distracted by their inability to see something shiny.

  “Do you think they should just . . .” Caroline waved her hand in the general direction of the gate. “Walk into it?”

  “Why not?” Leo asked. “That was the plan, right?”

  “Of course.” Abuela nodded. “If Leo sees a portal that the rest of us can’t see, then the portal spell worked.”

  “Yeah,” Isabel said, “but how do we know the portal goes where we want it to?”

  “Once the first person goes through, they can tell us how it is,” Belén said.

  Alma nodded. “Or at least, they can tell us if it sends them back to being normal ghosts.”

  The twins shared a worried glance. “But what if it’s not—”

  “If you don’t mind,” Mayor Rose spoke up, “I’m happy to try it out. I’m feeling quite tired, and I’m ready to let the town go on without me.” He walked up to the center of the carpet, his feet tangled in the glowing patterns, half a step from plunging straight through the veil. “Here?” he asked Leo, who nodded. “Well then, it has been a true pleasure and honor meeting all of you. It may seem a small thing, but the courage and creativity shown here today has given one old soul hope for the future of Rose Hill, of Texas, of the world. Sincerest farewells, friends and fellow citizens.” With one last flash of his brilliant smile, he stepped forward.

  And stepped forward again. And again, passing entirely through the veil and out the other side without creating so much as a ripple along its surface.

  “Hmm.” He glanced at Leo. “Did I miss it?”

  Leo shook her head, frowning. “You went right into it,” she said. “You didn’t feel anything?”

  Mayor Rose shrugged. Mr. Pérez stepped up to the gate, waved his hands out in front of him. “There’s nothing here,” he said.

  “But there is!” Leo marched up next to him and stuck her arm into the gate, feeling unreasonably relieved by the surge of cold energy and the wide eyes of her friends and family. “See?”

  “Maybe you have to be able to see it to use it?” Abuela mused. “But that doesn’t help us if we don’t know why Leo can see it and the rest of us can’t.”

  “We could run back to the bakery for the leftover ojos de buey,” Tricia suggested.

  “No, we’d have to make a new batch,”
Alma said. “Those were to find spirits, not spirit doors.”

  “Besides, do we know if the gate will stay open long enough for us to get there and back?” Caroline asked.

  “We don’t really know anything for sure,” Isabel said, her mouth pressed together in frustration.

  “It wouldn’t work,” Tía Paloma said. The finality of her voice carried through the room despite its low volume. “They need a guide.”

  “A guide?” Isabel shook her head slowly. “We saw that in the portal spells we looked up. You told us we shouldn’t use that part of the spell.”

  “We shouldn’t.” Tía Paloma sighed into her hands. “It would be . . . that’s the reason portal spells are so dangerous, why no ethical resource will describe them in full. The kind of creatures you need, ones who can walk between worlds . . . they’re full of power and often unpleasant. Attracting the attention of one is the last thing a wise bruja should be doing.”

  “I don’t understand.” Isabel shook her head again. “If you knew this would happen, why did you let us cast the spell? Why bother with any of it?”

  “I hoped the spirits could cross on their own!” Tía Paloma was almost shouting now. “They all belong in el Otro Lado, so I thought they might be able to pass.”

  “It worked once,” Caroline said. “I pulled them through already.”

  Tía Paloma shook her head. “That’s different,” she said. “You were pulling them here. You were the guide. To get them back, we need someone pulling from over there.”

  “So let’s summon someone,” Isabel said, reaching for one of her papers and pulling a pen out from her pocket. “We’ll put the pentacle back in, and we’ll get someone here who can guide them, and then—”

  “Absolutely not.” Abuela grabbed the paper from Isabel’s hand, her voice calm but her motion quick and definite. “You are not doing this, Isabel Lucero.”

  “Abuela, you’re being—”

  “No.” Abuela’s eyes were hard and fierce. “I lost my Isabel to a spell like this. I’m not letting you repeat her mistake.”