Trouble in Taco Town

by Jordan Castillo Price

  Contents

  Book Info

  1 DIXON

  2 YURI

  3 DIXON

  4

  5 YURI

  6 DIXON

  7 YURI

  8 DIXON

  9 YURI

  10 DIXON

  11 YURI

  12 DIXON

  13

  14 YURI

  The ABCs of Spellcraft Series

  About this Story

  About the Author

  TROUBLE IN TACO TOWN

  The ABCs of Spellcraft 2

  Jordan Castillo Price

  Find more titles at

  www.JCPbooks.com

  Trouble in Taco Town. ©2019 Jordan Castillo Price. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  ISBN 978-1-944779-06-1

  Electronic Version 1.2

  Don’t miss Yuri meeting Dixon’s parents for the first time in the bonus story All that Glitters.

  Sign up for Jordan Castillo Price’s newsletter at http://bit.ly/jcpglitters and download free.

  1

  DIXON

  Do animals feel sentimental about their homes?

  I imagine they must. So many of them are built with their own little paws or claws or…whatever is on the ends of those eight horrible little tarantula legs. But what actually constitutes a home? Take, for instance, the terrarium in my lap with the wonky little stick insect inside. He was part of the menagerie collected by Emery Flint, the previous owner of Precious Greetings—the menagerie that now needed to be re-homed.

  I don’t know if Sticky Stickerton was born in captivity or captured in the wild. Heck, I don’t even know where these little critters would roam free. But I do know that ever since he was bought and paid for by Mr. Flint, this little plastic box was all the home he’d known. So, did he care if we moved him from Precious Greetings to my parents’ rec room? Hard to say.

  Also, I wasn’t sure it was “he.” But, you know. Stick insect. They must all be “he”s.

  I rode in the passenger seat of Yuri’s pickup truck while he followed my cousin Sabina in the Buick, and she followed my parents in their Monte Carlo. The convoy snaked through the streets of Pinyin Bay, on a mission to make sure that none of the creatures had to suffer for Mr. Flint’s mistakes. The Bay County Zoological Society only had space for some of the animals—and I thank my lucky stars the tarantula was one of them—but we were still working on finding a forever home for a dozen toads and salamanders, a sugar glider, several hermit crabs, three lovebirds (who am I to judge?), and the cockatoo. There were some Madagascar hissing cockroaches too…but I think they “accidentally” met up with the bottom of my mother’s shoe.

  We pulled up in front of my folks’ house. Sabina ran up the front stairs to open the door, while Dad, Yuri and I formed a chain to hand off the habitats and cages. Mom supervised—she’s good at that. And together, the five of us got all the animals inside before anything caught their death in the chilly March air.

  “What happened to the monkey?” Dad said.

  My mother didn’t bother to hide her relief. “The zoo took it, and good thing. Those animals are constantly throwing poop.”

  “But they’re very smart. We could have trained it to only throw poop at people we don’t like.”

  “Says the man who couldn’t train his philodendron.”

  Mom had a point. That plant had formed a weird blob in the living room corner that no one dared look at too closely for fear of being sucked into another dimension, never to return.

  My parents have been together for over thirty years. They have an understanding. Dad pushes the limits, and Mom pushes back, and the two of them always meet somewhere in the middle. Hopefully Yuri would eventually get the dynamic. So far, I pushed and he grumbled—but eventually caved in.

  Then again, maybe I shouldn’t look a gift dynamic in the mouth.

  My parents’ home is pretty cozy. Even though they’d shifted around a lot of stuff in anticipation of fostering the menagerie, we still found ourselves with floor-to-ceiling cages in teetering stacks. The frogs all went quiet, and the lizards went ballistic.

  “We don’t have room for this,” my mother said. “You kids have to take something.”

  Erm…they’d seen the attic Sabina and I called home. Heck, they were the ones who’d helped us convert it. And Yuri was living on borrowed time in an off-season vacation rental.

  Yuri said, “This could all be solved by putting the cages outside and leaving them unlocked.”

  Such a kidder. I said, “I’m sure if we just categorized everything by its sleep cycle and stacked the cages better, they’d fit, no problem.” I glanced down at a two-gallon tank where black ribbons swirled through the fronds of fake neon plants. “So, are leeches diurnal?”

  My parents exchanged a glance with “down the toilet” written all over it as Sabina struggled through the front door with a blanket wrapped cage half as tall as she was. I hurried over to help her set it somewhere, though we ended up crab-walking around the living room at least four times before we finally admitted defeat and put it on the couch. A hiss sounded from inside, and I wondered if one of the cockroaches had made it out of Mr. Flint’s office after all. But no. It was just the big, white cockatoo, Meringue.

  “Whatever you do,” I said, “make sure this bird gets a really good home. She deserves it.”

  My parents squeezed into the living room to have a look at the creature who’d single-handedly changed the course of my life. The bird took one look at them, ruffled her crest, and said, “Dirty Scribblers.”

  Awkward silence.

  “I didn’t realize she could talk,” I eventually said.

  Yuri shrugged. “She usually doesn’t.”

  Talk about getting off on the wrong foot. The last customer who uttered the word Scribbler in my mother’s presence found himself confessing all his indiscretions in his sleep, “Since he’s so fond of the sound of his own voice,” Mom had said. He was in divorce court within a month.

  I tugged the blanket back over Meringue’s cage and said, “Y’know what? I think I’ve got just the spot for her. C’mon, Yuri, let’s go.”

  2

  YURI

  No one was more shocked than me to hear that bird speak. I’ve always been partial to her, but only because she was so good at annoying Emery Flint. There was no doubt where she’d picked up the phrase “dirty Scribblers.” Flint muttered it all the time. But she’d never repeated it for him—at least, not in front of me.

  The Handless can be funny about Spellcrafters. We are the first ones they turn to when they have a problem too strange (or embarrassing) to solve with conventional means. But they’re quick to forget who helped them, to make us the butt of their jokes. Scriveners and Seers become “Scribblers and Hacks.” It made them feel better to mock what they didn’t understand.

  I say, let them laugh. It’s so much easier to pick off your enemy when they underestimate you.

  Before Dixon’s mother could pluck the cockatoo and add it to a casserole, I hefted the cage and turned toward the door. “Wait,” she said grudgingly, and for a moment I thought she’d had a change of heart. “It’s cold out there. Throw another blanket on it first.”

  Even an inconvenience was an opportunity for Dixon to find something to be delighted about. “I can’t believe it,” he called from the back of the linen closet. “You still have my favorite quilt!”

  Oh, I believed it. The Penns clearly never threw anything away.

  Dixon strode into the living room wearing the duvet like a cloak, and gave it a whirl. Sp
arks of static crackled in the polyester. I caught a salamander tank that very nearly ended up on the floor. A massive houseplant in the corner rustled. The blanket was printed in bright primary colors with a superhero character: Wonder Woman. Dixon struck a tacky pose, which I found disturbingly alluring. “I haven’t seen this thing in years. Just think, if it weren’t for Meringue, who knows how long it would’ve stayed in the closet.”

  The bird groomed her wing, unimpressed.

  We said our goodbyes, wrapped the cage in Wonder Woman, and headed off for the apartment. The blanketed cage sat between us in the truck like a bulky third person, and I couldn’t see Dixon’s expression when he spoke. “Meringue’s cage is gonna be a tight squeeze—and I’ve priced the storage units around here, they’re ridiculous. How mad do you think Uncle Fonzo will be if I get rid of a few pieces of his furniture? I can totally replace them when he gets back.”

  Yet another example of how different Dixon is from me. I would never presume the man was coming home. Frankly, I wouldn’t even put money on him turning up alive. “Do what you have to. Fonzo will understand.”

  I didn’t know the man, but he might understand. Or he might not. One thing was for sure—I should’ve understood him. The two of us had each found ourselves trapped by a man looking to exploit our talents. But I was alone in the world with nothing to lose. Not Fonzo. When I saw the damage he could’ve done to his family, a family he should have cherished and protected at all costs, I was none too eager to make his acquaintance.

  “Maybe I can get rid of his grandfather clock,” Dixon said. “I’ll bet someone would buy it—it only runs a little slow. Maybe Uncle Fonzo wouldn’t even miss it. He’s got this uncanny ability where he always knows what time it is, within half an hour, give or take. It’s like a superpower.”

  “Impressive.”

  “And he probably wouldn’t miss the tube TV. The remote hasn’t worked in years. Although he might be sentimental about it, since it was a prize for guessing the number of jellybeans in a jar at the rent-to-own furniture store. Maybe guessing numbers is a superpower, too.”

  Or maybe he used a bit of Spellcraft to come by his guess.

  “Ooh. I know. The end table he set fire to when he fell asleep with a lit cigarette almost looks like an antique—”

  “I’m sure you will make the right decision,” I said abruptly. Because plugging my ears wasn’t an option while I was driving. According to Dixon, Fonzo had been gone since the failed Quilling Ceremony. Well over a year. At some point, Dixon would think of him less often as new memories began to overtake the old ones, and eventually he’d stop glancing out the window to see if his uncle had finally come home.

  And I could keep him busy until then.

  We pulled up in front of the hulking two-story home that Fonzo had left behind—along with an old Buick, a distraught daughter, and a crushing debt. The birdcage was not terribly heavy, but thanks to the Wonder Woman blanket, I couldn’t see around it. Dixon acted as my eyes, backing along in front of me with a series of enthused directions. “Okay, there’s a step. And another step. And that one feels a little soft, but don’t worry, it should totally hold you—”

  “Just tell me when I’m at the top.”

  I took a jarring step, and he said, “You’re at the top!”

  Beneath the Wonder Woman blanket, Meringue grumbled, “Dumb Hack.”

  Dixon struggled to wrangle open the inner door while he held open a screen door that was determined to snap shut. “This would be a lot easier if Sabina helped.”

  “We will manage.” I squeezed in sideways with the cage. The stairway leading up to the illegal attic apartment was lined with paintings and photographs on both sides, and I had to back up the stairs to avoid knocking anything off with the birdcage. Dixon was coaching me with a running stream of encouragements, which I tuned out since he couldn’t see which stair I was on any better than I could. I made it to the top without dropping anyone or tumbling back down, but then had to balance the birdcage on my knee while I opened yet another door.

  “Hello-o!” Dixon called past me. “We saw the Buick, Sabina—we know you’re here. Would it kill you to lend a hand?”

  There isn’t exactly an entryway in the attic Dixon shares with his cousin, just heaps of displaced furniture. I turned in a circle, looking for somewhere to set the tall birdcage, but every surface was already occupied by vases and lamps and boxes and bins.

  Beyond the wall of clutter, Sabina sat, very still, at a card table in the area designated as the “kitchen.”

  “Seriously,” Dixon called over. “Don’t break a sweat or anything.”

  I might not have known Dixon’s younger cousin long…but I knew it was unusual for her not to give back as good as she got. While Dixon crashed through the attic, hastily righting some things as he knocked others down, I nudged aside a crate of books, set Meringue’s cage on the floor, and approached the table. “Sabina?”

  She looked up, glassy-eyed, as if she’d only just noticed the two of us were there. In her hand was a postcard she held by a single corner. She flapped it up and down a few times and said, “Funny…I usually have some reason or other to think about my dad. But today, in all the excitement, he didn’t come to mind…not even once.”

  I held out my hand, and she surrendered the postcard. It read: Sabina—miss you, darlin’! Be good and don’t stay out too late. And never run from a fat cop, he’s more likely to shoot than give chase.

  -Dad

  I handed it back to Sabina. She chafed away a tear with the side of her hand. “Not even once. Is it crappy of me that I forgot about him?”

  Dixon squeezed past a set of filing cabinets stacked three-high and plucked the postcard from my hand. “Look at the postmark—this was just mailed yesterday. I don’t have a day job anymore, and neither does Yuri. There’s nothing stopping us from hitting the road right now and tracking him down!”

  If Fonzo Penn wanted to be found, he’d make contact with a phone call, not a tacky postcard with no return address. But before I could say as much, Dixon turned his earnest, dark-eyed gaze to me while his cousin held her breath...and I couldn’t bring myself to crush their dreams.

  The postcard was traditional Americana, a painting of a road winding gently through a tall pine forest…with something that looked like five-meter-high taco poking out from behind the trees. I was sure I must be seeing it wrong. But with the title Taco Town, Minnesota curving beneath the shell…apparently not.

  3

  DIXON

  “…and so that’s when I told her, I don’t care if that dress is made of curtains, this is only Pinyin Hill, it’s not like you’re traipsing through the Alps—say, Yuri, d’you hear that sound?”

  He sighed. “I’ve been trying to tell myself it’s nothing…but it’s been happening since Dubuque.”

  I paused my story and the two of us gave an extra hard listen. It wasn’t precisely a grind. Maybe more of a rattle? Or kind of a clinkety-clink. Whatever it might be, it was coming from beneath the truck.

  That couldn’t be good.

  Yuri pulled to the side of the road. Gravel crunched under the tires. There was no one for miles around, unless you counted the pasture dotted with cows. And even they were pretty far away.

  We both got behind the truck and crouched to peer beneath it. I didn’t particularly know what I was looking at, but it seemed like the thing to do, plus it was always fun to watch Yuri being all butch. He didn’t really need to do much more than stand there to be the manliest guy in the room, but to see him looking knowledgeably at a motor vehicle made me all giddy inside.

  “It’s the muffler,” he said.

  “I take it we need that part?”

  “Technically, no. But it will be an unpleasant few hours to get where we’re going without it. Hand me the duct tape.”

  I dug the big silver roll out of the toolbox in back. “You realized you haven’t said it yet, don’t you?”

  “Said what?”


  “The name of our destination.”

  He took the duct tape and began tearing off long strips, cutting them with his teeth.

  “C’mon, Yuri,” I teased. “I’ll bet it would sound exotic in your accent. And maybe even a little dangerous.”

  “Taco Town?”

  I hugged myself with glee. Only Yuri could deliver that phrase with such sardonic disbelief.

  He narrowed his eyes at me briefly, then set about strapping up the dangling muffler with yards and yards of tape. “Hopefully that will hold it until we can find a more permanent solution.”

  I glanced at the bulge in his pants. Not that one, but the square bulge in his pocket where he kept his tiny paintbox. “Maybe we should just make sure.”

  He straightened up and brushed gravelly snow off his knees. “You know better than that.” He gestured toward the cab with his head. “It’s getting late. Let’s go.”

  He pulled out onto the road, and it seemed like the duct tape was doing its job. The engine was a bit louder now, but nothing was pattering against the undercarriage like a giant castanet. In another mile or two, he said, “Your quill is so new it’s still warm from the bird. You still see Spellcraft as the answer to everything.”

  “Not everything.” Just most things. “Plus, I grew up in the Craft. It’s not as if I’m a total rookie.”

  “But the shine has not worn off.” His voice went soft. “Try to keep it that way.”

  “What is it about machines, anyhow? My folks usually turn away customers looking for that sort of thing, but they’ve never given me a straight answer as to why.”

  “Too many moving parts. Too much that can go wrong. Spellcraft was born in a time before machines. It hasn’t adapted well.”

  Born? Whoa. Mind blown. “Spellcraft deserves an honorary birthday! With sheet cake! And male strippers dressed like cowboys! How old do you think it is? I guess it couldn’t be any older than the first writing, could it? Even so….”