I groaned as she rifled through the kitchen drawer, dragging my hands down my face as she plopped a deck of cards onto the table between us.
“Lupe…that’s a lotería deck.”
“My tarot is upstairs, and this works just as well,” she replied, pushing the pile toward me.
I shuffled obediently.
She cut the deck a few times—her own personal method—then restacked and drew the top card. Her brow furrowed before she set it down.
La Sirena.
“Ah, see—that means beware of the siren’s call. Avoid temptation.” Why was I disappointed?
“Selena, we live in Crescent Cove. You’ve literally met mermaids.” She paused, her brow still furrowed, before she practically bounced out of her apron. “Is this stranger a merman?”
“He’s a tourist.” No need to mention he’d come out of the ocean at midnight…
“So? Crescent Cove attracts lots of magical people?—”
“Good night, Lupe.”
“Okay, okay. Ignore the cards. I’ve got a feeling, okay? You’ve got your big tournament and ritual coming up. It couldn’t hurt to charge up.”
She wasn’t wrong about that.
“Plus, I’m hoping he fucks that attitude out of you,” she teased, waggling her eyebrows.
“Then what’s left, mija?”
She laughed. “I’m just saying! It’ssex magic. The oldest trick in the book. Literally. Abuela had a whole chapter about it in her grimoire.”
“You’ve read Abuela’s grimoire?”
“Cover to cover. Chapter seven isverydetailed.” She paused. “There are diagrams.”
I stared at her. She stared back.
And then we both broke, laughter spilling out of us in the small kitchen, bouncing off the glass-block windows and the tile counters and the framed photo of our abuela on the wall, who stared down at us with the expression of a woman who had absolutely included diagrams in her sex magic chapter and wasn’t sorry about it.
“I’m not seducing anybody,” I gasped, wiping my eyes. “I don’t even know his name.”
“You don’t need to know his name. You need to ride his?—”
“LUPE.”
“I’m justsaying?—”
“Goodnight, Lupe.”
I stood up, still laughing, and kissed the top of her head on my way to the stairs. In a family of powerhouses and prodigies, Lupe had never looked at me with pity or disappointment.
I went upstairs laughing, which was not something that happened often enough, and fell into bed thinking about what Lupe had said.
Not the sex-magic part.
Well.
Notonlythe sex-magic part. The spark part.
