6. Selena #2
“You know it’s good. It’s always good. These are obscenely good.”
I took another bite, and this time I paid attention to the magic itself—how it moved, the shape of it.
Lupe’s power was warm and full-bodied, honestly, like a perfectly spiced mole sauce, as cheesy as that was. It was a comforting hug, permission to let go of the aches and pains we all held onto without noticing.
It was the kind of magic most people in our family didn’t respect because it didn’t make a spectacle.
I looked at my cousin—flour on her cheek, dark circles under her eyes from a man who didn’t deserve the effort it took to keep him fed and whole—and felt the familiar surge of protectiveness that had defined our relationship since we were kids.
Lupe was two years younger and had always been softer, quieter, more willing to bend.
I was the one who fought. Between us, we almost made one functional adult.
“Lupe.”
“Hm?”
“Your magic is extraordinary. You know that, right?”
She smiled—not the full Torres attitude, but one smaller and more real.
“You always say that.”
“Because it’s always true.”
“Mamá used to say kitchen magic was women’s work. And not in the nice way.”
“Your mother could call a hurricane with her bare hands but couldn’t boil rice without burning it. Her opinion on kitchen magic is irrelevant.”
My mother and her twin had always been extremely similar, which was probably why they didn’t get along.
Lupe laughed, and the tightness in my chest eased further. This was what I stayed for. Not the obligations, not the guilt. This. My cousin laughing at midnight in a kitchen that smelled like chiles and magic, handing me food that healed the parts of me I didn’t know were broken.
I finished the tamale and licked masa off my thumb.
“So,” Lupe said, eyes glinting, “this tourist.”
“Oh my god.”
“Hear me out. Men have their uses. I’m just saying—if your magic gets a boost and there’s a very attractive stranger in town who makes you smile like that and you get to have a few awesome orgasms along the way—”
“You are giving this guy an awful lot of credit.”
“I’ve got a good feeling about him.” She winked.
“What? Did the cards tell you?”
She lit up. “That’s a good point!”
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’s sex 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 is very detailed.” 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 just saying—”
“Good night, 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.
Not only the sex-magic part. The spark part.
My magic had flared tonight—really flared, for the first time in months.
The wind had shifted, and I’d felt it, not as a spectator but as a participant.
Something was coming. And if—if—there was a way to fan that spark into something bigger, something strong enough to protect my beach and my turtles and my tournament from whatever was rolling toward Crescent Cove…
Would it be so crazy?
I thought about the stranger’s laugh. His clearly rakish smile.
The heat that had rolled off him in waves—no, not waves.
Currents. Deep, dangerous, pulling at things better left alone.
And how underneath that spark, my magic had pulled the same way it did with stranded sea stars and tangled seagulls.
A pull toward someone hurt who needed help.
“No,” I said to the ceiling. “Absolutely not.”
The ceiling didn’t answer.
But somewhere in the back of my mind, in the place where my sad little magic lived and occasionally sputtered to life, a new feeling hummed.
I told it to shut up and went to sleep.