I pretend to wheedle, begging to know the secret, and she pretends to be stern—but really we’re both having fun. Truth is, I kind of enjoy imagining that her secret ingredient is actual magic—like she mutters a few words and zaps the bowl with lightning from her fingers—and I’d probably be disappointed if I found out that it’s really been ancho chile powder and pink peppercorn all this time.

Adriana is in the living room when I return, her face buried in an old leather-bound book, her phone beside her as she studies crowded lines of handwritten text. Glancing up at me, her eyes shine. “Auggie, check it out—Abuela let me look at one of her grimoires!”

I hazard a guess. “That’s like a spell book, right?”

“Exactly!” Adriana turns a page, sketches of herbs and phases of the moon surrounding another column of text. “This volume is pretty basic, because I’m still technically a beginner, but there’s some really cool stuff in here. This spell is for inviting restful sleep, and if you master it, the next level up is summoning clairvoyant dreams!”

“Sounds practical.” The nightmares I had last week flash through my mind.

“It’s all about clarity of mind, purity of will, and directed energy,” Adriana continues, photographing the page with her phone. “Look at the herbs! Chamomile? Lavender? And the spells are basically just affirmations … people practice witchcraft every day without even realizing it.” Under her breath, she adds, “But meanwhile, I’m the freak.”

Sooner or later, living in a vampire town means encountering some extreme special effects—shape-shifting, invisibility, lightning bolts blasting out of fingertips into amazing guacamole—and lots of people think that’s what “real” magic looks like. And, I mean, it does … but in the same way that the Grand Canyon is what a hole looks like.

Wicca is a faith, and its practitioners—like Ximena—work spells that draw on the power of the natural world for stuff like healing, good luck, and preventing others from doing harm. And honestly? Even when the results are mixed, they’re no less effective or meaningful than prayer. But in a town used to the kind of bright, sparkling sorcery that has nothing to do with Wicca and everything to do with the Nexus, a girl who carries around a bag of herbs and charms to ward off negativity still gets treated like a weirdo.

It doesn’t help that she has zero support at home. Ximena has been a witch forever, and Adriana’s mom, Salome, had access to all of it growing up, but she rejected the faith when she met Adriana’s father, Martín—a devout Catholic. Now, Martín and Salome Verdugo want their daughter confirmed in the Church, and my best friend has other ideas.