Rose stiffened. The recipe card was still tacked to the front of the fridge. If Mr. Butter had it, he could begin production on the dangerous Moony Pyes, the kind that had ripped the village of Dragomiresti to shreds.
“Oh, there it is,” he said before Rose could think of a response. Mr. Butter floated over to the fridge and snatched it up. “Interesting,” he said, reading over Rose’s notes.
Rose turned frantically to the red mason jar of Moon’s Cheese. It’s almost empty! she privately rejoiced. They can’t make more because it’s almost empty!
“I’m so sorry, Mr. Butter,” Rose said, “but I actually used up the last of the Moon’s Cheese making those Pyes. There’s no more. I’m afraid you’ll have to halt production.”
Mr. Butter let a sneaky little laugh out between the tiny spaces in his closed grin. “Rose, my dear,” he said, “we here at the Mostess Corporation never ever run out of ingredients. Do you think I’d let a little thing like an empty jar of Moon’s Cheese stand in the way of Americans everywhere enjoying the taste of your perfect Moony Pyes? I don’t think so. Follow me.”
Rose couldn’t move. All that work creating an antidote, and she’d let the evil recipe fall right into the hands of this evil man.
“Come along.” He walked to the golf cart and beckoned with his pointy finger.
Rose saw a gray head disappear into her backpack, hooked her arm through it, and then climbed into the golf cart.
“Oh, and Marge?” Mr. Butter said to the frazzled, chocolate-covered Head Baker. “Marge, honey, clean up yourself and this kitchen. You know how I hate a mess.”
Mr. Kerr drove Mr. Butter and Rose between the warehouses for what felt like miles. The rising sun threw its golden color on everything, and Rose felt a bit of hope worm its way through her despair. It was a beautiful morning, and Mr. Butter hadn’t put the recipe into production yet.
At first, they passed gray box after gray box, like the test kitchen warehouse, but after a while different sorts of buildings began to appear. There was a sleek office building where Rose could see men in the windows scribbling away at drafting boards—the front entrance was in the shape of a giant Mostess cow.
“Those are our graphic artists,” said Mr. Butter. “They weren’t the ones who originally came up with the cow, of course. We’ve hired all new ones. We’re working on some other packaging ideas, something . . . more modern.”
They passed another office building covered in billboards with Mostess slogans splashed across the front. MAKE THE MOSTESS OF YOUR DAY—EAT A DINKY CAKE! and LAUGH AWAY THE DAY WITH A TEE-HEE!
“With the right marketing,” explained Mr. Butter, “you can make a person do something they don’t even want to do—such as eat a Dinky Cake. It’s like . . . magic! But it’s magic that makes money!”
Rose gritted her teeth and stayed silent. She should never have helped with the Moony Pye recipe. Then again, Mr. Butter hadn’t given her much of a choice. She briefly wished her mom were there—Purdy Bliss would know what to do.
But on second thought, Rose was happy her mom didn’t have to see what Rose had done. Her disappointment would have been too much to bear.
“Ah, here we are,” said Mr. Butter as the golf cart pulled up in front of a building shaped like a wedding cake. “The Mostess pantry, if you will.”
It was a stack of round floors with tinted windows, each floor progressively smaller than the one below it. Atop the highest, smallest story was a giant statue of a smiling cow. Mr. Kerr drove the golf cart into an enormous revolving door, which rotated until the golf cart was safely inside the lobby.
Rose thought she had stepped into the future—or someone’s nightmare of the future. Instead of something that looked like the Bliss Bakery pantry, only larger, there were, she saw, men in white lab coats standing at a giant control board in front of an enormous wall of dark-red mason jars. The wall was at least five stories tall, with a rolling ladder that ran along the top—to access the jars from the upper levels, Rose figured.
“This is what we refer to as the laboratory,” said Mr. Butter proudly. “It is where we store all of our ingredients.”
“Isn’t it more of a warehouse, then?” Rose asked. “You store things in a warehouse. You create things in a lab.”
Mr. Butter waved away her comment. “You say poe-tay-toe, I say poh-tah-toe. We also do experiments here—how to get the recipes just right, this and that, and more. Plus, laboratory sounds much fancier than warehouse, doesn’t it?”
Rose couldn’t disagree with that. Instead of arguing with Mr. Butter, she turned her attention back to the wall of jars: There were too many of them to count, but Rose estimated that it must have been at least one thousand. It was hard to see inside the jars, but their contents were bobbing and glowing and growling and screeching.
“Doubtless you’ve realized by now, Rose, that ours is no ordinary factory,” said Mr. Butter. “You probably thought yours was the only kitchen equipped with magical mason jars, but no. We, like you, use special ingredients.”
So Lily had betrayed all the family secrets. Rose had figured as much, but it was still mortifying to hear it said so plainly by Mr. Butter.
“Yes, we too use magic,” Mr. Butter said, rubbing the top of his perfectly bald head, “but unlike the Bliss family, we maximize the effects of the magic through the power of technology.”
Mr. Butter moved to the giant control board and picked up a megaphone. “Mr. Mechanico! We need more Moon’s Cheese. Enough to produce ten million Moony Pyes!”
Just then, a lavender-colored robot whose shape could only be described as “octopus-esque” floated through the air and hovered above Rose’s head. Its mechanical arms writhed and clinked as it moved, like eight strings of metal cans. “At your servissssss,” the thing whispered through a silver-mesh metal grill.
“Here is the recipe,” Mr. Butter said, holding out the card with Rose’s notes on it. One of Mr. Mechanico’s segmented arms clanked and telescoped, reaching down toward Mr. Butter. With a strange slurping noise, the card stuck to one of hundreds of tiny suction cups underneath the mechanical tentacle. The robot curled the tentacle under its belly and appeared to swallow the recipe card whole.
“Received,” said Mr. Mechanico. His voice was higher than Rose would expect from a flying octopus robot. It sounded frighteningly real, like a human voice.
“Where are they going to get all that Moon’s Cheese?” Rose asked. “What is Moon’s Cheese, anyway? I mean, I know it’s a magical ingredient, but what is it?”
Mr. Butter slapped Mr. Kerr on the shoulder and laughed. “‘What is Moon’s Cheese?’ she asks! She never heard about Moon’s Cheese! Oh, these poor country bakers. Why don’t you explain, Mr. Kerr?”
Mr. Kerr knelt down next to Rose on one massive knee. His head was as thick as her entire body. “The moon,” he said in his deep voice, “is made of cheese.”
Rose tried not to giggle. “Mr. Kerr, with all due respect, I believe the moon is made of rock.”
“Nope! It’s cheese,” said Mr. Kerr. “A green cheese, actually.”
Gus curled his whiskers with his paw. Rose could tell that he also disagreed.
“It isn’t actually cheese,” Mr. Butter said, correcting Mr. Kerr. “Not in a made-from-curdled-cow’s-milk sort of way. Rather, it’s a cheese-like substance with powerful magical properties. These magical properties have been known to descendants of Filbert and Albatross Bliss for quite some time, due to the occasional piece of broken moon rock crashing onto Earth. But no one has had the technology to harness the magical properties of Moon’s Cheese on a grand scale—until now, that is.
“Mr. Mechanico,” continued Mr. Butter. “Why don’t you show Miss Bliss the cheese video.”
Mr. Mechanico reached over to the control board with one of his tentacles and pulled a red lever. The giant closet of red mason jars parted down the middle, revealing a movie screen as tall as the building itself. Mr. Mechanico pressed a series of buttons, and a vid
eo started to play of a trio of octopus-shaped robots making grilled cheese sandwiches over an open campfire. A faint soundtrack of classical music played softly.
“No,” said Mr. Butter, exasperated. “The other one.”
Another series of pushed buttons and a new video came on the screen—this time it was of another octopus-shaped robot dipping a crouton into a pot of fondue.
“The other one, Mechanico!”
A third video clicked onto the screen—a view of the moon through the windshield of an approaching spaceship. The moon grew larger in the image as the ship drew closer to the moon’s surface, and Rose could see that it wasn’t the dull-gray rock she’d expected. Instead, it seemed to jiggle like a vast grayish-white sea of Jell-O.
Then the view changed to a camera mounted under the ship. As the craft flew close to the surface, something extended from its belly—a massive robotic arm with a scoop on the end as big as a school bus. It plunged beneath the surface and pulled up a wedge of thick white cheese.
“You see, Rosemary Bliss,” said Mr. Butter, “there’s plenty of Moon’s Cheese to be had—more than enough to feed every person in the nation one of your marvelous Moony Pyes.”
“Great,” Rose said, feeling sick to her stomach. “That’s just great.”
“Marvelous,” Gus muttered under his breath, dripping with sarcasm.
“Yes,” said Mr. Kerr, unaware that it was the cat, not Rose, who had spoken. “It is marvelous.”
“But that was old footage from our last cheese run. Where are we now with the current launch, Mechanico?” asked Mr. Butter.
“All systems go,” answered Mr. Mechanico, and he reached down to the control board and pulled a green lever.
At first, nothing seemed to happen.
Then, on the enormous video screen, Rose saw the cake-shaped building from the outside. From its top, swirls of white smoke curled into the air. “What’s that?” she asked.
“A launch pad,” Mr. Butter replied.
“For what?” Rose asked.
Mr. Butter eyed Rose with faint disdain. “For the rocket ship. Which we are now launching. Which will go to the moon. And fetch us more cheese.” His broad, thin smile reappeared. “Easy. As. Pie.”
Rose clutched Gus in her arms. The mason jars began to rattle on the shelves, and there was a whirlwind of noise. The smoke on the screen thickened, and the rattling grew fiercer and fiercer and then—
All of a sudden, it stopped.
For a moment, Rose thought she could make out a tiny rocket ship soaring into the dark-blue sky on the video screen, but she wasn’t completely sure.
“There it goes,” said Mr. Butter with an elated sigh. He pinched his own cheeks and smacked his nonexistent lips together. “We should be all cheesed up in two weeks or so.”
Rose’s heart sank. With her help, there’d be no stopping the unholy alliance of the Mostess Snack Corporation and the International Society of the Rolling Pin.
“Come along, Rose,” said Mr. Butter. “That’s not even the main attraction. There’s still more!”
“More?” Rose repeated weakly. “Isn’t that enough?”
Mr. Butter wagged a stick-thin finger. “There’s something else I need to show you. Something very important.” He folded himself back into the front seat of the golf cart, then scowled. “Don’t look so down in the mouth! We’ll have your Moony Pyes out there in the world lickety-split!”
That’s what I’m afraid of, Rose thought to herself. But she got into the back of the cart without another word.
It wasn’t even noon yet, but Rose could see heat waves piping up from the road as Mr. Kerr pulled up in front of another building. This one was in the shape of a giant pastry bag, plumped up at the bottom but narrowing to a fluted glass tip at the very top.
“You’re going to like this one, Rose,” said Mr. Butter as Mr. Kerr parked outside the towering glass doors.
“If you say so,” Rose muttered, following Mr. Butter and Mr. Kerr through the building’s grand lobby. In place of flower arrangements, there were bouquets of candies and cookies. “This looks almost like a hotel,” she said.
“That’s because it is a hotel,” said Mr. Kerr.
“And people say children aren’t observant!” said Mr. Butter.
“A hotel for who?” Rose asked. “The families of the bakers?”
“Certainly not,” said Mr. Butter. “This is a hotel for guests to the compound.”
They boarded a glass elevator on the far wall of the lobby. “To the top!” Mr. Butter announced, fishing a key from his pocket. It was a silvery miniature rolling pin with teeth and notches carved into it. He slid it into a waiting keyhole, turned it, and then pressed the highest button.
The glass box immediately began to rise, slowly at first but gaining speed. One wall looked down upon the hotel lobby, but the other looked out upon the world. Rose could see the whole expanse of the Mostess compound, the rocket launchpad atop the warehouse building that Mr. Butter had called a laboratory, the desert of gray warehouses, the jungle of marketing buildings and ingredient laboratories, and acres of delivery trucks parked in rows.
At the farthest corner of the compound, she spied a curiosity, something completely out of place in the whole industrial mess: a small red cottage, with a brick chimney and a dilapidated front porch, sitting on a bit of grass the size of her own backyard back in Calamity Falls. It was as if Mr. Butter had cut something from the pages of a fairy tale and planted it in the corner of his space-age empire.
“What’s that?” Rose asked, pointing toward the cottage. “That little shack back there?”
Mr. Kerr looked nervously at Mr. Butter. “What? I don’t see anything.”
“It’s nothing,” Mr. Butter said stiffly, adjusting his glasses. “Been so long since I’ve been over at that corner of the compound, I forget what’s there.”
“But does someone live there?” Rose asked.
“I said, never mind!” Mr. Butter hissed, his eyes bulging and wild. He clenched his fists tightly, as though he were upset, and Rose didn’t ask any more questions.
The elevator dinged at floor 34.
“We’re here.” Mr. Butter smiled and smoothed out the creases in his pants. “Aren’t surprises exciting?” He seemed overcome with glee, completely recovered from his sudden anger about the strange little cottage.
The doors opened on a plush corridor, carpeted in gold-and-red-patterned carpet and lit by golden wall sconces. Soft music tinkled faintly in the air, accompanying them as they knocked on the door of room 3405.
Rose yawned. Baking all night had left her too exhausted to worry about what Mr. Butter had behind the door. At this point, what could one more surprise from him matter? He couldn’t be any more evil than he already was.
And then the door flew open, revealing Purdy, Albert, and Balthazar, looking as surprised as Rose felt.
“Mom. Dad. Grampa.” Rose stood in the doorway, unsure what to do.
“Go on,” Mr. Butter said. “Talk to your family. We’ll give you a moment of privacy.” With a sharp push, he shoved her inside and pulled the door shut.
Rose’s shock gave way to sweet relief as her family surged forward and surrounded her, embracing her in turns and together so that she could barely catch her breath. “I can’t believe you’re here!” Rose cried, dropping her backpack to the floor and hugging them back. “I thought I’d never see you again!”
Gus crawled out of her backpack. “You dropped me,” he said.
“We were so worried!” said Purdy, hugging her daughter so tightly that Rose could barely breathe. “We had the police searching. Everyone was a mess. Then Jacques came running in from the backyard saying that he’d had a conversation with the neighbor’s Persian cat, and the cat had heard a story about the Bliss girl of Calamity Falls being held at the Mostess Snack Cake Corporation.”
“The Caterwaul!” Gus proclaimed. “I told you, dear Rose. Never doubt the organizational skills of a herd of cats.”<
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“At first we thought Jacques was just being French,” said Balthazar.
From his pocket came a small voice, “Oh, you are a rude man to insult my people in such a way after how loyally I have served you!”
“Sorry, Jacques,” Balthazar muttered. “But even you’d admit that you are one gullible mouse.”
A soft “Oui” came from his pocket.
“We decided it was our only lead,” Albert continued. “The police weren’t having any luck tracking you down, so we all piled in the van and drove two hours, and here we are. We left your siblings safe at home with Mrs. Carlson.”
“Mr. Butter has been very nice to us,” said Purdy, whose hair was so disheveled with heat and worry that it looked like an angora rabbit. “But he hasn’t quite explained why you’re here.”
“Rose has been wonderful,” said Mr. Butter from behind them, as he swung open the door again and stepped inside the room. “Giving of herself and her talents. Aiding us in our time of need. Doing the work that only she can do.” He cleared his throat. “Speaking of which, it’s back to the test kitchen for her. The day is wasting away!”
“No!” Rose snapped. “I’m going home with my parents now, thank you very much.”
“Oh, actually, no one is going home,” said Mr. Butter. “Everyone will receive these luxurious, free accommodations until Rose finishes formulating her recipes.”
“And what recipes are these?” said Purdy.
Rose looked over her parents’ shoulders at Mr. Kerr, who smiled at her and drew a finger across his throat.
“Um,” Rose said. “Just some recipes. For Mostess treats.”
“May I have a word with you outside, Rosemary Bliss?” Mr. Butter said, ushering her out into the hall again with a shallow bow and a swish of his arm.
Mr. Kerr held back Rose’s parents while she and Mr. Butter went back out into the plush hallway. On the soft, soft carpet, Mr. Butter said, “It’s a curious thing, Rose. When these fine folks showed up at our door, I first considered telling them I had no idea who you were and sending them back home. But then I realized that their presence gave me a unique tactical advantage.”
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