A Dash of Magic: A Bliss Novel

by Kathryn Littlewood

  “Right away!” said the clerk. The phone rang again, and Leigh held up the receiver as Lily answered.

  “What?” Lily asked groggily, her voice ringing out from the receiver.

  “Lily,” said Leigh. “It is Jean-Pierre. We would like to plan a publicity event in regards to your victory. Something the entire world will see.”

  Lily was silent a moment. “Are you saying I’ve already won?”

  “I can’t imagine any other possible outcome,” said Leigh.

  “What did you have in mind for this publicity event?”

  “I can’t discuss it over the phone,” said Leigh. “You’ll have to meet me in my office at the expo center.”

  “Now?”

  “There is no time like the present! True confectioners never sleep!”

  Lily said, “But can’t this wait a few more hours? It’s barely four in the morning.”

  Leigh looked to Rose, who shrugged. Frustrated, Leigh spoke in her normal voice. “It’s only just across the street, lazybones!”

  Silence stretched down the phone line. At last Lily asked, “Why did you just sound like a little girl?”

  Leigh cleared her throat. “I suffer from stomach pains,” she said in Jean-Pierre’s voice again. “It is terrible. Now, will you come?”

  “Give me ten minutes,” Lily said.

  Leigh hung up, and Rose, Ty, and Sage went to peer out the window, which overlooked the sidewalk in front of the Hôtel de Notre Dame.

  Twelve minutes later, they saw Lily and the Shrunken Man hurrying across the street to the expo center.

  “Now’s our chance!” Rose said.

  Moments later, Rose, Ty, Sage, and Leigh, with Sage carrying Gus in the BabyBjörn and Jacques nestled in Rose’s sweatshirt pocket, skidded to a halt in front of the secret elevator. Standing before it, vacuuming the carpet, was a maid in a conservative black frock.

  The maid shut off the vacuum when she saw them. “This area is restricted, young woman,” she said. She looked down at Gus. “Particularly for cats.”

  Leigh held up the key they’d been given last time they’d visited Lily’s suite. “But we have the key!” she said.

  The maid shook her head. “You must be mistaken,” she said. “There are only two people staying on the Fantasy Floor, and I know both of them. Now shoo!”

  As they retreated back across the lobby, Ty muttered, “Now what?”

  Rose glanced at a house phone on the other side of the hotel lobby. “Leigh, can you do Lily’s voice?”

  Leigh grinned devilishly. “Of course, darling,” she said in Lily’s sugary sweet tone.

  On the lobby phone was a button that automatically rang the front desk. Rose pressed the button and held the phone up to Leigh.

  The kids watched as the clerk picked up the ringing telephone. “Good morning, this is the Hôtel de Notre Dame front desk,” he said. “How may I help you?”

  “Hello, it is Lily Le Fay,” Leigh said quietly. “I’ve spilled water on my kitchen counter. I need a maid to come and mop it up. Immediately.”

  “Of course, Ms. Le Fay!” said the clerk in a panic. “Do not lift a finger! We will be right there!”

  The clerk hung up and jogged over to the maid. “There’s an emergency on the Fantasy Floor!” he cried. “Lily Le Fay has spilled water on her kitchen counter! Go!”

  The maid promptly shut off her vacuum and hurried into the elevator. Rose waited until the elevator departed. Then she looked at her siblings. “Our turn,” she said.

  Ty nodded. “But we’d better hurry. It won’t take Lily long to figure out she’s been tricked.”

  Moments later, they arrived in the Fantasy Floor antechamber. The door to Lily’s suite was already open. Rose peered in and saw the maid wiping up the nonexistent water spill on the kitchen counter. While she was occupied, the kids slipped through the door and hid in the bathroom until the maid left.

  They split up to search the suite. Rose and Ty checked Lily’s bedroom, but all they found were a closet full of black cocktail dresses, twelve identical cotton bathrobes, hundreds of bottles of high-end skin care products, two dozen boxes of high-heeled sandals, and a shelf of self-help books with titles like Don’t Ask for What You Want—Take It!

  Rose peeked under each of the shoe boxes, in between every dress, behind every self-help book, but the Bliss Cookery Booke was nowhere to be found.

  Sage, who ransacked the kitchen, and Leigh, who crawled through the master bathroom, had similar luck.

  They met back in the main room of the suite. Sage looked perplexed. “Lily must have locked our Booke in a Swiss bank,” he said. “Where the heck could she be hiding it?”

  Gus and Jacques were perched on the windowsill, watching for the inevitable return of Lily and the Shrunken Man. “I am sure I don’t know,” said the stodgy cat, “but now may not be the best time to discuss it. Lily and her assistant just left the expo center, and they don’t look happy.”

  Sage picked up Gus and fastened him back into the BabyBjörn. As Rose reached for Jacques, he held up a single paw. “I will stay,” he announced. “I will spy all night and discover the location of your prized book.”

  “You can’t!” said Ty, playing lookout from the door of the suite. “It’s too dangerous!”

  “There is no choice,” Jacques said. “If there is foul play tomorrow and Rose does not emerge victorious, you must know where the book is so that you can retrieve it.”

  Rose was stunned. So, apparently, was Gus. “Jacques,” the cat said, hanging from Sage’s chest in the BabyBjörn. “I never thought I would be saying this to a mouse, but your nobility of character rivals that of a Scottish Fold. You are a cat among mice.”

  Jacques bowed to the cat, saluted the kids, and, with a cry of “Vive la France!” darted to the floor and through a hole in the baseboard.

  “That was really touching,” said Ty, “but any moment now Lily’s creepy little boyfriend is going to run in here and shoot us in the neck with a poison dart gun or something. Can we go already?”

  Leigh nodded. “Can we go already?” she repeated in Ty’s voice.

  Rose and her siblings piled into the secret elevator and rode it back down to the lobby. They were just in time. As they waited for the regular elevator to take them to their own suite, they saw Lily rushing across the lobby on her way back in.

  She was by herself.

  “Hey, guys,” Rose said. “Not that I really want to see him, but where is the Shrunken Man?”

  Sage shrugged. “Who cares?”

  “Yeah,” agreed Ty. “It really doesn’t matter.”

  “Why not?” asked Rose.

  “’Cause we’re totally gonna win tomorrow,” he said. “It’s not even a question. Whatever theme pops up, we have the ingredients to cover it. We got so much crazy stuff this week.”

  Rose smiled. “Yeah,” she said, shaking her head at the big, fat book she’d wanted to leave in place of the real Booke. It hadn’t been much of a plan: Lily would have known it wasn’t the Cookery Booke right away. “We really did.”

  When they got back to their suite, Rose pulled out her room key only to discover that the front door was already ajar.

  “Guys,” she whispered. “Did we leave the door open?”

  Ty and Sage looked at each other, then they looked at Leigh. She just shrugged.

  Rose pushed the door open and flicked on the light.

  Standing in the center of the living room, sneering at them, was the Shrunken Man. He held a suitcase in one hand—Balthazar’s suitcase, the one that contained all of their magical ingredients!

  The Shrunken Man sketched a little bow. “Hello, children,” he croaked in a voice like sandpaper. “That was a clever trick, luring us away from our suite. Did you think that when Lily and Jeremius got to Jean-Pierre’s office—”

  “Who is Jeremius?” Ty huffed.

  “Me! As I was saying, did you think that when Lily and Jeremius found Jean-Pierre’s office empty, we woul
dn’t figure out what you had done?” Jeremius lifted the suitcase, his eyes glittering green.

  Ty stepped forward. Rose had never seen him looking so serious. “There’s nothing you want in that suitcase, hombre,” he said softly. “So I suggest you put it down.”

  Jeremius laughed. “I laugh!” he said. “Ha-ha!” He set down Balthazar’s suitcase, then opened it so they could see what they knew was inside: It was filled with blue mason jars. The ghostly gust, the true queen’s blush, the secret of the Mona Lisa’s smile, and all of the other specialty ingredients that Rose and her family had spent the past week so painstakingly collecting. “When we were inside the expo center and figured out we’d been duped, we decided to loot your ingredients. To teach you a lesson in playing fair!”

  Without thinking, Rose lunged across the room. Quick as a wink, Jeremius snapped the suitcase shut and leaped onto the back of a couch.

  “I don’t think so,” he croaked.

  Sage was fuming. “Who are you?” he asked. “What group home for homicidal dwarves did Lily rescue you from?”

  “Oh, I’m one of the family,” crowed Jeremius. “So I’m sure you won’t mind if I borrow these for a little while?”

  “Actually, we do!” Ty cried. He and Sage sprang at Jeremius from opposite ends of the couch, while Rose dived straight at him.

  But they were too slow.

  With a deft acrobatic flip, he somersaulted out the window, the suitcase clutched to his chest, landing astride the wide window ledge. “Ha-ha!” He blew them a wet kiss, then ran away along the ledge, leaping onto a nearby rooftop and prancing along its peak. They watched him caper and listened to his fading cackles as he became a silhouette in the pink-hued light of dawn.

  Rose hung her head. “That’s it,” she sobbed. “We might as well go home.”

  That morning, Rose walked into the expo center to find everything rearranged. All of the dusty kitchens had been cleared away, leaving the vast room empty save for two kitchens that stood face-to-face: hers and Lily’s.

  The balconies lining the sides of the room were overflowing with curious audience members, but no one stood on the actual floor of the center except for Rose and Ty, Lily and Jeremius, and about twenty-five men and women with cameras and microphones on poles and endless coils of brightly colored wire.

  Across the aisle, Lily was wearing her signature black cocktail dress. Her fake black hair tumbled in perfect curls like a cartoon princess’s.

  Rose could see her own reflection in one of the shiny pots on Lily’s stovetop: her thin black hair was dirty and stringy, and she’d pulled it back into a messy ponytail. She looked like she hadn’t slept in days. And her green hoodie was covered with flecks of dried batter on the chest and sleeves that smelled like stale eggs and chocolate.

  But Rose wasn’t worried about how she looked at that particular moment. She was worried about what she had to work with in the competition, which was nothing.

  Rose leaned against the counter, dizzy with despair. Last night’s mission to recover the Booke had been a terrible mess, and it had ruined her—all because she didn’t trust herself to be able to win in the Wild Card category. Now she was sure she would lose. Jeremius had run off with all of their special ingredients. There was no way an ordinary baked good could beat one of Lily’s magical ones, especially if they were infused with the Magic Ingredient.

  Lily waved to Rose, then held up a small wire birdcage. In a corner of the cage shivered a tiny gray mouse curled up in a ball.

  “Jacques!” Rose cried.

  “Oh, is that his name?” Lily said. “Clever, to arrange for a mouse as a spy. But alas, he has a weakness for Camembert. I put a chunk in this decorative birdcage, and he could not resist.”

  Lily set the cage atop her pantry shelf of ingredients and wiped her hands on her skirt. “Filthy,” she muttered.

  Just then, the vast chandeliers that hung from the ceiling of the expo center went dark. An ominous drumroll filled the room, and then the lights burst on, revealing the rotund master of baking at the microphone.

  “This is the final countdown!” he bellowed. “Two contestants remain: Lily Le Fay, celebrity chef extraordinaire, and Rosemary Bliss, child.” The applause was deafening.

  Rose couldn’t help looking across the aisle at Lily’s kitchen. Throughout her career, Lily had done every low-down, sneaky, cheating thing she could to stomp out anyone who’d gotten in her way. And now she was about to stomp out Rose.

  Jean-Pierre exhaled a shaky breath into the microphone. “I would like to say a word now about Lily Le Fay.” He paused a minute to wipe the corner of his eye. “I will do my best to contain my tears, but I promise nothing.”

  A white screen the size of the entire gymnasium wall at Calamity Falls Middle School descended from the ceiling, and a Celine Dion song began to play in the background. Images of Lily’s performance over the past four days began appearing on the screen, each “candid” photograph more polished and perfect than the last.

  “Lily Le Fay is simply a master,” Jean-Pierre said. “Her baked goods are like professionally wrapped presents: glossy, colorful, and filled with wondrous surprises. And Lily herself is like a present as well. Between her television show and her cookbooks, her patented whisks and bowls and spatulas and beaters, Lily has conquered the world of celebrity baking. It seems there is no stopping her.”

  The crowd erupted into a tsunami of applause. The slide show ended with a picture of a smiling Lily licking a dollop of whipped cream off her finger.

  Can we just get to the announcement of the category, already? Rose thought, tapping her foot on one of the tiles of the kitchen floor.

  “And then there is, of course, the young Miss Bliss.” Jean-Pierre’s tears ceased as he scratched the coarse bristles under his nose. “In her time here, Miss Bliss has created a blackened cookie, an orange ball, an angel food cake, and a banana bread. She’s been assisted by her very attractive older brother, Thyme, who has spent much of the competition smiling into the cameras. Today she seems not to have combed her hair or to have changed her sweatshirt, which is not so surprising given that she is a middle school student.”

  That’s it, Rose thought, starting to untie her apron. I’m outta here.

  “I never suspected that young Rosemary would survive even the first day of competition,” Jean-Pierre continued. “And indeed, her blackened cookie was a close call. But then imagine my surprise when I tasted her orange ball, her angel food cake, and her banana bread, and found that I had never in my life been so delighted, so charmed, so . . . moved . . . by a simple baked good.”

  Rose stopped fumbling with her apron strings as her stomach jumped into her throat. Jean-Pierre Jeanpierre, the world’s foremost judge of baked goods, has never been more delighted than when he was eating my banana bread?

  “I have watched Rosemary at her work throughout the week. Not only do her focus, poise, and technical skill rival that of seasoned professionals, but she bakes with a certain level of . . . we might call it grace. Humble grace.”

  Humble grace? Rose thought, dumbstruck.

  The master chef continued. “I recognize a quality in her that only one other person possesses, and that person is myself: It is the quality of having been born to bake.”

  Rose gulped. Maybe I could win, she thought. Maybe it isn’t all about who has the best ingredients and the most magical help and all that. Maybe it’s about who is the most passionate about baking, and helping people feel better.

  Then again, maybe passion just wasn’t enough.

  “And now for the surprise theme of the day,” Jean-Pierre said.

  Here it comes.

  Whatever the theme would be—whether it was FLAKY or DOUGHY or RAW or BURNED or RANCID or whatever bizarre thing Jean-Pierre had dreamed up in his angel food cake–assisted sleep—Rose would be utterly unable to execute a dish that could stack up against Lily’s. She had nothing magical at her disposal, not even a girlish giggle or the first wind of autumn
. The Dwarf of Perpetual Sleep was asleep elsewhere, and the true queen’s blush had disappeared into the night.

  “The theme is UNUSUAL GRAINS.”

  The room erupted into whispers and gasps as the audience in the balconies expressed their surprise.

  “You’ll have one hour to gather and plan, as usual, and then the most important hour of baking in your lives will commence. Go now. Venture forth into your imaginations.”

  The bald chef left the stage as the balconies began to clear. Rose leaned back against the counter. What was she going to do?

  “Oh man, mi hermana,” Ty said. “You don’t look so good. You need to wash your face. Your eyes are all wet.”

  Rose went to wipe her cheek with the sleeve of her hoodie, but at just that moment Balthazar appeared and yanked her arm away. “Leave it!” he cried.

  Balthazar set down the brocade carpet bag he’d been carrying and pried it open.

  “Grandpa Balthazar,” Rose pleaded, “what am I supposed to do? Jeremius took all of our magical ingredients!”

  Balthazar pulled a test tube from the carpet bag and held it underneath Rose’s eyelids, which were spilling over like the top tier of a fountain. A few of the tears pooled at the bottom of the test tube. Balthazar stuck a cork in it and handed it to Ty.

  “What’s this for?” Ty asked, gingerly pinching the vial of tears between the tips of his thumb and forefinger like it was filled with plutonium.

  “I’ll explain,” Balthazar grunted, then turned to Rose.

  “You’ll make the polenta,” he said matter-of-factly. “Remember the polenta I showed you in Mexico? Just do that. You whisk cornmeal in a pot with boiling water. You add honey, then a sprig of rosemary, then you add—”

  “The burp of the bloated bullfrog, I know,” Rose said. “But we don’t have the bloated bullfrog.”

  Lily must have overheard, because she hissed from across the aisle. “Psst. Rose. Do you mean this bloated bullfrog?”

  Lily ducked behind her chopping block for a moment. When she stood back up, she was holding a blue mason jar—with the same uncomfortable amphibian Rose had met in Mexico leaning miserably against the side of the jar, holding his belly.