Bite-Sized Magic
Page 21
Rose pressed the postcard to her heart. “I’m framing this,” she said to her brothers.
“No one could hold Marge down in the first place,” said Ty, swinging a series of quick jabs that landed Sage’s robot in another smoking hunk of metal on the grass. “She just didn’t know it.”
“Oh, man!” said Sage. “I gotta take boxing lessons.”
Rose continued to flip through the postcards. Her eye settled on one that was just a blank, cream-colored card embossed in the center with a radiating silver rolling pin.
Her blood ran cold as she flipped over the postcard and read Aunt Lily’s unmistakable calligraphy.
Just because you turned Mr. Butter into the King of Sunshine and Daisies and destroyed the Mostess Corporation doesn’t mean you’ve defeated the Rolling Pin. See you soon. Love, L.
“Ty! Sage!” Rose cried. “Look at this!”
Ty and Sage dropped their gloves and sauntered over. They passed the postcard back and forth.
“It smells like flowers,” Sage said, holding the card to his nose. “It’s really from her.”
“But better show Mom and Dad and Balthazar, just to be safe,” Ty said.
At that moment, Albert and Balthazar drove up in the Bliss family van. The back door of the van slid open, and Purdy and Kathy Keegan stepped out onto the driveway.
“And why can’t we manufacture Mind Your Own Beeswax Buttons?” Kathy Keegan asked. “They’d be a wonderful addition to the Kathy Keegan dessert line. They’d stop tabloids and gossip columnists in their tracks.”
“Because the Dread Swarm of the Tubertine needs time to regenerate,” Purdy explained patiently. “These magical ingredients can’t be had en masse. You need to use them responsibly.”
“I see,” Kathy answered, scratching her chin thoughtfully. “You’ll have to forgive me. This whole magic thing is new to me.”
Rose handed her mother the postcard. “It’s from Lily,” she said.
Purdy glanced at it and tucked it into her pocket. “Never mind about that. We have a surprise for you, Rose.”
Purdy and Kathy pulled Rose into the kitchen, where Albert had pulled the shutters closed, just like the first time he had showed her the secret hiding place of the Bliss Cookery Booke. Ty, Sage, and Leigh followed behind.
“What’s going on?” said Ty.
“Shhh!” whispered Purdy.
The kitchen was dark, except for a few ribbons of light flowing in through the shutters. Balthazar entered from the front room carrying a pink cake, with thirteen tiny candles sticking out from the top. When Balthazar got close enough to set the cake in front of Rose, she could see that they were actually thirteen Blinding Beetles hovering above the frosting, sparkling in different colors.
“Happy thirteenth birthday, Rosie!” he cried.
She’d forgotten what day it was. How could that have happened? she wondered, but she knew the answer already. Sometimes life was just so full that you lost track of things. “I—I forgot!” she said.
“Time to blow out the Blinding Beetles! And don’t forget to make a wish!”
Rose smiled and blew as the Blinding Beetles scattered into a cloud of colored sparks that lit up the room, while everyone clapped and cheered. “Yay!” Leigh cried.
“Did you make a wish?” Gus asked from down at her feet.
“I made two,” said Rose looking down at the cat. “But I can’t tell you what they are. But you can bet I was careful.”
Gus said nothing in reply, just purred and butted his head against her shin.
In one of her hands, Albert placed the whisk-shaped key that opened the secret storeroom behind the walk-in refrigerator; in the other, he set the gray pamphlet of questionable recipes and their antidotes: Albatross’s Apocrypha. “Go put this back where it belongs, please, Rosie.”
Rose took a deep breath and opened the walk-in refrigerator. The Blinding Beetles followed her to light her way, like little fairies, past the wall of eggs and milk and sugar and chocolate. She pulled back the green tapestry on the far wall and inserted the whisk-shaped key into the hole in the wooden door. She pulled open the door, and the Blinding Beetles followed her inside to illuminate the centuries of Bliss family portraits that lined the walls of the secret room.
Rose found the hollowed-out place in the thick back cover of the Bliss Cookery Booke where the Apocrypha was stored. She noticed that a new recipe had been added on the final page, in careful printing:
CHOCOLATE-GINGERBREAD OF BROTHERHOOD: For the Cessation of the Thrumpin’s Curse
It was in 2014 in the American state of Pennsylvania that Lady Rosemary Bliss did, under greatest duress, create an antidote to the gingerbread created from the ground ginger root first offered to Albatross Bliss by the evil Thrumpin. She did create a chocolate-gingerbread batter and add THE BROTHER STONE, whereupon the bakers so afflicted did feel a sense of brotherhood once more.
Rose nearly wept as she stared at her name, printed in the Bliss Cookery Booke: Lady Rosemary Bliss.
She had been welcomed into a tradition as old as time. She had invented her own antidote, and she was a real Bliss family baker. The look of her name, printed in that ancient calligraphy, was the most beautiful sight she’d ever seen.
Rose closed the book and reentered the darkened kitchen, where her family and Kathy waited. “You’re a real Bliss Baker now!” Purdy exclaimed. “You’re part of the history books, honey!”
Rose fell into her mother’s arms. “That was one of my wishes,” she whispered, overwhelmed.
“You were born to it, darling,” said Purdy. “And the other wish?”
Just then, the kitchen door creaked open. Rose peeked out from her mother’s arms and saw Devin Stetson peer into the kitchen.
“Oh, sorry. I didn’t know you guys were having a ceremony,” he said. “I just wanted to know if Rose wanted to come for a birthday bike ride.”
Rose turned back to her mother. That was the other wish, she wanted to say. But she thought that she would keep it private, just for herself.
“Well, Rose has a lot of baking to do,” Balthazar began. “Seeing as how she’s an official Bliss family baker.”
“Actually,” said Rose, “I think the world can wait for a little while.”
Her mother kissed her head and released her. “Have fun, honey. You deserve it.”
And so Lady Rosemary Bliss did ride off into the blistering light of afternoon, on the morning of her thirteenth birthday, with the Blinding Beetles showering streaks of orange and green and purple light behind her, and she did no longer feel exactly like a girl.
Instead, she did feel almost like a Lady.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thank you to my mother, for providing a safe haven in which to write this book, for the late-night movie marathons, and for the all the kale you bought me. You have rescued me from the Mostess Compound many times.
Thank you to Katherine Tegen, Katie Bignell, Amy Ryan, and all the book chefs at Katherine Tegen Books and HarperCollins Children’s Books for believing in the Bliss family and for putting them into the hands of readers.
This book, and indeed this whole series, would not have existed without the patient guidance and wild creativity of Ted Malawer and Michael Stearns at The Inkhouse. Thank you for allowing me to tell the story of the Bliss family. There aren’t enough baked goods in the world to repay you.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
KATHRYN LITTLEWOOD is a writer, actress, comedienne, and bon vivant who lives in New York City, works often in Los Angeles, and has a sweet tooth for pain au chocolat and sweet novels for middle-grade readers. This, her third novel, joins Bliss and A Dash of Magic in the Bliss trilogy. You can visit her online at www.littlewoodbooks.com.
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BACK AD
CREDITS
Cover art © 2014 by Iacopo Bruno
COPYRIGHT
Katherine Tegen Books is an imprint o
f HarperCollins Publishers.
Bite-Sized Magic
Text copyright © 2014 by The Inkhouse
Interior illustrations copyright © 2014 by Erin McGuire
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
www.harpercollinschildrens.com
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Littlewood, Kathryn.
Bite-sized magic : a Bliss novel / Kathryn Littlewood. — First edition.
pages cm
Summary: Twelve-year-old Rosemary Bliss must use her magical baking skills to escape when she is kidnapped by the owner of the Mostess Snack Cake Corporation.
ISBN 978-0-06-208426-2 (hardcover bdg.)
EPUB Edition NOVEMBER 2013 ISBN 9780062084286
[1. Bakers and bakeries—Fiction. 2. Magic—Fiction. 3. Kidnapping—Fiction. 4. Cookbooks—Fiction. 5. Brothers and sisters—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.L736472Bit 2014
2013008048
[Fic]—dc23
CIP
AC
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13 14 15 16 17 CG/RRDH 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
FIRST EDITION
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