A Dash of Magic: A Bliss Novel

by Kathryn Littlewood

  Ty put a restraining hand on Rose’s arm. “Leave this to me,” he whispered. “I can make any girl blush.” He slipped off his shoes and swung a bare foot back and forth through the water. “Yes, ma’am,” he said. “Mind if I come in? It’s so warm out here, and I’m all sweaty.” He adopted a pose that he called “The Young Yachtsman,” which involved pulling on an imaginary rope. “I’ve never been in the presence of a queen before. It’s . . . thrilling.”

  But instead of blushing, Marie laughed—softly at first, then building to full snorts. “Are you trying to flatter me? You, a scrawny boy? Am I on a television prank show?”

  “Hey!” Ty said. “I’m not scrawny!”

  This only made Marie laugh all the more. She grabbed her sides and rolled about in the fountain, not touching the water at all.

  Sage splashed in, too. “We need you to blush!” he said. “We’re in a baking competition, and we need—well, it’s a long story. But we need to capture your blush.”

  Marie Antoinette stopped laughing and looked serious for a moment. “I wish I could help you, young master. But the last time I blushed was in seventeen sixty, on my fifth birthday. Since then I’ve seen just about everything and done just about everything else. I am—how do you say?—shameless! Nothing will make me blush!”

  “Oh yeah?” Sage said. He climbed onto the ledge of the fountain. With his chest held high, he cupped one wet hand and slipped it into his armpit. Solemnly, he lifted his elbow up in the air before slamming it back toward his chest.

  It was so loud and disturbing a sound that it sent a flock of pigeons squawking up in the air.

  But Marie Antoinette only moved her shoulders back and forth, which was as close as she could come to shaking her severed head. “Sorry,” she said. “I’ve farted before major heads of state. It doesn’t even make me laugh anymore.”

  Ty and Sage both looked to Rose, but she was plumb out of ideas.

  Just then they heard an angry howl coming from behind them on the garden path. Suddenly the transparent form of Ourson hurtled into the clearing, sailed over the ledge of the fountain, and fastened his hands around what was left of Marie Antoinette’s neck. “How could you say ‘Let them eat cake’?” he roared. “We were starving! All seven of my sisters died while you were hosting wine-and-cheese receptions!”

  The ghost of Marie’s severed head slid from her shoulders and slipped softly into the water.

  “Ourson!” Rose scolded.

  Shamefacedly, the ghost stepped away from headless Marie Antoinette. “I did not mean to do that!” he said. “I didn’t know it would fall off!”

  Rose pointed. “Find her head and put it back!”

  The ghost looked thoughtful as he sank into the water and swished his insubstantial hands around. “It is very slimy, this fountain!” he said. “Why do they not clean it?”

  Rose put her hands on her hips. “Just do as you’re told.”

  “Ah-ha!” He rose up out of the water, and in his arms was the startled-looking head of the dead queen. Ourson held it out to her body and placed it in her hands; then she set it in place, but backward.

  “I really should find some way of fastening it permanently,” she said as she twisted it around the right way.

  Rose squinted at the ghost and gasped. There could be no mistake. The ghost’s cheeks were very faintly red.

  “Sage!” she cried. “Ty!”

  Sage grabbed a handkerchief from his pocket, stumbled through the water to the ghost’s side, and gently blotted at Marie’s cheek. Ty was right behind him with a blue mason jar. Sage turned and dropped the hankie in, and Ty sealed the jar shut.

  Marie Antoinette seemed not to have noticed. She was staring at Ourson. “I never thought about it!” she said to him. “All those parties . . . I thought everyone was having parties. I’m so sorry for your sisters, . . . you handsome, brutish, devastatingly handsome young man!”

  Ourson lowered his hands and stepped back. “And I am sorry I beheaded you. Again. I suppose you didn’t deserve to have your head cut off. In a way, you were merely an accomplice.” He bowed. “An exceptionally beautiful accomplice, I might add.”

  Suddenly there was a shriek from the other side of the fountain. Just across the pool, peering at them through the harsh sun and pointing, was a portly, mustachioed guard.

  Rose turned back toward Ourson and Marie Antoinette, but they had disappeared into the water.

  “That water is terribly dirty!” the man shouted. “Get out!”

  Rose realized that the guard wasn’t pointing at the ghosts but at her and her brothers. She sloshed to the ledge of the fountain and pulled herself out. “Sorry!” she yelled back. “We were hot.”

  Rose turned to Sage, who was carrying the mason jar with Marie Antoinette’s blush-stained handkerchief inside. “Let’s get this to the hotel. Hopefully Balthazar will be finished translating the last recipe. And I need to change my pants.”

  Back at the Hôtel de Notre Dame, Rose and Sage knocked on Balthazar’s bedroom door and cracked it open about a foot. Inside, he was hunched over the Booke, consulting various tables and indexes and maps and charts and lunar almanacs.

  “We got the queen’s blush,” she announced proudly. “Do you have the Ravishing Rugelach recipe?”

  “You’re kidding!” he said. “Whose cheek did you get?”

  “Oh . . . just Marie Antoinette’s,” Sage said proudly.

  “I’m impressed,” said Balthazar. “Now, as for the Ravishing Rugelach, I finished translating, but we’re gonna have to pick a new recipe for the ROLLED category. This one is impossible. Though at least the main ingredient is in Paris.”

  “Why?”

  Balthazar handed Rose the sheet of paper. “Read it and weep.”

  Rose looked over the recipe:

  Ravishing Rugelach, for Matrimonial Merriment.

  It was in 1645 that the baker Jean ValBliss did make a pilgrimage to the Cathédrale Notre Dame de Paris with his fiancée, the ravishing Anais Amembert, whom he intended to wed on the steps of the cathédrale. But when he did arrive, he did find that a plague had overtaken the land. Jean and Anais proceeded with their wedding, and together did bake these rugelach to serve to their guests, whereupon the town was filled, for a single afternoon, with pure Bliss.

  Jean and Anais Bliss did cut one staff of butter into a bowl with one fist of white flour, two fists of sugar, and one fist of soured cream. Afterward he did add the rolling midnight chime of the Notre Dame Bourdon bell called Emmanuel.

  “We have to collect the midnight chime of the bell at Notre Dame Cathedral?” said Rose. “How hard could that be?”

  A snort came from Rose’s front pocket. “Fools rush in where angels fear to tread!” warned a tiny voice.

  Rose reached in and scooped out Jacques. “I made the mistake of trespassing in Notre Dame at night once, and I shan’t do it again.”

  “Why?” said Rose. “What’s so awful in there? Is the night guard mean?”

  “There are several night guards,” said Jacques. “But they’re not human. They are gargoyles. Hideous, monstrous, vengeful creatures who rule over the cathedral like it’s their own kingdom.”

  “Well, what else are we supposed to do?” she asked.

  “I haven’t figured it out yet,” Balthazar said, “but I should know by the end of the evening. Your parents already called and said they’d be out all night chasing an inchworm’s shout.”

  “Is that hard to capture?” Sage asked.

  Balthazar scowled. “Have you ever tried to rile up an inchworm? They’re the most reasonable things in the universe.” He looked back down at the sheet of paper. “Let me work while you three get some dinner, and then we’ll figure out what recipe we can substitute for this one.”

  “How long is that going to take?” Rose asked impatiently.

  “Not that long, I think!” Balthazar said with a sparkle in his eyes. “You know, I didn’t really want to come to Paris, but now that I’m here, wi
th all of you impossibly young people, I feel about a hundred years younger! I mean, have you seen how fast I’ve been translating these recipes?”

  “You mean faster than one every six months?” Gus called in from the living room.

  “What was the last thing you translated, cat?” Balthazar shouted back.

  “Why do you two fight all the time?” Rose asked.

  “Isn’t that what best friends do?” Balthazar whispered. “I couldn’t live without that cat. We just like to . . . challenge each other.”

  Rose read the recipe for Ravishing Rugelach once more.

  “Why don’t we just use this?” Rose asked. “It can’t be that difficult to get past a couple of gargoyles.”

  But Balthazar shook his head. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. Gargoyles? They’re like the opposite of inchworms. If there is something more vile and unreasonable in the world, I don’t want to know what it is.”

  “They’re that bad?” Rose asked.

  Jacques shuddered. “The worst.”

  While Sage and Ty played video games and Leigh snored, Rose paced around the room, sighing heavily and talking to herself.

  “It’s come down to me and Lily and Wei Wen, and he is like a master architect of baking. If the category is ROLLED, Lily is going to make a Jittering Jelly Roll, according to what Jacques saw. I have to make something incredible enough to get me through to the finals. What is Balthazar doing in there? He said he was feeling sprightly! We need another plan! Fast!”

  “Calm down, Rosicita!” said Ty.

  “You don’t understand the pressure I’m under!” she screamed. “It’s my fault that the Booke is gone! And it’s up to me to fix it. Me alone. Me!”

  “With all due respect, Rose,” Sage said, “it was all of our faults that the Booke got lost. I gave Lily the key to the fridge. And Ty was the one who wanted to break the Booke out in the first place ’cause he wanted to impress Aunt Lily. And if Mom and Dad hadn’t left, we wouldn’t have had a problem. So it’s not just your fault.”

  “But I was the one that trusted her,” said Rose. “I was the one who ate up her praise and then almost left you guys to join her on her psycho roller coaster ride of fame.”

  “You almost left?” said Sage. “What do you mean?”

  Rose bit her lip. The whole nine months since Lily had left, Rose hadn’t shared what had really happened. She was too ashamed to tell her family that she had actually considered leaving them forever to be on some stupid TV show. “I mean, figuratively. Let’s check on Balthazar’s progress.”

  But when Rose looked in on him, Balthazar was hunched over his Sassanian version of the Booke, snoring. He hadn’t even begun to translate another recipe.

  “Old men have to sleep sometime, I guess. Okay, that’s it!” Rose said. “I don’t care how dangerous it is; we’re going to Notre Dame to get that chime!”

  “Rose, I don’t want to go,” said Sage. “The last time I was on the roof of a Parisian landmark in the middle of the night, I almost didn’t come back down. What are the chances that ROLLED will be the category tomorrow? One in a million.”

  “Actually, it’s one in eight,” she replied.

  “Oh, in that case,” said Sage, “I guess we’d better go.”

  Rose, Ty, Sage, and Leigh set off out of the hotel, with Gus trailing behind. Jacques sat tucked in the pocket of Rose’s sweatshirt, and Sage carried an empty blue mason jar.

  Rose pulled at the brass handle of the heavy glass door of the hotel and held it open for her brothers and the cat, then shuffled on through, failing to notice that two more people were shuffling on through at the same moment. She found herself wedged in the doorway between two people, who whined and groaned in French. Rose couldn’t tell what they were saying, but it didn’t sound very friendly.

  After a moment of struggle, Rose squeezed through the door and fell to her knees, where she finally got a good look at the two French people: Miriam and Muriel Desjardins, who were wearing matching red dresses and headbands made of silk roses.

  Miriam lost her balance and went sailing into Ty, who tried to catch her in his arms but buckled under her weight, leaving both of them landing in a heap on the concrete sidewalk. Muriel spun around and fell butt first toward Sage, who tossed the blue mason jar up in the air in order to free his hands but missed Muriel’s shoulders anyway.

  Rose saw the jar flying to its death on the hard concrete and slid toward it with outstretched arms so that it landed in the soft palms of her hands. Unfortunately, Gus had gotten caught up underneath her, and he squealed as he wrestled his hind leg free.

  “Please!” he shouted. “I am not a toy! I am a living thing!”

  Miriam and Muriel both turned toward Gus and watched in terror as he stood on his hind legs and brushed himself off. “The nerve of you people.”

  The twins Desjardins turned to each other, wide-eyed, and began to scream.

  “Oh boy,” said Rose. “Here we go.”

  The twins scrambled to their feet and backed away from the gray cat with the rumpled ears and bad attitude.

  “The cat—he . . . spoke!” Miriam wailed.

  “Shhh!” Ty shouted, hopping to his feet. He clamped his hand over Miriam’s mouth and ushered her into an empty alley on the side of the hotel. Rose followed suit, leading a fainting Muriel.

  “I knew it!” Miriam hissed. “I knew there was something creepy about you people! You’re witches! You have a talking cat! You probably ride on brooms as well! Didn’t I tell you, Muriel?”

  Muriel could only cry and struggle to break free from Rose’s grip.

  “We’re not witches!” Ty squealed. “We’re magicians!”

  “You’re magicians?” Miriam said, shivering with terror. “What do you mean, magicians?”

  “We’re kitchen magicians!” Ty said. “We make magic with food. Magical cakes, pies, cookies . . . you know, things you eat. All very harmless. Fascinating, of course, and powerful, but ultimately harmless. We’re from a long line of kitchen magicians. The night that you found us on the deck of the Eiffel Tower, for instance, we were collecting unspoiled rainfall, directly from a storm cloud.”

  “What about the talking cat?” said Muriel, still staring in terror at Gus, who sat on the pavement with his front legs folded across his chest.

  “He was given a Chattering Cheddar Biscuit a long time ago, and he’s been able to talk ever since,” Ty answered.

  “This is all too much. I have to sit down,” said Miriam, faltering as she lowered herself to the concrete.

  “So, you’re not evil?” Muriel whispered.

  “No, no, no,” Ty said, shaking his head. “But we know someone who is. She’s our aunt. That’s why we’re competing in the Gala. She stole our magical cookbook, and we challenged her to a duel; and if we win the Gala, we get the cookbook back, but if we lose, she keeps it forever and she can do whatever evil thing she wants with it.”

  Muriel’s jaw dropped. “Who is your evil aunt?”

  “Lily Le Fay,” Rose said, practically spitting the name from her mouth.

  Miriam gasped from where she sat on the concrete.

  “I knew it!” she shrieked. “She is the one who made us lose!”

  “What?” Rose shouted. “How did she do that?”

  “We made our famous Key Lime Cupcakes for the SOUR category,” said Muriel. “We added lime juice that we had squeezed the night before, as usual.”

  “We have made the cupcakes over three hundred times,” Miriam added. “To us, it is easier than breathing. They are perfection each time.”

  “But when Jean-Pierre took a bite, he winced,” Muriel went on. “We were devastated. We went back and were about to toss out the lime juice when I noticed that it smelled funny. I tasted it. Someone had replaced our fresh-squeezed lime juice with olive juice.”

  “I peeked over at Lily Le Fay’s garbage,” said Miriam, “and I saw an empty can of olives. I know it was her.”

  “If you are
trying to beat her,” said Muriel, “we want to help. We’ll do anything to make sure she goes up in flames.”

  Ty grinned. “How much do you know about the Cathédrale Notre Dame?”

  “We are closed!” proclaimed the guard at the front of Notre Dame Cathedral.

  Rose stood on her tiptoes and looked past the woman into the majestic vault of the cathedral. A few people were still milling about inside.

  “What about them?” Rose asked, pointing.

  “They will be asked to leave in fifteen minutes,” the guardwoman said.

  “Fifteen minutes is all we need! Please? It’s our last night in Paris!” Rose said.

  With a huff, the guard stepped aside so that they could enter.

  Rose, Leigh, Ty, Miriam, and Muriel filed past. Sage was about to follow when the guard realized Sage was carrying not a baby in his BabyBjörn but a cat.

  The guard raised her arm. “No cats!” she bellowed.

  “But it’s a toy!” Sage protested. He thumped the cat on its crumple-eared head. “Look how stiff his legs are! Look at how fake this fur looks! No real cat would be this ugly.”

  Obligingly, Gus kept his legs and body stiff and unyielding.

  The woman touched the cat’s head, then pulled on one of his ears. “I can see it now—these ears are not very realistic, are they?”

  “Nope!” Sage chirped. “Fakity-fake fake!”

  And then they were past and walking down the side aisle of the cathedral.

  “That,” Gus whispered, “was wholly uncalled for. Ugly!? Me?”

  “Non! Not you!” Muriel said, leaning in to Gus and patting him on his head.

  “Now let me get this straight,” said Miriam. “We are waiting until midnight, then we are going upstairs to the bell tower and collecting the chime of the bell in this jar?”

  “Yes,” Ty answered. “But apparently there is some sort of gargoyle problem.”

  “I don’t see what could be so bad about some stone statues,” said Muriel.

  “Ten minutes until closing!” a voice reverberated through the stone vault of the cathedral. “Everyone is to exit in ten minutes!”