A Dash of Magic: A Bliss Novel (13 page)

“All right, little
hermano
, drink up the good stuff,” said Ty, handing Sage a thermos full of Helium Hot Chocolate.

Under Gus’s direction, Rose had whipped up the syrupy brown liquid on the hotel stovetop before they’d left: milk, cocoa powder, sugar, and a blast from the rare Helium Beetle, an iridescent blue bug that Balthazar kept in a jar in his suitcase.

“What does that bug do?” Rose had asked.

“It expels helium,” Gus had said.

“Expels it from where?” Sage had asked suspiciously.

“If you must know, it expels it from both ends,” Gus had said as the beetle had let out a satisfied grunt.

“Oh man! Beetle gas!” Sage had chuckled.

But now that he was in the dark rain, the only illumination coming from a set of wandering searchlights, he forgot all about the hilarity of the beetle gas. He stared nervously at the clouds as he sucked down the warm contents of the thermos.

As Sage drank, Ty tied the rope they’d brought with them in a crisscross harness around Sage’s chest and waist. “Tug on the rope twice when you’ve got the rain from the cloud. Cool?”

Sage handed the thermos back to Rose and licked his lips. “Cool,” he squeaked. With all the helium he’d drunk, his voice came out sounding like a sped-up record.

“Don’t let any rain get inside this jacket!” Gus yelled, his voice muffled beneath the vinyl. “If I feel so much as a drop of water on my delicate fur, I shall become very crabby!”

Ty let go of Sage and played out the rope as Sage floated slowly off the deck and into the dark, wet sky.

“Wait!” he cried. “I don’t want to go!”

Rose had a moment of doubt. This was more dangerous than anything they’d ever done, more dangerous even than visiting a ghost in a catacomb. Wasn’t Sage more important than beating Lily and recovering the Booke?

“Ty!” she cried. “Bring him back!”

But it was too late. The bottoms of Sage’s feet had already disappeared into the black clouds overhead. The rope whirred through Ty’s hands as Sage rose higher and higher. Ty struggled to get a grip on it. “We shouldn’t have used nylon rope,” he grunted. “This rain makes it
muy
slippery.”

Rose held her breath. It seemed to take forever as the wind and rain whipped the tower, but finally the rope jerked in Ty’s hands.

Ty reeled the rope back in, hand over hand, until the soles of Sage’s feet broke through the clouds, followed by his legs and his yellow slicker-clad belly, and finally his head and hands. Sage held the jar above his head and grinned at them in triumph. “Got it!” he called.

He was just five feet off the deck when Ty bent down to loop the rope around the railing.

But before he could finish, Gus’s head popped out of the bottom of Sage’s raincoat. “Water!” Gus shrieked. “There’s water on my fur!”

The cat twisted and writhed until he released himself from the BabyBjörn carrier and leaped away from Sage and onto a dry patch of the platform. Without Gus’s considerable weight to balance the helium, Sage shot up into the sky, and the wet rope whirred out of Ty’s grasp.

“I lost my grip!” Ty cried.

“Helllllpppp!” Sage wailed as the rope slithered along toward the edge of the deck.

Rose screamed as the frayed end of the rope rose up in the air to follow Sage into the sky.

T
y lunged forward and with his right hand caught the rope while with his left hand he held on to the railing. “I’m losing my grip again!” he said, the rope slipping inch by inch through his wet hands. “Rose, help!”

Rose scrambled onto his back and wrapped her fist around the rope, too. But it was no use: they were too wet, and the rope was too slippery. “I can’t hold it!” she cried.

That’s when Gus sprinted out from his dry hiding place and hurtled across the rainy deck. He vaulted over Ty’s back, landed on Rose’s head, and hooked the rope with one of his claws. “Nothing escapes a cat’s clutches!” he announced.

“Youch!”
Rose cried as Gus dug into her scalp with the claws on his hind feet. But his hind claws were no match for the Helium Hot Chocolate, and Gus himself began to float upward into the sky, taking some of Rose’s hair with him.

“Rowr!”
he yowled as he slipped up into the air.

But now Rose and Ty had something to hold on to. Rose reached up and grabbed Gus’s tail. “Gotcha!”

Rose, still sitting on Ty’s shoulders, pulled Gus toward her by his tail, hand over hand, until she was holding him around his fat belly. She strained and reached up past his claws to grab the rope that held Sage from floating away into oblivion. Gus leaped back down to the ground and landed with a thud.

“Why, oh why, did I ever leave Mexico?” he wailed.

As Rose held tight to the rope, Ty backed away from the railing and sunk to his knees, then bent over, giving Rose enough room to climb down from his shoulders and plant her feet firmly on the ground. She and Ty pulled furiously at the rope, reeling their little brother in foot by foot.

Rose sobbed with relief when Sage finally emerged from the clouds overhead.

When his feet were just an inch above the deck, Ty tied off the rope so Sage couldn’t drift away again, and Rose ran forward and threw her arms around him.

“I’m sorry I made you do it,” she said. “That was selfish and stupid of me.”

“Eh . . . it wasn’t that bad,” he replied. He smiled, but even Rose could see he was doing it for her benefit. She hugged him harder.

Bobbing just a few inches above the platform, Sage handed the blue mason jar full of water to his brother, then crossed his arms and glared at Gus, who, now soaking wet, was huddled miserably in a corner by the elevator, nursing his sore tail.

“
Water
, Gus?” Sage squeaked with his helium voice, uncharacteristically serious for a change. “You were going to let me float up to Saturn because of a few drops of
water
?”

With his gray coat plastered to his body, the fat cat looked a lot less fat. “To me, water feels like sulfuric acid. How would you like it if I dripped acid on you?”

Rose glared at Gus.

The cat huffed. “I’m sorry I jumped. I put my comfort before your safety. I suppose I panicked.”

A smile flickered across Sage’s face. “It’s okay,” he squeaked. “It’s worth it to see you soaking wet! Now, how do I get all this helium out of me?”

“I guess you just gotta let it all seep out,” said Ty. Because of the rain, his usually spiky hair had wilted and now hung down to his ears. “It shouldn’t take too long. We’ll just tie you to the ground for a week or so until you start to droop.”

Sage beat his bloated gut with both fists. “I feel like I have gas. Wait! I
do
have gas! All I need to do is—”

“
Eew
, Sage, no!” Rose said, fanning her hand in front of her face. “There has to be another way.”

“How about belching instead?” Ty said. “That shouldn’t be a problem for you,
mi
hermano.
You’re a champion burper!”

“Great idea,” Rose said. Sage could not only burp the alphabet on cue, but all of the state capitals as well.

Sage opened his mouth and pushed from his stomach, but nothing came out. He tried again. “Albany. Tallahassee. Sacramento,” he said. His face scrunched up in frustration. “Oh man. I have belcher’s block!”

Gus batted a can of ginger ale toward them. “This might do the trick.”

Rose scooped up the rolling can. “Where did you get this?” she asked.

“I crawled inside that vending machine,” Gus said, flicking his bedraggled tail at a glowing machine near the elevator. “I nearly got stuck on the way out. I hope that I have adequately demonstrated my willingness to make myself uncomfortable for your sake, young Sage.”

“You’re too big to crawl inside a vending machine, Gus,” Rose said, trying to envision the cat’s bloated stomach squeezing inside the tiny slot at the bottom.

“You’re right,” he answered. “I bought it.”

Rose knelt and patted Gus on the head. “Thank you, Gus. This is very helpful.” She handed the can to Sage as Gus climbed back into his waterproof hiding place beneath Sage’s raincoat.

“Chug! Chug! Chug!” shouted Ty.

Sage cracked open the can and downed the ginger ale in a matter of seconds. After a moment, he hiccupped once, then twice. Then his jaws were forced open by a hot blast as loud as a rifle salute on Memorial Day.

Ty laughed. “Yes,
hermano
! That was a scorcher!”

Sage had dropped closer to the platform, but he was still floating. Then his mouth opened as wide as the end of a tuba, and he let loose a series of long, reverberating blasts that rustled his lips, blew back Rose’s hair, and seemed to shake the very foundation of the Eiffel Tower.

“
Ay yi yi
,” Ty said. “I’m not sure that smells any better than the other option.”

“Thank goodness we’re alone,” said Rose. “This is too embarrassing for words.”

That was when Rose heard whispers coming from the far corner of the deck. She turned to find Miriam and Muriel Desjardins, the twin bakers who had been eliminated from the competition earlier that day. They were wearing short black skirts and matching blue blazers. Miriam, whose long hair looked perfect, even when drenched, wore a dainty lace scarf; and Muriel, whose chic hair rivaled even the chicness of Lily’s old haircut, wore a red beret. They looked like cutouts from the pages of a French fashion magazine. Muriel was holding a balloon in the shape of a cupcake.

“Hello,” Rose said nervously. “How long have you two been standing there?” Rose asked.

“I’ll handle this,” Ty whispered to Rose. He sauntered over to the girls. “
Amigas
! The name is Thyme Bliss, but you can call me Ty. Or T-Dog. Call me whatever you want. You’ll recognize my sister Rose and me from the Gala, I’m sure.”

“Yes, we recognize you,” Miriam said as she and her twin sister surveyed the strange scene: Ty and Rose standing on a wet, dark roof, and Sage in a yellow raincoat with the head of a gray cat poking out the top.

“What a surprise!” Ty went on. “And what brings you here on this lovely rainy evening?”

“We’re here to say good-bye to the Gala des Gâteaux Grands,” said Muriel. “We were eliminated today, and they gave us this crummy balloon as a gift. We came up here to set it free.”

“She means ‘to throw it away,’” said Miriam. “The real question is, what are
you
doing here?” she asked suspiciously.

As if on cue, Sage let loose with his biggest belch yet, which was so powerful that it caught the rain and blew it the other way.

The two girls stepped back a few paces.

“I guess you heard my little brother,” Ty replied. “He has a disease called, uh, winditis, which causes uncontrollable belching. It’s very embarrassing, so we came up here in the rain so no one would have to listen to how disgusting he is.”

“Hey!” Sage yelled. That final roar had expelled all the remaining gas. Sage’s feet were firmly on the platform, and he was busy untying his rope anchor.

“You’ll forgive us, right?” said Ty. And then Ty busted out the most revered of all his poses: “The Surprised Hair-Swipe.” He raised his eyebrows, bowed his head, and ran his fingers through his damp hair.

But Miriam and Muriel were of a different caliber of woman than Ty was used to at Calamity Falls High, and “The Surprised Hair-Swipe” seemed to have no effect.

“You came up here in the middle of a thunderstorm so your brother could burp?” Muriel smirked. “Interesting. Though it doesn’t explain the cat underneath his raincoat and why he’s wearing a rope harness that’s anchored to the tower.”

“There’s something funny about your family,” said Miriam. “I can’t put my finger on it.”

“I know,” said Ty. “It’s funny how attractive we are. Or . . . me, at least.”

“No, that’s not it,” said Miriam. “We’ll leave you alone to finish whatever odd thing you were doing.”

“No!” Ty cried. “Stay!”

“
Bonne nuit
,” said Muriel.

Rose patted Ty on the shoulder as the Desjardins twins disappeared into the elevator.

“‘The Surprised Hair-Swipe’
always
works,” he whispered, shell-shocked.

“You’ll get ’em next time,
mi hermano,
” Rose said.

The next morning, Jean-Pierre Jeanpierre looked out over the hall and said, “And then there were five.”

Rose, Lily, Rohit Mansukhani, Dag Ferskjold, and Wen Wei had been stationed at the kitchens closest to the stage. Lily’s kitchen remained directly across from Rose’s.

“Today’s category will require superior technique,” Jean-Pierre said. “The theme of the day is AIRY.”

Phew!
Rose thought of the two blue mason jars they’d added to Balthazar’s ingredients suitcase and removed the recipe for Angel’s Breath Food Cake from her back pocket. She gave it a final once-over, although she almost knew it by heart, having stayed up much of the night memorizing the recipes.

“We’ve got that one totally covered,
mi hermana
,” Ty said.

As the remaining contestants hurried out of the room to collect their special ingredient, or huddled with their teams to discuss recipes, Purdy bustled up. Behind her trailed Leigh and Sage. Sage was carrying Gus in the BabyBjörn. As usual, Gus did not look pleased at the indignity.