A Dash of Magic: A Bliss Novel (18 page)

The gargoyles were unmoved by Sage’s humor. All except Eve, who had covered her mouth with one wing as if hiding a smile.

Eve cleared her throat with a terrible stone-grinding sound, then dropped her wing. She wasn’t smiling.

“The young redhead is very funny,” she barked. “Nevertheless, you will leave before the tolling of the bell.”

Rose’s shoulders slumped. “Sorry to bother you,” she muttered, turning to go.

“Good idea, Rose,” Muriel shouted. “Let’s get out of here! I feel like I’m inside a nightmare!”

Just then, a chorus of bells began to chime. “Are those the North Tower bells?” Rose asked.

“Yes,” Bob grunted. “They anticipate the chiming of our Emmanuel bell, which you shan’t witness, because you’re leaving
right now
.” Bob bounced up in the air and landed with a
CRACK
, breaking one of the marble tiles on the floor and dislodging one of the posts in the railing. It rolled over the edge of the balcony and tumbled hundreds of feet through the air to smash to pieces on the walkway below.

Leigh looked coolly at her siblings. “It would appear that they are quite serious about our leaving.”

“No kidding!” said Ty. “Let’s get out of here!”

Sage and Gus were huddled together in a corner, whispering. Before Rose could ask them what they were doing, Sage broke from the huddle and walked toward Eve. He knelt on one knee and offered her a hand. “We’ll go in a minute, I promise. But first, these chiming bells make me want to dance. Will you do me the honor?”

Eve’s stern monkey-face seemed to soften. “I don’t know what to say,” she said in her deep, stony voice. “No one has ever asked me to dance before.”

“Really?” Miriam cried. “We’re really asking the monsters to dance? You are the strangest bunch of people I have ever met. Americans are so bizarre.”

Eve ignored Miriam as she lifted one of her stony paws and placed it in Sage’s outstretched hand. As Sage stood, she stood also, stretching up on her hind legs and placing her other paw on Sage’s shoulder. The two began to rock back and forth to the music of the chiming bells, both staring awkwardly into the distance.

Ty quickly got the idea. He turned to little cat-like Antonia and offered his hand. “
Mademoiselle
?” he crooned. “May I?”

“Oh heck, yes!” Antonia leaped into Ty’s arms, and the two of them waltzed around the dark balcony, Antonia’s wings flapping mightily.

Rose knew what she had to do. She quickly retrieved their final blue mason jar, then whispered, “Jacques!”

The little mouse poked his head out of the pocket of her sweatshirt. “
Oui
?” he said.

“I’ll get the jar in position, and you flip the lid when the chime is done, okay?”

Jacques nodded. Rose looked over at Bob. He was rolling gently in place, entranced by his sisters’ dancing. Rose inched behind him to the entryway to the bell room. Watching Bob carefully, she reached back and placed the open mason jar on the wooden deck underneath the bell. Jacques jumped to the ground and scurried over to the jar.

As Rose was standing back up, Bob noticed her. “What are you doing?” he thundered.

“I was just . . . pouting because I have no one to dance with,” she said, careful to block the view into the bell room as she walked toward him. “That is . . . unless you’ll take pity on me, Bob?”

If it is possible for a stone to blush, Bob did. Rose held out her hands, and Bob, who was just a head after all, bopped up and down in front of Rose, and she bopped up and down with him.

Rose looked past the bobbing orb of stone in front of her at her two brothers, both slow-dancing with stone statues, while Miriam picked up Leigh and rocked back and forth and Muriel twirled around the balcony with Gus in her arms.

After a minute, another bell joined the clanging chorus. Rose glanced surreptitiously past Bob and saw the Emmanuel bell swinging pendulously back and forth.

Underneath the bell, poor Jacques shook with every stentorian chime, but he stood firm, clinging to the side of the blue mason jar. When the rolling chime finally ended, he clamped the lid of the jar closed.

Rose stopped bouncing and started clapping. “Yay! That was fun. Our parents are probably worried sick, so we should get going.”

Sage broke free from Eve’s stony grip, rubbing the mangled tendons in his crushed hand. “Well, it was nice meeting you!”

Ty bowed courteously to Antonia. “
Enchanté
,
mademoiselle
.”

Rose quickly grabbed the mason jar and stuffed it, along with Jacques, into the front pocket of her sweatshirt. Sage grabbed the cat, and they all started down the spiral staircase.

“Wait!” cried Bob from the doorway. “How will we get in touch with you?”

“When will you be back?” shouted Eve.

“Um . . . tomorrow!” Ty shouted back.

“Don’t go!” Antonia roared. A pair of teeth like scythes sprouted from the roof of her mouth, and she soared through the air toward Ty’s head.

“Run!” he shouted, pushing past Rose and Sage and Leigh. He swiftly ushered Muriel and Miriam down the cold, white stone steps of the spiral staircase, while Rose scrambled behind with Sage and Leigh.

Rose, who headed up the rear, turned to find an angry Antonia rushing just inches behind her, baring her newly sprouted fangs. “What sort of friends are you?” she howled as Bob and Eve bounced behind her.

Fortunately, the staircase was narrow, and Antonia’s vast stone wings got caught, blocking Bob and Eve like a cave-in at a rock quarry.

As soon as Rose set foot once more on the cathedral floor, she heard a massive creaking overhead as Antonia finally wrenched her elbows free. The three came tumbling down the stairs, just in time for the twins and the Bliss clan to sneak out an emergency exit behind the gift shop.

Rose shut the metal door and leaned against it with her back, panting, as she heard the lock click in place.

“Nooooo!” she heard Bob shout in a muted blast.

“I feel bad,” said Sage. “Should we go back in?”

“They’re made out of stone, Sage. They’ll get over it,” said Ty.

Outside, the air was deliciously crisp, more like an autumn night than a spring one, and the lights outside the cathedral glowed a dim orange. Rose took the blue mason jar with the chime out of her pocket and looked at it. They had done it!

“You were . . . quite dashing in there, Thyme,” said Muriel, putting a hand on his shoulder.

“A wonderful performance,” Miriam agreed.

Ty looked as though he might melt into a hot puddle on the sidewalk.

Just then, Rose noticed someone slinking toward them through the shadows of the courtyard.

He moved into the light. It was Lily’s assistant, the Shrunken Man!

He stared at Rose, grinned, then dragged his finger slowly across his neck.

Rose gasped, and her hands went limp.

The blue mason jar shattered on the cold stone walkway, and the midnight chime of the Emmanuel bell rang out into the night, before fading away into nothing.

R
ose slept a grand total of about forty-five minutes that night. She rolled back and forth in her bed, replaying the moments before she dropped the jar over and over again.

Maybe there will come a day when I make no more mistakes,
Rose thought on waking the next morning. Purdy had once told her that everyone made mistakes, and Rose believed it; but since she really only witnessed her own, it seemed to Rose as if she was a lot clumsier than everyone else.

Rose rifled through the mason jars in Balthazar’s suitcase: traditional ingredients like flour and sugar snugged beside blue mason jars filled with the unspoiled rainfall from the other evening and the handkerchief with Marie Antoinette’s blush, plus the newly added murderer’s growl and banshee’s howl. But no rolling chime. What would they do if the category was ROLLED?

“In a moment,” Jean-Pierre proclaimed, “I will announce today’s theme. Today’s bake-off will determine the final two chefs, who will compete tomorrow in the Wild Card category.”

All the kitchens were empty and covered by a dusting of flour except for the three with the final contestants: Rose, Lily, and Wei Wen.

Rose glanced up at the balcony where her family was sitting. Miriam and Muriel were sitting with them, staring down intently at the three remaining kitchens. Rose wasn’t sure if they were there because they wanted to see Lily go up in flames or because they wanted to hang around Ty, but it didn’t really matter. It was nice to have more people rooting for her.

The whole family was grinning at her, except for Sage, who was frowning and staring off into the distance. Sage was particularly upset at the loss of the chime: for the first time in his life, he had managed to sweep a girl off her feet—a girl made of stone, but a girl nonetheless. His cleverness had saved the day, until his boneheaded older sister un-saved it.

“There are three of you left,” Jean-Pierre continued. “Who will survive? And who will leave at the end of the day knowing that the finest achievement of her bitter life was just barely out of her reach?”

Rose let her forehead thump onto the kitchen counter.

“The category of the day is . . .” Rose held her breath.
Don’t say
ROLLED
,
she prayed.
Don’t say
ROLLED
.

“. . .
SUGARLESS
.”

Rose heaved a sigh of relief. The jar full of unspoiled rainfall was still very much intact. In the balcony, Sage and the rest of her family gave her a giant thumbs-up.

As Jean-Pierre waddled offstage, Rose pulled the folded recipe for Better-Than-Anything Banana Bread from the back pocket of her jeans.

Ty leaned over Rose’s shoulder and stared down at the paper. “Thanks for letting Miriam and Muriel come along last night,” he said, having perked up considerably since the night before. “They totally dig me now. I mean, look at them! They’re sitting with Mom and Dad! I’ll bet it’s because I was vulnerable. Girls love to see a boy get all disappointed.”

“Shhh,”
Rose hissed. “I’m trying to memorize this before we have to bake.”

Ty hopped up and sat atop the rolling chopping block. “You know, I think you’re taking this whole thing a little too seriously, Rose.”

Rose spun around and stared at her older brother. “I’m taking it too seriously?” she hollered. “What could be more serious than getting our Cookery Booke back?”

Ty thought earnestly for a moment. “Well, if one of us was sick, I guess. Or missing. Something like that.
That
would be serious. This is only a book, Rose. It doesn’t matter as much as any one of us.”

“Well, it matters to me,” Rose replied. “This is the most serious thing I’ve ever done. So are you going to help me or not?”

An hour later, Rose prepared a bowl of dry ingredients while Ty mashed bananas. “I think we’re gonna blow Lily out of the water!” he cried as he pounded at the yellow fruit.

Across the aisle, Lily was working on a Soprano’s Wedding Cake that had a layer of sponge, a layer of white chocolate mousse, a layer of blackberry compote, a layer of hazelnut nougatine, and several other delicious-looking layers that Rose couldn’t even hope to identify. All of it was tucked neatly under a white chocolate dome, infused with the soaring lilt of a Scandinavian soprano and a dash of Lily’s Magic Ingredient. It was an architectural miracle, and probably a culinary one as well, to say nothing of its magical properties.

Rose looked down at her own entry, which at the moment consisted entirely of a bowl of mushed bananas.

“This looks like garbage,” Rose said.

“Maybe,” Ty agreed. “But I look great. That ought to count for something, right?”

Rose rolled her eyes as she dumped flour, egg, and vanilla with the banana mash. After she stirred it all together, she poured in a half cup of the unspoiled rainfall. Instantly, the batter lost the unappealing, grayish color of baby food and took on a radiant, golden glow. Rose dipped a spoon into the batter and tried it.

The SUGARLESS batter was the sweetest thing she’d ever tasted—not the cloying, chemical sweetness of aspartame and candy and diet soda, but a natural, delicious sweetness with more flavor than even maple syrup or honey.

Oh my,
Rose thought.
Maybe we might even . . . win?

Twenty minutes later, Rose took the freshly baked bread out of the oven and plated a slice of her golden banana bread on a simple white dish just before the
ding
of the giant wall timer.

Across the aisle, Lily had plated her intricate dome of cake next to the white-chocolate sculpture of a dove. When Lily sliced through the center of her cake, Rose could see that the differently colored layers of cake were arranged to paint a picture: a scene of doves and unicorns frolicking gaily through a meadow.

Wei Wen adjusted his glasses and stood proudly next to his creation. He had fashioned a chocolate replica of Notre Dame that stood five feet high and seven feet across.

Rose looked down at her modest slice of banana bread.
Then again,
she thought,
maybe we
won’t
win.