A Dash of Magic: A Bliss Novel (20 page)

“But maybe they won’t open it right away!” Rose replied. “If they win the competition, then get on the plane carrying the book, open it up on the plane, and realize it’s not the Booke, by then it’ll be too late! Imagine the look on her smug, stupid face.”

“But Rose,” Ty said, his hair sticking out at ridiculous angles. “How are we supposed to get Lily out of her room? It’s the middle of the night, remember?”

Leigh wandered in. “How are we supposed to get Lily out of her room?” she said, mimicking Ty’s voice exactly.

Rose smiled at her brothers. “That’s the best part of my idea,” she said. “Leigh, how would you like to talk to Lily, the magnificent mistress of muffins, on the phone?”

“H
ello, I would like to speak with Ms. Lily Le Fay,
s’il vous plaît
.”

“And who may I say is calling?”

“Monsieur Jean-Pierre Jeanpierre,” said Leigh with Jean-Pierre’s haughty, robust French accent.

“But, sir, it is four a.m.”

Rose sat beside Leigh while she spoke on the phone with the front-desk manager. Rose told her what to say, and a moment later, Leigh repeated it in the voice of the pompous French chef. It was uncanny.

“I think she will want to accept this phone call,” said Leigh in Jean-Pierre’s voice. “I am calling to discuss her victory at the Gala des Gâteaux Grands this morning.”

“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 wouldn’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.”

T
hat 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.