A Dash of Magic: A Bliss Novel (5 page)

The driver eyed Balthazar and Al cautiously. “Welcome to Paris,” he said. “I am Stefan. Your car is right this way.”

“To the Hôtel de Notre Dame, then?” Albert asked, fiddling with a few stapled papers on which he had printed their itinerary.

“No, no!” yelled Stefan. “The hotel will have to wait. You are late for the Gala orientation meeting with Jean-Pierre Jeanpierre, which means you are already treading on thin ice.”

They had only just arrived, and already Rose was in trouble.

Rose’s jaw dropped as Stefan stopped the car in front of the expo center. It was a massive glass building with enormous banners on each side of the entrance. The banners were covered with pictures of giant cream puffs, tarts, and slices of gooey red velvet cake, with the words
GALA DES GÂTEAUX GRANDS: 18–23 AVRIL
printed in white letters.

Rose gulped. She knew the Gala des Gâteaux Grands was a big deal, but she wasn’t expecting banners the size of blimps.

Stefan held the back door open while Rose and Purdy and the rest of the family piled out of the car. As they pushed through the giant revolving glass door in the front of the center, a nervous woman with short golden hair and extremely thin lips, which she’d painted fire-engine red, ran over.

“Rosemary Bliss?” she said, taking Purdy’s arm and pulling her toward a set of giant double doors. “You are late for the orientation! You must hurry!”

“No, no, I’m
Purdy
Bliss,” said Rose’s mother.

The woman stopped in her tracks and eyed the rest of the group suspiciously. “Then which one of you is Rosemary Bliss? Who is our chef?”

Rose hooked her thumb against the chest of her hooded sweatshirt. “Me?”

Confusion flashed across the red-lipped woman’s face. “Ah. I see. My name is Flaurabelle. I am chief assistant to Chef Jean-Pierre Jeanpierre. And you are late!” She ushered Rose through the double doors, with the rest of the Blisses following behind.

The room on the other side of the doors was immense. High ceilings arched overhead, with intricate hanging chandeliers. The floor was crowded with people sitting around large round tables. In the center of each table was a giant crystal mixing bowl containing multicolored batter. All of the tables were filled except one.

Everyone turned to watch as the red-lipped woman led the Blisses to the empty table. Rose sat with Purdy and Ty on either side of her. “The batter is for decoration only,” the red-lipped woman warned in whisper. “We already had an incident this morning. Please do not eat the batter.”

“Okay,” Rose said quietly. She turned to the people glaring at them from a nearby table. “Sorry we’re late,” she said.

“Americans,”
she heard someone sneer.

Just then the chandeliers went dark and a spotlight shone on a balcony on the back wall of the room. Prerecorded orchestral music swelled as a man wearing a chef’s coat made entirely of red velvet appeared atop the balcony. The man was clearly old—not as old as Balthazar, but far older than Purdy and Albert—and completely hairless. His head was bald, his cheeks and chin were bald—he even lacked eyebrows. His bald head was small compared to his rotund belly, giving him the overall appearance of a turtle.

How do I get myself into these things?
Rose wondered.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” boomed an announcer, “please welcome the inventor of chocolate éclairs, the preeminent pastry chef of France, and most importantly, the founder of the Gala des Gâteaux Grands, Chef Jean-Pierre Jeanpierre!”

As the audience applauded, Jean-Pierre Jeanpierre reached up, took hold of a set of handlebars hanging above the balcony, and stepped over the railing. The spotlight followed him as he soared down a zip line from the balcony to a stage on the other side of the room.

Chef Jeanpierre landed on the stage in a rumpled pile of red velvet. He huffed and puffed his way to a standing position and approached a podium, his arms held up like he was the pope.

Rose’s stomach fluttered. She had read about Jean-Pierre Jeanpierre, of course. In a sense, he truly was the pope of baking. From her reading she knew that he took seven lumps of sugar in his morning coffee, that he’d had his hometown of St. Aubergine renamed St. Jeanpierre, and that he slept exclusively on pillows made of angel food cake, which he baked fresh every evening.

Whenever Rose thought that she’d become too obsessed with baking, she reminded herself about Jean-Pierre Jeanpierre.

Jean-Pierre’s eyes glimmered wide from behind his spectacles. He tapped the microphone, then said
, “Bienvenue à la Gala des Gâteaux Grands.”

The room erupted into violent applause as everyone jumped to their feet and cheered.

“Please!” yelled Jean-Pierre. “Sit! Twenty of the world’s fiercest culinary competitors—and their assistants—are in this room,” said Jean-Pierre. “None of them as fierce as myself, of course, but this is why I exclude myself from competition.”

As Jean-Pierre was boasting, Rose glanced around the room. At one table sat a slight, bespectacled man with his arms folded, holding whisks like knives. In front of his plate was a name tag that read
WEI WEN, CHINA
.

At another table, a young man smirked behind a name tag labeled
ROHIT MANSUKHANI, INDIA
. At still another table sat a lithe blond man who looked to be eight feet tall: Dag Ferskjold, Norway. He peered at the ceiling with a thousand-yard stare. None of the other contestants looked particularly happy or excited.

“Each morning at nine a.m.,” Jean-Pierre went on, “I will announce the surprise theme of the day. Past themes have included things like
FLAKY
.
FLOURLESS
.
ROLLED
.
GREEN
. Whatever crosses my mind as I wake. Where do the themes come from? Who knows!”

Rose turned around in her seat and glanced at the other side of the room. There was a tawny woman with short blond hair gelled into spikes—Irina Klechevsky, Russia—and a tall bald man with exceedingly white teeth—Malik Hall, Senegal. There was a short man with sallow skin and big lips—Victor Cabeza, Mexico—and a handsome man with shoulder-length brown hair—Peter Gianopolous, Greece. There was Fritz Knapschildt from Germany, King Phokong from Thailand, Niccolo Puzzio from Italy, and many more, all grown-ups wearing stern, competitive looks. They were out for blood.

What am I doing here?
thought Rose.

Rose was relieved to spot a table with two French girls who looked like they could be in high school. Their name tags read
MIRIAM DESJARDINS, FRANCE
and
MURIEL DESJARDINS
,
FRANCE
; and, upon closer examination, it seemed that they were identical twins, though one had long, brown hair and the other one had short, brown hair.

Ty had seen them, too. He was leaning as far back in his chair as he could, raising and lowering his eyebrows at them. The girls were too busy staring at Jean-Pierre to notice.

“After I announce the theme,” Jean-Pierre continued, “you will have one hour to collect a special ingredient of your own choosing. The rest of your ingredients must come from the Gala kitchen.”

It suddenly occurred to Rose that Aunt Lily was probably sitting somewhere in that room at that very moment. Rose looked around and finally spotted the producers of
30-Minute Magic
, Ryan and Kyle, sitting at the table on the other side of the room. Both producers were typing on their phones; Lily herself was nowhere to be found.

Jean-Pierre paused for a minute to take a sip of tea. “At ten a.m., after you’ve collected your special ingredient, the competition will take place. There will be cameras filming you from every angle, capturing every turn of the spoon, every bead of sweat, every tear. You must love the cameras, and also ignore them.”

Rose prayed that she wouldn’t produce any tears for them to capture.

“After the baking you will face the judge’s table, where your desserts will be sampled by the judge, who is myself. After that, I will announce who will move on to the next day of competition and who will be sent back to their houses to cry and relive the painful memories of what they did wrong, over and over, for the rest of their lives.”

The audience tittered meanly.

“There will be five days of competition, with the final day being a face-off between the top two competitors.” Jean-Pierre paused to wipe his bare brow. “As always, competitors must work from memory. Anyone caught with a cookbook as they bake will be immediately tossed to the curb.”

The
from memory
part was what worried Rose the most. The recipes in the Bliss Cookery Booke relied on precision—any deviation could alter not only the taste and texture of whatever she was trying to bake, but its magical properties as well. She and her mother would have to memorize the magical recipes perfectly in the hour before the baking commenced—that is, if Balthazar could manage to translate them.

“And, as always, no one who has previously participated in the Gala des Gâteaux Grands may participate again. If your assistant has previously baked in this competition, you must find a new assistant!”

Rose stared at her mother. Her mother stared back.
Don’t panic,
she thought, trying to catch her breath.
Grandpa Balthazar is a professional. He can be my assistant
.

Balthazar was scratching Gus’s pinched, rumpled ears. Rose leaned over and whispered, “You can be my assistant, right, Grandpa Balthazar?”

Balthazar shook his head. “Nope. I competed in the first Gala des Gâteaux Grands in the nineteen fifties, when I was sixty-six. Lost flat-out. It was grueling.”

Rose looked at her father. “I know you never competed, Dad,” said Rose.

Albert reached into the pocket of his trousers and pulled out a brown paper bag, then held it to his mouth and began to hyperventilate. “Rose,” he managed in between puffs, “I can’t be in front of cameras. Or audiences. I’m too shy. I’ll get seasick. You’ll be better off with Ty. You two were a good team when your mom and I went off to Humbleton, right?”

“Thyme, my sweet,” said Purdy, “you’ll help Rosie, right?”

Ty perked up, staring joyfully at the table where Miriam and Muriel Desjardins sat. “Sure! I’ll get to be on TV, right?” Purdy nodded. “Anything for my beloved
hermana
.” Ty practically shouted when he said
hermana
, hoping the French girls would hear him.

They didn’t—but Jean-Pierre did.

“Shush your mouths!” he yelled. “You’ll have the rest of the day to sort out your pairings. I will see you all tomorrow morning at nine a.m. for day one of the competition.”

With that, Jean-Pierre grabbed the handlebars, which hoisted him higher and higher until he disappeared through a hole in the ceiling.

Rose looked again at her brother Ty, who gave her a double thumbs-up sign.

We are going to lose,
she thought.

T
he next day, Rose examined her little Gala kitchen in the expo center. It was one of twenty that were connected by an aisle of black and white checkered tiles that led to a raised platform at the front of the room with a microphone and a long oak dining table.

Hanging above the row of kitchens were balconies draped in red velvet, like special box seats at an opera. In the balcony above her, Rose saw Balthazar and Gus sitting with her parents and Sage and Leigh.

Across the black-and-white-tiled aisle stood Lily’s kitchen. Lily was standing coolly behind a wooden chopping block, wearing, as usual, a black cocktail dress. She turned and winked at Rose as she tested the dials on her oven.

Rose sighed heavily, and Ty poked her in the shoulder. “What’s bugging you,
mi hermana
?”

“This whole thing, it’s too much pressure,” she said.

Ty tousled her stringy black hair. “Don’t worry, Rose. You’re the best there is. And you’ve got me right here, all the way.”

Ty had been so nice to Rose in the previous nine months that she almost couldn’t believe it. But nice wasn’t going to help her get the Booke back. She needed expert assistance. Still, it was comforting to have her older brother beside her.

“Thanks, Ty,” she said.

Rose peered around her kitchen once more. On one side of the oven was a red refrigerator, and on the other was a wooden bookcase that served as a pantry. There were clear mason jars of flour, white sugar, brown sugar, baking powder, and cocoa powder, plus a brightly colored cardboard box hidden in the back.

“What’s this?” Ty asked Rose, picking up the box.

Rose took the box from Ty and recognized it immediately as a box of Lily’s Magic Ingredient. “No!” said Rose. “What’s this doing here?”

Rose marched across the aisle of black and white tiles and stopped short in front of Lily’s wooden chopping block.

“Why is this in my kitchen?” she demanded.

“It’s in everyone’s kitchen!” Lily replied, brushing a strand of black hair from her cheek. “I donated it, so it’s part of everyone’s allowable pantry items. Anyone can add a dash of Lily’s Magic Ingredient—I think it’ll really improve their results.”