A Dash of Magic: A Bliss Novel (9 page)

The final list looked like this:

Puffed—Nectar-of-Joy Cream Puffs

Phyllo—Born Yesterday Baklava

Cheesy—Sublime Danish

Chocolate—Disappearing Devil’s Food Cake

Airy—Angel’s Breath Food Cake

Sugarless—Better-Than-Anything Banana Bread

Flaky—Crazed Croissants

Rolled—Ravishing Rugelach

Sour—Double Orange Whoopie Pie

When they had finally finished with the list, it was midnight, and Purdy declared that everyone should get some sleep, particularly Rose and Ty, who had to bake early in the morning.

“But we won’t be ready in the morning!” Rose protested. “Balthazar can’t possibly translate all these recipes by then! And we can’t have gathered all the necessary ingredients by then, either!”

“Calm down, Rosie, honey,” said Albert. “It’ll all work itself out. Balthazar can wake up early and start translating, and we’ll still have an hour before baking tomorrow to gather the ingredients we need.”

And so Rose reluctantly went to her room and lay down on her bed opposite a snoring Leigh.

She felt a little better having an idea of what categories might be coming up and what to do if they did, but she had no idea how she would get through tomorrow morning with no translated recipes and no ingredients.

She tried to fall asleep, but she kept hallucinating the sound of flute music.
I must be having some sort of bizarre nightmare,
she thought. The music seemed to be coming from the wall, from underneath a writing desk in the corner. After a moment, Rose hopped out of bed and followed the sound. She discovered a small hole in the baseboard through which she could hear the flute music more clearly.

“Hello?” she whispered into the hole.

The flute music stopped. After a moment Jacques poked his fuzzy nose through the hole.

“Jacques!” she whispered. “You’re back!”

“I am not
back
,” he replied. “I live in this hole, and I am doing my nightly practice. But I have not returned. I have not disobeyed the warning of the Scottish Fold. It is written in the
Book of Mouse
that I must stay away until the warning has been rescinded.”

“There’s a
Book of Mouse
, too?” asked Rose.

Jacques emerged from the hole, looking left and right, then sat back on his haunches. He was carrying a miniature silver flute the size of a toothpick. “Every mouse has a copy of the
Book of Mouse
,” he said. “It is a history of mice, their oppression by humans and cats, and their glorification by insects and small birds.”

Rose nodded. “We had a book like that. It’s a collection of our family’s magical recipes, sort of a magical family history. Some of the recipes are good; some are dangerous. We never used the dangerous ones. Except once, by accident.”

“You say you
had
the book? Where did it go?” Jacques asked.

“It’s the one you just saw in that suite on the Fantasy Floor,” said Rose. “That’s the whole reason we’re here. To beat my aunt Lily in a baking contest and get that book back. But I don’t think I can do it.”

“Your mind is heavy,” said Jacques, patting Rose’s knee with his tiny paw, which was the size of a lentil. “Which is why you are awake at such a late hour.”

“It’s true,” said Rose. “I just wish I could get the Booke back tonight. There’s no way I can win against Lily. I’m not a good enough baker.”

Rose pondered a minute, then trapped Jacques between her palms and ferried him into Sage and Ty’s room, where her brothers had already fallen asleep.

“Guys! Ty! Sage! Wake up! I have an idea!” Rose shouted, drowning out the sound of Jacques’s pleas. “Instead of waiting around to lose tomorrow morning, why don’t we sneak up to the Fantasy Floor tonight and steal the Booke back once and for all!”

“What?” Sage said groggily.

“Rose, go back to bed,” said Ty.

Rose ran to Ty’s bed and shook him awake by the shoulder, holding Jacques captive in her other palm. “We can sneak up to Lily’s room, steal the Booke back, and go home and fix Calamity Falls tomorrow. Wouldn’t that be easier?”

Ty sat up in bed, his eyes still closed. “Yeah, I guess . . .”

“Sage, don’t you want this whole thing over with?” said Rose.

“It’s kind of unlike you to want to break into someone’s room and steal something, Rose.”

“I don’t want to steal; I just want to make sure we get the Booke back, and I don’t think I can do it by winning the contest,” she replied.

Jacques shook his narrow little head. “
Non, non.
I cannot show you how to get up to the Fantasy Floor. It is too dangerous.”

Rose thought for a moment. “I suppose a slice of Brie wouldn’t change your mind?” she said.

Jacques sat in the front pocket of Rose’s hooded sweatshirt as she and her brothers walked through the hotel lobby. On one side of the room stretched the hotel’s ornate front desk. A flower arrangement dominated the room’s center, towering nearly to the massive chandelier hanging from the frescoed ceiling.

According to the huge clock above the front desk, it was a half hour past midnight. While the chandelier above them burned brightly, the rest of the lights in the room were dimmed, and the lobby was nearly empty.

Rose and her brothers continued past the elevators to the hotel café and a door marked
TOILETTE.
On the other side of the door was a red velvet staircase.

“Keep going,” Jacques instructed.

They climbed the stairs and came to a hallway cordoned off by a delicate chain. A sign hanging from the chain read
PRIVÉ.

“That means ‘private,’ doesn’t it, Jacques?” said Rose. “We can’t go in.”

“You wanted to get to the Fantasy Floor,
non
?” answered the mouse. “This is the way.”

Her brothers nodded. Rose took a deep breath and stepped over the chain.

The hallway was dim, lit only by a medieval-style wall sconce. At the end of the short hall was a single brass elevator bank. Instead of a set of
UP
and
DOWN
buttons, there was a panel of multiple buttons, each button corresponding to a letter of the alphabet.

“This elevator can only be opened with a special code,” Jacques said. “Each guest decides his or her own.”

“What is Lily’s code?” Sage asked.

“Je ne sais pas!”
said Jacques. “I just waited here in the corner until a bellhop called the elevator, then darted in after him. He was bringing the famous woman her caviar.”

“Did you see how many buttons the bellhop pressed?” Rose asked.

Jacques thought a minute. “I think . . . he pressed five buttons.”

Rose thought a minute.

Ty was shaking his head. “I don’t get it,” he said. “
TIABLO
is six letters.”

As Sage stifled a laugh, Rose held her finger above the buttons, took a deep breath, then typed in
B O O K E
.

A lamp above the elevator lit up, a bell dinged, and the elevator doors slid open. Ty patted Rose on the back. “Nice one,
mi hermana
.”

“Guess Lily’s got the Cookery Booke on the brain,” said Sage as they stepped inside.

The elevator itself contained only one button, numbered
17
.

“But there are only sixteen floors in this hotel!” said Rose.

“Or so you
thought
,” said Jacques.

Rose pressed
17
. The doors closed, and the elevator rumbled as it ascended to the secret floor. After just a moment or two, a bell dinged, and the doors opened into a small antechamber with a door on each wall.

“Through that door,” whispered Jacques, pointing with one little claw at the door opposite the elevator.

Rose padded across the room, then jiggled the doorknob of the main room; but the door wouldn’t budge. “It’s locked!”

Ty groaned. “Why didn’t you tell us we needed a key?” he asked Jacques.

Jacques was fretfully chewing on his tail. “The witch woman opened the door for the bellhop. I never saw a key.”

Rose sighed as Sage knelt down in front of the doorknob. “Look!” he whispered. “There’s a keyhole!”

Rose knelt next to her brother. Sure enough, under the door handle was a keyhole large enough to actually see through. The door to the Bliss family suite used a modern key card lock. Rose figured it must have been part of the charm of the Fantasy Floor that the doors used the large, old-fashioned metal keys that Rose had only seen in movies and read about in books.

Sage was peering through the keyhole. “I can see the Booke!”

Rose shouldered Sage aside and put her eye to the keyhole.

The light inside Lily’s suite was dim, but Rose could make out a lavish living room with a grand piano and a purple velvet ottoman bigger than a normal person’s mattress.

Lying on top of the ottoman was the Cookery Booke, and lying next to it was the Shrunken Man, who seemed to be Lily’s assistant.

“My turn,” said Ty, pushing Rose out of the way. But when Ty looked through the keyhole, he was so startled by the Shrunken Man on the ottoman that he scrambled back from the door, accidentally knocking his head on the knob.

“Who
is
that little guy?” he cried.

“I told you there was a little man talking to Lily!” Rose said as she dropped back to the keyhole. What she saw made her fall back from the door as quickly as her brother had. The strange little man was sitting up and looking right at her, his eyes glowing the same unearthly shade of green they had before in the expo center when he’d stared right at Rose.

As Rose struggled to her feet, Jacques spilled out of her shirt pocket and tumbled across the floor. Rose grabbed her brothers by their collars and hauled them to the elevator. “Press the Down button!” she hissed. “Hurry!”

Ty smacked his hand against the Lobby button, and they all looked up at the light above the elevator, silently pleading. Behind them, Rose could hear footsteps crossing to Lily’s door.

Rose glanced back to see what had happened to Jacques. He was shaking his head.

“Jacques!” Rose hissed. “Are you coming?”

“Surely you jest!” screamed the little mouse. “I am never coming near you people again!”

Just then the knob on Lily’s door started to turn. Without a backward glance, Jacques scampered through a hole in the floor.

“I don’t want to die!” Sage cried, curling up behind Rose.

The elevator dinged, the light came on, and Rose and her brothers piled inside. They turned to see the Shrunken Man hurtling across the antechamber, reaching for them with a pair of tiny, clawed hands.

And then the doors hissed closed.

T
he next morning, Jean-Pierre entered the expo hall resplendent in his usual red-velvet chef’s coat.

“What you’ve all been waiting for—today’s category! I’ve issued this particular theme several times before, and it always yields interesting results. The theme is . . . SOUR!”

SOUR was last of the possible categories they’d listed the night before, and Rose doubted that Balthazar had made it all the way through to the end of the list with his translations.

When Rose looked over to Lily’s kitchen, her brow furrowed even more. The Shrunken Man was standing outside the circle of cameras, glaring at her. He smiled, then mimed a knife with his finger and dragged it across his tanned neck.

“Ty!” Rose whispered. “Did you see that? The little man just issued an official death threat!”

Ty looked over at Lily’s kitchen. “Who, Rumpel-stupids-kin? I could literally step on that guy. Jacques could swallow him. Gus could hiss and the guy would think Al was a sphinx. It’s ridiculous.”

Ty looked over at the Shrunken Man and mimed putting him in a headlock.

The Shrunken Man just kept smiling as he pulled out a tiny vial of glowing violet liquid. He mimed drinking the liquid, then sank dramatically to the ground.

I should never have roped Ty and Sage into trying to steal back the Booke,
Rose thought.

Just then Purdy, Balthazar, and the rest of the family rushed up to them.

“Well, we know exactly what Lily will be preparing,” Purdy said, brandishing a miniature copy of the final list. “Sourpatch Pie.”

Balthazar stuck his tongue out. “Ugh. Capers in a pie. No one wants that. When people ask for something sour, they always want it tempered with something sweet, even if they can’t articulate it.”

Purdy nodded sagely. “That’s right. So according to the list, we settled on a . . . Double Orange Whoopie Pie. Balthazar, do you think you’ll be able to translate the recipe within the hour while we go get our magical ingredient?”

“No need!” he said, pulling a sheet of paper triumphantly from his pocket. “I always work backward from the end of a list. SOUR was the first recipe I translated last night. Here it is. The best part is that the magic ingredient is right here in Paris.” He slammed the paper down on the chopping block, and Rose took a look at the recipe:

Double Orange Whoopie Pie, By All Accounts, the Sweetest and Sourest Confection ever Assembled.