A Dash of Magic: A Bliss Novel (24 page)

“How is that going to help Leigh?” Sage asked. “If we make it two layers high, she’ll disappear. Or she’ll be in Mom’s womb again or something. I don’t think she would like that.”

“A layer of trifle,” Rose pontificated, “consists of sponge cake, fruit, custard, and whipped cream. So if we just give her the sponge cake, it’ll turn her back a quarter of a year. Three months—right before she ate that poisoned pound cake.”

Sir Lionel Bliss did begin his cake of sponge by placing two fists of
flour pure as snow
in the center of the wooden bowl. He cracked six of the
chicken’s eggs
into the flour, then hovered over it with his mason jar, releasing the
sting of the ancient hornet.

“What the heck is an ancient hornet,
Abuelo
?” Ty asked.

“It’s a hornet from the Queztmectal rain forests, destroyed by a fire in the fourteenth century. Their stingers had magical properties. There are only a few left in the world, and I have one. Or at least I did until that hateful little turd ran off with my mason jars. We have no way of getting an ancient hornet.”

Gus cleared his throat, accidentally coughing up a hair ball. “That’s not necessarily true.”

“What do you mean, Gus?” Balthazar asked suspiciously. “You weren’t, say, rifling through my bags, were you?”

“I hate that hornet,” Gus went on. “He used to say terrible things about me. Whenever I went near him, I could hear him chattering under his breath. ‘Gus smells like tuna. Gus licks his own feet. Gus’s tail makes him look like a bumper car.’ One day I couldn’t take it any more. I took the jar off the shelf, and I rolled it across the floor back and forth, like a hockey puck.”

“I told you a million times not to do that!” Balthazar protested. “The hornet is hundreds of years old! He’s delicate!”

“Sometimes I can’t help myself,” Gus replied. “Like the first day we arrived, for instance. I was passing by Balthazar’s suitcase, and I heard his terrible little voice calling out for me, so I took him out of his jar and just . . . played hockey with him. I swatted him underneath the sink, but my paw couldn’t reach in to fetch him out. He could still be there, but I don’t know how we’ll retrieve him. The space is too narrow.”

“I shall go!” cried Jacques as he scampered over to the sink and darted into the tight space underneath.

A moment later he reemerged, carrying the frail hornet in his paws. “You wouldn’t believe how mean this hornet is! The things he said about me. . . . I can’t repeat them! He stings with his abdomen
and
with his words!” Jacques dumped the hornet into a little juice glass and wiped his hands clean.

“See?” sighed Gus.

While Rose mixed up the batter for the sponge cake, Balthazar looked through the pages of the Cookery Booke.

“What are you looking for?” Rose asked.

“Signs of misuse,” he replied. “Missing pages, defamation, things like that.”

Once Rose had finished the batter, she tilted the juice glass in which the ancient hornet lay over the bowl. The hornet sighed as he slid to the rim of the glass. With a lot of creaking and complaining, he managed to stick his stinger into the yellow batter, which turned a violent, pulsing red. Rose tilted the glass away from the batter, and the hornet slid back to the bottom.

“Don’t hornets die after they sting something?” Sage asked.

“Hornets do not die after stinging,” Leigh piped in from the couch using Balthazar’s deep, gravelly voice, “because their stingers are not barbed. Also, they are not
beetles
; they are part of the order Hymenoptera, whereas beetles are members of the order Coleoptera. I’m sure Lily knows all of the insect orders.”

Ty turned to Rose. “Make the cake and feed it to her,
now
.”

The rest of the sponge cake recipe was simple, and Rose rested the sheet of cake in the oven and set the timer for six songs.

After three songs, Purdy and Albert called up from the lobby to say that they were having some trouble checking out—something about the room bill—but that they’d be right back. Rose pulled the hot cake from the oven after the time of six songs, and she carried a slice over to Leigh.

“What is that?” she asked haughtily. “I don’t want to eat it unless Lily made it.”

Sage grabbed Leigh’s shoulders and pinned her to the couch while Ty pried her mouth open.

“Unhand me, fools!” she cried.

Rose stuffed a few bites of the sponge cake into her sister’s mouth, and Ty clamped Leigh’s jaw shut until she had no choice but to chew and swallow.

They watched in wonder as Leigh’s wild sprig of black hair seemed to pull back into her head about an inch and three months’ worth of stains vanished from her
101 Dalmatians
T-shirt, leaving it only mildly browned and disgusting as opposed to abjectly browned and disgusting. The eerie black shimmer of her irises disappeared as her eyes slowly closed.

When Leigh opened them again, she giggled.

“Leigh?” said Rose, pinching Leigh’s nose. “Do you know who Lily Le Fay is?”

Leigh put a tiny finger to her lips. “The bad one?”

“Right!” said Rose, hoisting her little sister up in her arms. “And do you know who I am?”

“Rosie!” she shrieked.

Rose buried her face in Leigh’s dirty shirt. “I missed you, Leigh.”

“Why? Where did I go?” she gurgled.

“Well, technically you didn’t go anywhere. But I still missed you.”

Jacques crawled up Rose’s side and stared Leigh in the eye. “Wait . . . this child is not a demon sprite? She was merely under the spell of a witch?”

“Mousie!” Leigh cackled, grabbing at Jacques, who leaped from Rose’s arm and landed between Gus’s crumpled ears.

“Grandpa Balthazar,” said Rose, “this is Leigh. The real Leigh.”

“Nice to meet you,” Balthazar grumbled, barely looking up from the Cookery Booke.

Just then, Purdy and Albert came through the doorway. Albert pointed at Rose and her brothers. “Are you all packed?”

“No,” Rose answered. “But we got Leigh back to normal again!”

“You made the Turn-Back Trifle?” Purdy asked. “How many layers did she eat?”

“Just the sponge cake, Mom,” Rose answered.

“Good girl,” said Purdy. She looked Rose in the eye as she pulled Leigh into her arms. “Rosie, you really are wonderful. I love you so much. And you too, Leigh!”

“Mama!” she cooed.

Balthazar looked up gravely. “Oh no,” he said. “I was afraid of this.”

“What?” Rose said, joining her grandfather at the counter.

“Look,” he said, pointing to the hollowed-out compartment in the back cover of the book where Albatross’s Apocrypha were stored. The collection of dangerous recipes was missing.

Instead, there was a tiny inscription written in Lily’s flowery calligraphy.

Property of Lily Le Fay,

Novice

International Society of the Rolling Pin

“‘Society of the Rolling Pin’?” Rose asked. “What’s that?”

Balthazar sighed. “About a hundred years ago, Albatross descendants from all over the globe created a secret society. They’ve been working underground for years, creating all sorts of nastiness. Shrinking men with rotten milkshakes isn’t even the half of it.”

“What does that mean?” Rose squeaked.

“I suppose it means they’ll be back for the Booke,” he answered. “Not now, but sometime when you least expect it. You’ll all have to be diligent.” He paused. “You might even need a little . . . grandfatherly protection. I left my assistant Jorge in charge of my
panadería
. I don’t think he’d mind running the place a little while longer. Besides, I think the cat has grown attached to you all.”

“So it’s just me that’s grown attached, eh, old man?” Gus smirked from the couch, where he was tidying up his tail fur. “And you, as usual, feel nothing?”

“Of course,” Balthazar growled.

“We’ve grown attached to you, too,
Abuelo
,” said Ty, tousling what was left of his great-great-great-grandfather’s hair.

Jacques hopped down from Gus’s head and slumped off in the direction of the hole where they had first seen him. “And I suppose this is good-bye to Jacques.”

Leigh scrambled down from Purdy’s chest and waddled after Jacques.

“Come back, Mousie!”

Gus hopped down from the couch. “Jacques, whom I am proud to call my friend. You will join us as well. That is, if the illustrious Mrs. Bliss doesn’t mind a mouse in the kitchen.”

“Of course not,” said Purdy.

Jacques stopped and pulled out his flute. “I have never been to America!” he exclaimed. “I must celebrate. Allow me to play the national anthem of America on my flute.”

Everyone stood solemnly as Jacques piped out the strains of “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

Rose knew that she had managed to recover the Booke and that she’d set Calamity Falls right again, all without any of Lily’s cold, calculated magic. She had everything she needed right here: a passion for baking, a town she’d do anything to protect, and a family she loved. That was enough.

Rose stood with her family as each of them placed a hand over their hearts and listened to Jacques’s hopeful tune.

I
t was in 2011 in the City of New York that Kathryn Littlewood did pen this tome.

She did rely heavily upon the splendid creative genius of Ted Malawer and Michael Stearns at the Inkhouse to collect the story’s ingredients. She did thereafter lean upon the inspired editorial guidance of Katherine Tegen and the Katherine Tegen Books family to trim the story’s burnt edges and cover its entirety with a decadent frosting.

She did rely daily on the tender wisdom and creativity of her very own coven of magical women: Jocelyn, Laura Jean, Emily, and Alexandra.

When it was through, she did thank these wonderful individuals in the acknowledgments section of this book, because she would be hungry and lonely and quite bereft without them.

Also, she did watch the Food Network well, and often.

About the Author

KATHRYN LITTLEWOOD
is a writer, actress, comedienne, and bon vivant who lives in New York City, works often in Los Angeles, and has a sweet tooth for
pain au chocolat
and sweet novels for middle-grade readers. This, her second novel, is a sequel to her first,
BLISS
.

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Copyright

Katherine Tegen Books is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

A Dash of Magic

Text copyright © 2013 by The Inkhouse

Interior illustrations copyright © 2013 by Erin McGuire

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