A Dash of Magic: A Bliss Novel (7 page)

Jean-Pierre waddled from his floating cupcake carriage to the front of the stage and seized the microphone. “The time has come. You will have one hour in which to prepare your first dessert. You may keep track of time there!” Jean-Pierre pointed to the wall above the doors, where there hung a big black clock in the shape of a baking timer. “Ready. Set. Bake!”

Purdy hurried off with Sage and Leigh to join Balthazar and Albert in the opera box, leaving Rose and Ty to swim—or sink—in cookie batter.

Rose hurried to her ingredients and found a sack of flour and a tiny brown bottle of vanilla. She opened the red refrigerator and pulled out a carton of eggs and a stick of butter. She arranged her ingredients on the wooden chopping block in front of a mixing bowl and exhaled noisily. “Okay. Here goes. Ty, can you get the measuring spoons?” she said.

But Ty was already too busy talking to the camera. He leaned casually against the chopping block with his arms crossed over his chest, flexing his biceps. Rose recognized the pose, another standard weapon in Ty’s arsenal of handsomeness—he called it “The Manly Man.”

“There’s nothing harder than baking,” he crooned into the camera, running his fingers along the stiff red spikes on his forehead, “or more rewarding. I’ve sacrificed everything to be here. My spring break . . . everything. It makes dating difficult, of course, because I pretty much bake from the moment I wake up until the moment I take off my shirt at night and go to sleep. But I’d be willing to lay down my spatula for the right woman.” He winked into the camera as it drifted over to Rose.

It was a curious sensation, being filmed. There was something about knowing you’re being watched—knowing that someone thinks you are interesting enough to record your face and actions and words for eternity—that was a little bit dizzying. It propelled Rose forward as she gathered the measuring cups and dumped two cups of flour into the bowl.

“Whoa,” said Ty, pointing to Aunt Lily’s kitchen, where no less than seven cameras were capturing her every elegant move. “Why don’t we have that many cameras?”

“It’s not about the cameras, Ty,” Rose said. “Just get the blue mason jar.”

Ty retrieved the jar, opened it, and used a metal spoon to scoop up every last bit of grayed almond butter. He plopped all of it into the bowl with the rest of the ingredients.

Rose stirred, and the batter turned bloodred.

“Ah, red! The color of passion!” said Ty, winking again at the camera.

As Rose continued to stir, the red dissolved into a gritty black. She stirred and stirred, and the mixture grew thick and gummy and heavy, until finally it stuck together in a tight black ball in the bottom of the bowl.

“This isn’t right!” Rose said. She glanced at the big timer on the wall—there were only thirty minutes left, just enough time to bake the cookies.

Rose looked up at her family in the balcony. Purdy smiled and gave Rose a thumbs-up, but Rose could tell that Purdy looked worried.

Rose gouged spoonfuls of the thick black mess onto a baking sheet, then tossed them into the oven. “Maybe they’ll come out all right,” she whispered. “Please let them come out all right.”

When the timer reached zero, a deafening clang reverberated through the expo center.

“Spoons down!” boomed Jean-Pierre Jeanpierre. “Marco will now bring your SWEET desserts to me at the judge’s table, and I will sample each one.”

A dashing, tawny man wearing a white-gloved uniform placed Rose’s finished plate of blackened cookies on a rolling silver cart as long as a helicopter blade, along with the nineteen other contestants’ plates. He practically flew up the black-and-white-tiled aisle toward the stage at the front, then laid the desserts in front of Jean-Pierre.

All of the twenty contestants filed up from their kitchens and formed a line facing the bottom of the stage.

“There are twenty of you right now,” Jean-Pierre intoned, “but in five minutes’ time, there will be only ten.
Bonne chance
.”

Rose’s cookies were first in line on the silver tray, although they looked more like shriveled monkey heads than sugar cookies—nothing like what Sir Falstaffe Bliss must have presented to the sour Countess Fifi Canard.

Jean-Pierre took one of the gummy cookies and sank into it with his molars. Rose swore she could hear a tooth cracking.

Jean-Pierre snapped his fingers, and Marco held a delicate silver bowl up to his lips. Jean-Pierre spit the bite he’d taken into the silver bowl, looked at Rose with dead eyes, and cleared his throat. Then he moved on to the next plate, saying nothing at all.

Down the line, Lily put a hand on either cheek and mouthed
Oh, no!
to Rose in a show of sympathy as false as her long black locks.

That’s it. I ruined everything,
Rose thought.
Now we’ll never get the Cookery Booke back.

J
ean-Pierre stood on the stage with Marco, the handsome waiter, and Flaurabelle, his red-lipped assistant, whispering back and forth.

Rose couldn’t understand what she’d done wrong. Too much flour? Not enough vanilla? Had the lovers’ whispers been tainted?

“I’m going to find Mom,” she said, sulking off in the direction of the opera box at the side of the room.

“Wait up,
mi hermana
!” said Ty.

When they found the box, Rose fell into Purdy’s arms. “Jean-Pierre spit my cookie into a bowl!” she sobbed.

“He sure did,” Balthazar grumbled. “Are you sure you captured lovers’ whispers?”

“Totally sure,” said Sage. “The woman had a ring the size of a kiwi.”

“But what did they
say
?”

Sage shrugged. “It was, like, ‘
Fi fi fah fah fah. Hoh huh hee huh huh
.’ Pretty much exactly like that.”

“No, no, dude,” said Ty. “It was, like, ‘
Zha-tah keet. Na-mah keet-pah. Zha-tah keet. Na-mah keet-pah
.’ Which I assumed meant, like, ‘You are so hot’ and ‘I know I am so hot.’ Right,
Abuelo
?”

Balthazar shook his head. “No! Wrong. ‘
Je te quitte
’ means ‘I’m leaving you,’ and ‘
Ne me quitte pas
’ means ‘Don’t leave me.’ You trapped break-up whispers instead of lovers’ whispers. That’s what made the cookies taste bitter and look like—well, like they looked. Also, don’t call me
Abuelo.
I was born in New Jersey.”

Just then Jean-Pierre took up his microphone and cleared his throat. “I have now made my decision. Half of you will be moving on in the competition, and half of you will be swept away on a wave of shameful tears. The bakers who will be joining us tomorrow are, in no particular order . . .”

As Jean-Pierre rattled off name after name, shouts of joy wafted up from other kitchens. Rohit Mansukhani, the baker from India, did a victory dance. Wei Wen, the slight baker from China, nodded courteously. Dag Ferskjold, the tall Norwegian, pounded his fists on his cutting board and broke down in tears of relief. Miriam and Muriel, the French twins Desjardins, jumped up and down like schoolchildren.

Ty jumped with them.

“You’re supposed to be rooting for
our
team, Ty,” said Rose.

“I am!” he said. “But I’m also rooting for Miriam and Muriel.”

Finally, Jean-Pierre paused and looked out over the crowd. “I have named the eight contestants who will be advancing in the competition. Other than the victor, only one name remains,” he said.

Rose shook her head. She knew she was finished.

“Bliss.”

Rose’s eyes darted around the room. Was there another competitor named Bliss? Or had she, by some miracle, been allowed to continue on?

“Oh, thank goodness!” Purdy screamed, hoisting Rose up in the air.

“The rest of you,” Jean-Pierre continued, “may pack up your spatulas and leave the premises.” Irina Klechevsky from Russia threw her hands up in the air, while Malik Hall from Senegal dropped to his knees and cursed the sky. Victor Cabeza from Mexico hung his head, while Peter Gianopolous stormed out of the expo center. Fritz Knapschildt and the others simply collected their utensils and walked off toward the door, sighing.

That could have been me,
Rose thought.

Jean-Pierre cleared his throat. “Congratulations to the nine bakers, though I use the term loosely. Some of the so-called sweet desserts were an abominable, dismal mess. I have been forced to allow these people to pass through to day two only because half of our contestants didn’t finish their baked goods in time. Those of you who’ve barely skated by—and you know who you are—will be shown no mercy tomorrow.”

Rose pictured Jean-Pierre slicing her head off with a guillotine made out of sheet cake.

“Our winner for today,” Jean-Pierre went on, “is a woman whose decadent chocolate creation managed to tickle even myself, the world’s foremost expert on chocolate. The magnificent woman who has rescued the morning from insignificance is . . . Lily Le Fay!”

Rose peered into Jean-Pierre’s eyes as he announced the winner. His blue eyes had darkened so that Rose couldn’t tell where pupils ended and irises began, just as Leigh’s eyes had darkened when she ate the entire Pound-for-Pound Cake tainted with Lily’s Magic Ingredient. Jean-Pierre hadn’t eaten quite that much, and his body was considerably larger than Leigh’s, so Rose hoped that the effects would be short-lived; but still, they were unmistakable. Lily could have made instant mashed potatoes with her Magic Ingredient and he would have proclaimed it the most genius thing he’d ever eaten.

I don’t stand a chance against her magic,
Rose thought.

Lily ran to the stage, where Jean-Pierre placed a silver tiara on her head. Dozens of cameras swarmed, bulbs flashed, and Lily smiled.

“How does it feel to win, Lily?” one of the cameramen asked.

“Oh, I’m humbled just to be here,” she said.

That’s when Rose spotted the tiny man in the harlequin costume. He cocked his bald head to the side and peered up into the crowd from beneath the bushy black caterpillars of his eyebrows. His eyes flashed green, and Rose could swear she saw him wink at her from all the way down on the stage.

“Ty,” Rose said, pulling on his sleeve. “Do you see that? Who is that guy?”

“What guy?”

“The little guy standing next to Lily.”

Ty peered down over the stage. “There’s no little guy,
mi hermana
.”

Rose checked again. Ty was right. There was no longer anyone standing next to Lily except reporters and cameramen.

Ty patted Rose on the head. “I think you need a nap.”

When they got back to the family’s suite at the Hôtel de Notre Dame, Rose locked herself in the room she was sharing with Leigh and couldn’t be coaxed out, not even by the aroma of boxed macaroni and cheese being heated up in the suite’s miniature kitchen.

“Rose!” Leigh called through the door. “Your level of despondence rivals that of van Gogh. Are you going to cut your ear off over a few burned cookies? You’re being selfish and maudlin. Besides, my blanky is inside and you’ve locked me out blanky-less! Open the door!”

“Rose, honey, open the door,” said Purdy. “What happened today wasn’t your fault. We just weren’t prepared.”

Rose let out a huge sigh.

“We’ll be prepared for tomorrow,” said Albert. “But you gotta come help us figure out what to do.”

“I want to go home,” Rose said. “There are just too many ways everything can go wrong. It’s not a fair match, me and her. She’s using her Lily’s Magic Ingredient stuff, and I just have our old family recipes.”

“Check your math on that one,” Balthazar grunted. “Last I checked, Lily had a team of one. You have six people and a talking cat out here, all working for you.”

“True,” said Gus. “Although Lily has the Magic Ingredient on her side as well. And some very rare items in blue mason jars as well. The two in conjunction are lethal.”

“What rare items?” asked Balthazar.

Rose listened closer, pressing her ear to the door.

“Today she used the whinny of a camel-horse,” Gus replied.

Rose threw open the door. “
Really?
How do you know?”

Everyone was gathered in a circle around an ottoman, peering down at Gus, who was ignoring everyone, running his rough tongue over his silky gray paw.

“I was watching her as she worked,” he said, sitting back on his hind legs. “More importantly, I was listening. When the batter was almost done, she opened a blue mason jar over the bowl, and I distinctly heard the neighing of a horse. You know.” Gus did his best impression of a braying horse, complete with kicking the dirt with his hind legs.

“What’s a camel-horse?” Ty asked.

Balthazar glared sideways at Ty like Ty had just asked how to spell his own name. “What do you teach these children? A camel-horse! Camel-horses were bred by a trader of chocolate in ancient Samarkand named Elmurod. Elmurod noticed that everyone who petted camel-horses instantly felt calm and peaceful, so he invented a chocolate confection that contained the magical whinny of the camel-horse. He called them Bless-Me Brownies, and, like petting the actual animal, they made people feel calm and peaceful—a feeling that’s always been in short supply, if you ask me.”