Bite-Sized Magic

  “But that’s not enough time!” Rose protested.

  “It will have to be.” Mr. Butter turned to leave, then spotted the few remaining donut holes on the cookie sheet. “Donut holes!” he shouted. “Where did you get those?”

  “Um . . . leftovers from the Dinky Doodle Donuts we just made!” Rose said quickly. “Just scraps. Freshly baked.”

  “I suppose that makes sense.” Mr. Butter’s fingers twitched as he eyed the donuts with what looked like disgust—but just as easily might have been longing. “Okay, I must return to my guests. Mind that you and your team stay in here so that Mr. Kerr doesn’t mistake you for the culprits behind tonight’s attack. I’d hate for him to accidentally hurt you.”

  Mr. Kerr threw her a menacing look, then slid behind the wheel of the golf cart. As Mr. Butter climbed in beside him, Rose glimpsed a thick bundle of dozens of keys dangling from his belt.

  The moment Mr. Butter and Mr. Kerr disappeared into the floor, the bakers let out sighs of relief.

  “Phew!” said Gene. “It’s hard to stand up straight for that long. Exercise is tough!”

  “Let’s all try and get some sleep,” Rose said to Marge and the bakers. “We have a long day ahead of us tomorrow.” But all Rose could think about was that keychain on Mr. Butter’s belt.

  The key to the hotel elevator has to be one of those, she thought to herself. If I can get those, I can rescue my parents and Balthazar, and we can all get out of here.

  CHAPTER 13

  King Things of Revulsion

  Rose was awoken the next morning by Sage, who bounced onto her bed, crying, “Surprise! Rose, wake up! We did the King Things for you!”

  “What do you mean, you did them for me?” she asked, worried by the sight of her younger brother with his wild ginger curls dusted in flour and his fingers and face coated in sticky chocolate.

  “We did it! Ty and me and Marge. We took Lily’s recipe card and looked at the original recipe in the Apocrypha, and we fixed it!” He paused to lick a finger. “We think.”

  Rose took a deep breath and looked down over the test kitchen, which was scattered with dirty bowls of flour and spilled canisters of cocoa and a dozen eggshells.

  Ty was standing over a tray of freshly baked chocolate-covered logs. He waved up to Rose, wearing a look of extreme pride. The bakers were frantically cleaning up the mess her brothers had made. “Thank you, Sage.”

  “It’s no problem, sis,” her brother said. “We’re all in this together, you know?”

  “I know,” Rose said. “And I’m really grateful for that.”

  She smiled at Sage and hugged him. Thank God he and Ty had come for her—she had no idea what she would have done without them. It was a good feeling knowing that the three of them were in this together. And Leigh, too, in spirit.

  “Look what we did!” Ty said, gesturing to the tray of King Things as Rose came down the stairs fifteen minutes later.

  She had taken a quick shower and was wearing a fresh white chef’s apron and a new—clean—baking hat. She still had her shorts on, though, the ones she’d worn when she was kidnapped. Luckily, they hadn’t gotten dirty.

  “We made these! Thought we’d show you that your brothers still have the knack, the know-how, the family magic in their fingers!”

  “You guys did a great job,” said Rose, patting her older brother on the back. On one of the prep tables was a cup of tea and some of the contraband Kathy Keegen cookies. Her usual breakfast. Rose took a sip of tea and asked, “What Apocrypha recipe did Lily mess up this time?”

  “This one,” said Sage, handing Rose one of Lily’s creamy recipe cards and the pamphlet of grayed sheets that was the Apocrypha.

  ROLLS OF REVULSION: To sow the seeds of hatred and discord

  It was in 1809 in the Arabian village of Masuleh that the nefarious descendant of Albatross Bliss, Madame Gagoosh Taghipoor, did bake these rolls of cake filled with bitter jelly. She did feed them to all of the children in the town, whereupon they did begin to feel a strong distaste for their parents’ cooking, and for their parents in general. They thenceforth ate only at the bakery of Madame Gagoosh Taghipoor, and when Madame Gagoosh Taghipoor moved away from the village, the children did wander in exile, hating their parents until eventually they starved.

  “Geez Louise!” Rose exclaimed. “This one sounds totally nasty!”

  “We followed the recipe part, where it says bitter fruit,” said Sage. “Look.”

  Madame Taghipoor did combine two fists of bitter fruit with one fist of sugar and one acorn of THE OBJECT OF REVULSION.

  “The only difference we could find between the original recipe and Lily’s,” said Ty, “was the Object of Revulsion. We thought maybe hers wasn’t strong enough. Because see, she was making a much larger batch, but she didn’t change the proportions. So we just added a lot more.”

  “But what is the Object of Revulsion?” Rose asked, wrinkling her nose. It certainly didn’t sound very appealing, but then again not much in the Apocrypha did.

  “Oh, it’s this stuff,” said Marge, holding up a red mason jar filled with a crumbly black substance that looked like . . . well, rabbit poop. “Mr. Butter delivered it himself. I don’t know what’s in it.”

  Rose opened the jar and was smacked in the face by the smell of dead flowers and old cheese and unwashed sneakers and yogurt breath and a thousand other nasty things. She snapped the jar closed, her stomach churning.

  “Oh my. That is bad. So what do these King Things do?” said Rose. “I doubt they’ll be edible, if you dumped this nasty stuff in.”

  “There’s only one way to find out,” said Marge, and she passed the frosted chocolate logs to the other bakers, then took a bite of one herself. “Huh,” she said, wincing only slightly. “Could be worse.”

  Ty and Sage gave each other a rousing high five. “We did it, man!”

  “But what did it do?” said Rose. “Marge, do you feel funny?”

  “I feel like I have a good sense of humor, but my wit isn’t as sharp as that of a professional comedian,” said Marge thoughtfully. “My mother never encouraged me to develop my natural talent in the arts. I mean, I appreciate humor . . .” At the look on Rose’s face, Marge trailed off. “Oh, you meant, do I feel funny as in strange. No, no, I don’t feel strange at all.”

  “What about the rest of you?” Rose said to the other bakers. “Anything different?”

  They shook their heads.

  “Why isn’t it doing anything?” Sage whined.

  “I don’t know,” said Rose. “See, you can’t just add stuff willy-nilly—there might be too much of the Object of Revulsion in there. King Things are supposed to be a lighter chocolate—these are so dark, they look like . . .” Rose reached into the pocket of her shorts and produced the letter she’d received days ago. There it was, in a boxed picture at the bottom of the letter. “They look like these: Kathy Keegan Koko Kakes.”

  As soon as Rose said “Kathy Keegan,” the bakers’ faces instantly contorted into looks of complete revulsion.

  “That talentless witch?” Marge spat. “That hack?”

  “Her Koko Kakes are chocolate tragedies,” said Jasmine angrily.

  “If I saw her on the street, I would spit her Koko Kakes right in her face,” said Ning. “Right into her scaly lizard face.”

  Sage pointed to the cartoon drawing of Kathy Keegan on the letter. “This little cartoon lady?” he said. “With the short hair? She looks fine to me!”

  With a scream of rage, Melanie and Felanie seized the letter from Sage and tore off the cartoon Kathy Keegan head. “Hey!” Sage called out, but Jasmine and Ning had already crumpled up the portion of the letter they’d ripped and shoved it down the garbage disposal, cheering as it was ground into a pulp.

  “Here, Sage, give me that.” Rose held out her hand and Sage gave her the remainder of the letter. She folded it up as best she could and put it back in her pocket.

  “What’s their beef with Kathy Keegan?” S
age asked.

  Rose shook her head. “It’s the King Things.” She pointed to Jasmine and Ning who were staring down the drain and clapping. “They make them hate Kathy Keegan!”

  The bakers covered their hands with their ears, as if the very name of the cartoon baker sounded like nails on a chalkboard.

  “Why would Mr. Butter want that?” Ty asked. “I thought he wanted to take over Kathy Keegan’s company?”

  An image of the International Society of the Rolling Pin’s meeting flashed before Rose’s eyes—how everyone there despised Kathy Keegan. “It’s a backup plan in case the other plan doesn’t work,” Rose said with a sudden realization. “If people eat King Things, and King Things make them hate Kathy Keegan, they’re not gonna go out and buy a box of Kathy Keegan Koko Kakes, right?”

  The bakers snarled and winced and threw metal bowls, which went clattering to the floor.

  “And since only two bakeries in the country are now legally allowed to operate, that means Mostess Moony Pyes and Glo-Balls and Dinky Doodle Donuts are their only other choice,” Sage concluded. “Tricky!”

  Rose smelled the red mason jar containing the Object of Revulsion once more. “I just don’t understand exactly what this stuff is.”

  “It actually looks like Kathy Keegan Koko Kakes,” said Ty, peering through the red glass of the jar. “Like, ones that have seen better days.”

  “That’s it!” Rose exclaimed. “The Koko Kakes themselves are the Objects of Revulsion! They’ve been putrefied, probably with some kind of magical rotting agent. Add the revolting stuff to the batter, and the people who eat it start to hate that thing. A lot.”

  Marge and the other bakers had opened fifty canisters of vanilla frosting and were assembling the white goopy stuff into something that looked like a snowman.

  “What are you doing with that frosting?” said Rose.

  “We’re making an effigy of that useless sack Kathy Keegan,” said Marge.

  “And what are you going to do with it?” asked Ty.

  Marge’s eyes seemed to burst with flames. “Burn it.”

  Rose grabbed the Apocrypha and flipped through, looking for an antidote to Gagoosh Taghipoor’s Rolls of Revulsion. “Oh dear. We have to fix this before they burn down the building.”

  PARENTAL PASTRY CREAM: To squash the seeds of hatred and discord

  The beautiful Lady Niloufar Bliss did greet the wandering band of starving children who had so violently eschewed their parents. She did create a plum tart and did imbue the pastry cream beneath the fruit with MOTHER’S LOVE, mined from the wailing of the estranged mothers of the village of Masuleh. When the children did eat of the tart, they wept and ran back to the arms of their weeping mothers, who kissed their faces and rejoiced.

  “Where are we going to get Mother’s Love?” Rose asked.

  “Duh,” said Ty. “Our own mother is about a mile away. And she loves us. Like, a lot.”

  “Right,” said Rose. “Except we don’t have the key to their suite. I think I saw it on Mr. Butter’s key ring, but there’s no way to actually lift it off his belt.”

  “Leave that to me!” squeaked Jacques. The mouse had been watching the proceedings from atop one of the prep tables. “You see, I used to be a thief.”

  “You did?”

  “Oui,” said Jacques. “I would steal food from expensive shops in the market and give it to ze poor people.”

  “Like Robin Hood,” said Ty.

  “That was ze idea,” said Jacques. “But I got very creative. In ze beginning, I would leave potatoes on their doorstep. Then eet was a whole medley of vegetables and butchered meats. Then I was constructing elaborate gift baskets from the things I stole. Eet got to be excessive. Ze poor don’t need little tins of caviar and smoked oysters. And ze baskets were so heavy that I would have to enlist many mice to help me carry them. And then ze mice would start to eat the baskets—oooooh, eet was a big mess.”

  “But your heart was in the right place,” Rose said.

  “Absolument! In any case, I am quite an adept thief.” He drew his paws along his whiskers, cleaning them. “When your Mr. Butter comes in here later today, that key will be mine.”

  Mr. Butter and Mr. Kerr showed up a short while later. Mr. Kerr had on a bright purple velour track suit. How many of those things does he own? Rose wondered.

  Sage and Ty watched from Rose’s bedroom, unseen by Mr. Butter and Mr. Kerr, while Rose greeted them in the test kitchen.

  Marge and the bakers had completed their life-size frosting statue of Kathy Keegan. It bore a remarkable resemblance to the cartoon character on the letterhead. If the bakers hadn’t been driven by blind hatred, they might have considered careers as sculptors and artists.

  “What is this snowman doing here?” asked Mr. Butter.

  He stood behind a stainless steel prep table wearing a light-blue button-down shirt and navy slacks. The same thick ring of keys Rose had seen before hung from his belt, and as she scanned it, she saw an oddly shaped key, a brass staff with a tiny rolling pin jutting out from the end at a ninety-degree angle. She looked around for Jacques, but he was nowhere to be found. Gus, though, she could see sitting atop a refrigerator in plain sight. She’d told the cat to hide—Mr. Butter clearly didn’t like him—but he had his own ideas about where he belonged.

  “This is an effigy of Kathy Keegan made from frosting,” said Rose. “The bakers are eager to burn it.”

  “Are you?” Mr. Butter asked the bakers, looking delighted. “Why?”

  “Because Kathy Keegan is evil,” Felanie said.

  “Like music that plays in elevators,” Melanie said.

  “Or Christmas fruitcakes,” Gene said.

  “We were trying to expunge that ugly face from our brains,” said Marge. “We only want to think of Mostess—and its heavenly, perfect food-like products.”

  It would have been a rousing performance, thought Rose, if indeed it had been a performance. Unlike the other times Mr. Butter had come in to check on the test kitchen’s progress, this time the bakers weren’t faking it. Mr. Butter was witnessing the true destructive power of the perfected recipes firsthand, and he was loving it. His eyes were bright and wide, and his cheeks were as pink as the top of his bald head. He looked like a schoolboy. A strange, old schoolboy.

  “I’d like to ask you all a series of questions,” he said, using his fingers to comb nonexistent hair across his shiny scalp. “Just to make sure the King Things are perfect.”

  “Anything for you, Master of the Mostess!” Ning declared with a bow.

  Mr. Butter whispered to Rose, “We’ll see whether the recipe has truly been perfected. Lily Le Fay was able to achieve similar results, but her King Things weren’t quite strong enough.”

  They’re strong enough now, Rose thought. Thanks to Ty and Sage.

  Mr. Butter pointed to Marge. “What do Kathy Keegan Koko Kakes taste like?”

  Marge made a face of disgust. “Rotten eggs and disappointment!”

  He pointed to Melanie and Felanie. “What is your favorite thing about Kathy Keegan?”

  “That she can be hit over the head with a rolling pin,” Melanie volunteered.

  “And smacked in the face with a baking sheet,” said Felanie with a firm nod.

  Mr. Butter continued around the kitchen until he was standing directly in front of Gene. “Where do you think Kathy Keegan lives?”

  “A sewer,” he answered. “And that’s where she does her baking.”

  Finally, he gestured at Jasmine and Ning. “And what would you do if you ran into Kathy Keegan on the street?”

  “Run!” cried Ning.

  “As fast and as far in the opposite direction as I can go!” said Jasmine.

  “Or build a prison out of Moony Pyes and Glo-Balls and lock her inside,” said Ning.

  “You’ve outdone yourself, Miss Rosemary Bliss,” Mr. Butter said just as Jacques appeared at the corner of the table.

  “Why thank you, sir!” Rose said, anxious to dr
aw away his attention. Now please give us your keys so I can go see my mother and turn these poor bakers back the way they were.

  “In a mere four days you have perfected our Moony Pyes, Glo-Balls, Dinky Doodle Donuts, and now our King Things! By the end of today, when you’ve perfected the original Dinky recipe, all five of our new and improved FLCPs will be ready to go into production!”

  Jacques tightroped along the edge of the table, carefully putting one tiny pink foot in front of the other, almost within reach of the dangling batch of keys on Mr. Butter’s belt.

  “Kathy Keegan is, as you know, the devil incarnate,” said Mr. Butter.

  The bakers hooted and applauded as Jacques, unseen by anyone but Rose, reached forward and tried to unhook the rolling-pin key. But Mr. Butter was standing just an inch too far from the table for Jacques to reach.

  Rose moved to the edge of the prep table opposite Mr. Butter. “Could you lean forward, Mr. Butter?”

  “Why?”

  “I . . . I’m thinking of shaving my hair off, and I want to see what it would look like on top.” She shrugged and smiled. “It’s a new fashion!”

  Mr. Butter cooed and leaned forward, so that his key ring clunked onto the top of the table. “This isn’t a traditional girl’s haircut,” he said, “but kids these days!”

  Rose reached forward and ran her fingers along the smooth, waxy surface of Mr. Butter’s head, all the while staring down at Jacques, who had disappeared beneath the folds of Mr. Butter’s button-down shirt.

  “It’s so . . . bumpy,” Rose said.

  “That’s my skull under the skin,” Mr. Butter said.

  A moment later, the mouse emerged carrying the oddly shaped key, and Rose liberated her hand from Mr. Butter’s greasy head. “Thank you,” she said. “That was very . . . informative.”