A Dash of Magic: A Bliss Novel

  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.

  The 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.

  It was in 1671, in the Italian city of FLORENCE, that Signora Artemisia Bliss did manage to spare her own head by creating a dessert that pleased both the ruthless Duke Alessandro di Medici and his ruthless wife, the Duchess Margareta. Alessandro did prefer sweet
desserts, and Margareta, sour. Signora Bliss, the Court Baker, was ordered to create a wedding dessert that would please both the Duke and the Duchess, on Pain of DEATH. The fearsome rulers did spare her life upon sampling her double orange Whoopie pie.

  Signora Bliss did create two cookies of orange by mixing together the flesh of one pumpkin, one fist of white flour, one of the chicken’s eggs, and one fist of sugar.

  She did bind the cookies together with a frosting wrought from the vigorous mixing of one fist confectioners’ sugar, one staff of butter, the juice of one Blood Orange, and the Secret that lies behind the enigmatic smile of the Mona Lisa, uttered by the portrait herself.

  Rose gulped. “We need to collect the secret of the Mona Lisa’s smile?”

  “Looks like it,” said Purdy. “You didn’t warn us last night, Balthazar, when you suggested the recipe.”

  “Hey!” he grunted, adjusting his purple cardigan. “You want your stuff to taste the best, you gotta collect the best. There’s nothing more sweet-and-sour than the Mona Lisa’s smile. Of course, it’s a very rare ingredient, and I don’t have it in my suitcase. We’ve got to go straight to the source.”

  “All right,” said Albert, pouring himself a glass of water and gulping it down. “I guess we’re off to the Louvre museum.”

  “Why are we going to a museum now?” whined Sage. “I thought the one perk of this nonvacation was that we’d be too busy to go to a museum.”

  But Leigh shivered with delight. “Art!” she screamed. “Nectar of the human soul!”

  The Louvre looked to Rose like a medieval castle—save for the famous glass pyramid in the courtyard. The building was so enormous that at first she didn’t realize it was all the same. “How big is this place?”

  “Big enough to be seen from space,” her father said. “Now come on.”

  The Blisses hurried to the entrance and found themselves at the back of a line that wound all the way around the block.

  “This is worse than Disney World!” said Albert. He poked the shoulder of the uniformed soldier in front of him. “Sir? Do you know how long the wait is?”

  “About three hours,” said the man.

  Purdy looked at her watch. “We only have fifty-two minutes! Are you sure we can’t substitute a different ingredient, Balthazar?”

  “It has to be the Mona Lisa’s secret,” he answered gruffly. “No way around it.” Balthazar had donned a baseball hat that was too big, even for his massive cranium, and had painted his nose and cheeks with pasty white zinc oxide to protect them from the sun.

  “I have an idea,” Sage announced. “Let’s tell the guards that I have a rare disease where I can’t be out in the sun. They’ll let us in just to spare my life!”

  Purdy shook her head. “That’s immoral,” she said. “Also, that’s a real disease. It’s called Xeroderma Pigmentosum.”

  “Huh,” pondered Balthazar. “You know, I think the kid is on to something. We oughtta try. We’ve only got forty-nine minutes.”

  Balthazar pulled a napkin from his pocket. Inside was a flaky pastry that looked chalky and old. “Here. We all need a bite of this before we get inside. It’s a Portrait Pop-Tart. Makes it so you can hear what the folks in the paintings are saying.”

  Rose took a bite of the Portrait Pop-Tart. It was as dry and hard as a fingernail, and the jelly inside had dried into dehydrated red flakes. “When is this from?” she asked, doing her best not to spit her bite to the curb.

  “Nineteen fifty-five,” answered Balthazar. “Sorry about that. I considered making a new one last night, just in case, but I had this perfectly good one stuffed in my suitcase.”

  As soon as everyone had managed to scarf down a bite of the ancient Portrait Pop-Tart, Sage unwrapped the blue pashmina Purdy was wearing around her neck and draped it over his head, then spread some of Balthazar’s zinc oxide on his nose. “Let’s go.”

  Heads turned as the Blisses marched around the block to the front of the line. At the entrance, a tired woman with short brown curls was taking tickets.

  “Excuse me, ma’am,” said Sage. “My name is Leonardo Da Bliss, and I’ve traveled all the way here from Alaska with my family.”

  Sage indicated the motley crew that stood behind him.

  “I have a rare condition called . . . zero-drama piggytosis.” Sage glanced back at Purdy, who smiled nervously. “I am allergic to the sun. My whole life, all I’ve wanted was to see the Mona Lisa, painted by my namesake, Leonardo Da Vinci. But I can’t wait in this line for another three hours under the blazing sun. I was hoping you could let me and my family in, or else I’ll have to go back to my hotel and look at pictures of the Mona Lisa on the internet.”

  Rose could barely believe what a whopper of a lie her brother had just told, though she had to hand it to him—he had pulled it off without flinching.

  Rose risked a glance at the ticket taker. It seemed to have worked!

  The ticket taker smiled gently. “Sure, sweet one. You and your brother and sisters can come in for free. But it’ll be thirty euros for the adults. And you’ll have to put the cat in the coat check.”

  Balthazar looked like someone had punched him in the stomach. “Thirty euros?” he gasped. “That’s forty bucks! Outrageous! Just send the kids in.”

  While Purdy, Albert, Balthazar, and Gus waited outside, the four kids marched right in to search for the Mona Lisa.

  Everybody walking through the halls of the Louvre spoke in hushed tones, which was good, because the din coming from the portraits was deafening.

  It was impossible, for instance, to ignore the portrait of Napoleon Bonaparte crossing the Alps on horseback. “I’ve grown weary of our journey,” he whined. “My toes are frostbitten. I’ve change my mind about Russia—I don’t want to go anymore. I hear in Russia they put small dolls inside of larger dolls. I don’t understand. I can no longer feel my fingers. Does anyone have a slice of quiche? Are we there yet?”

  Sage couldn’t resist. He walked over to the portrait of Napoleon. “I sympathize, Your Excellency.”

  Napoleon’s eyes seemed to shift ever so slightly to Sage’s face. While his mouth didn’t move, the Bliss children could hear exactly what he was saying.

  “You can hear me?” the portrait asked Sage.

  “Yes, sir,” said Sage.

  “C’est beau,” whispered Napoleon. “Bring me a croissant! And a carafe of my finest wine! This horse’s hair is coarse and unpleasant. Bring me a donkey!”

  “It’s been a pleasure, sir,” said Sage, saluting Napoleon and rejoining the group.

  “Wait!” called the painting. “Where are you going?”

  “Wow,” whispered Sage as he continued down the hallway. “He really is a whiner! Can you believe that guy, Ty?”

  Ty offered no reply—he was too busy staring at a portrait of a naked woman’s back. He managed to look away long enough to read the name of the painter on the card next to the painting. “Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres,” he said. He turned back to the painting. “Hola, mi amor. Is that the name of your . . . husband? Your boyfriend?”

  While the woman in the painting didn’t move, Rose could clearly hear her voice. “He was just a guy I met at the market while I was buying beans,” she said. “He told me this painting was just for practice. He said people thought he was a terrible artist and no one would ever see it. But here we are, well over a century later, and a thousand different people stare at my butt every day. You among them.”

  Ty blushed. “I’m sorry,” he said, looking at the floor.

  They hurried on.

  Rose elbowed her brother. “Serves you right for trying to pick up someone in a painting.”

  At the end of the hall, a crowd of tourists stood in a huddle, all facing the wall. Rose stood on her toes and strained to see what they were looking at.

  There she was: the Mona Lisa.

  The painting was much smaller than Rose had pictured. It was covered by glass and illuminated from above by a small lamp. Rose squ
eezed her way to the front of the crowd to hear what the Mona Lisa was saying, but the painting was silent.

  “Hello,” Rose whispered. “Mona?”

  Nothing—except for confused stares from the people standing next to her.

  “Let’s let the strange little girl have her moment alone,” whispered one couple.

  The crowd that had gathered around the portrait dispersed when they heard Rose whispering to herself. Before long, Rose and her brothers found themselves face-to-face with the famous portrait.

  “I said, Hello!” Rose whispered again.

  “Oh, I heard you the first time,” the painting said, her voice soft and low.

  “I . . . we . . . we are in a baking competition,” Rose whispered to the painting. “We need to capture the secret of your smile. So, if you’ll just tell us, we’ll be on our way.”

  The painting scoffed. “Everyone thinks I’m smiling. I’m not smiling! I’m frowning, like a respectable woman. So, whatever you need for your baking competition, you’ll have to find it somewhere else.”

  “I got this,” Ty said, running his fingers through his hair. He sauntered up to the painting, bit his lower lip, and furrowed his brow in a pose that Ty had practiced many times and called “The Album Cover.”

  “You look like you are having surgery,” said the Mona Lisa.

  Ty broke his pose and let out his breath. “What do you mean? I practiced that face for two days! I did so much research!”

  “I hate to break it to you,” said the painting, “but you look like—” and then she said things Rose had never heard an adult woman say before in her life, let alone a painting of an adult woman.

  Ty gasped. “You have a dirty mouth! No wonder you keep it closed!”

  Rose turned to look for Leigh, who’d wandered down the hallway and was having words with a docent who wore a red uniform that made him look like a bellhop.

  “I just wanted you to know that your biography of Eugène Delacroix contains glaring misinformation,” Leigh argued, scratching a bit of spilled oatmeal off the front of her crusty 101 Dalmatians T-shirt. “Though he did in fact attend both schools, it was at the Lycée Pierre Corneille that he first won accolades for his illustrations and not at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand as your placard asserts.”