A Dash of Magic: A Bliss Novel

  Ty, on the other hand, counted Pet Sematary as his favorite film and was thrilled to be venturing into a catacomb. As they walked single-file down the hall, he said, “Oh man, Jacques. This is like, the casa de los muertos. Too radical, mouse-man. But where are all the graves?”

  Rose and Jacques squeezed through a narrow opening at the end of the stone hallway. “There are no graves,” Jacques said quietly. “Just bones.”

  Through the narrow entrance was a small room where the walls were made entirely of bones. Long, musty thigh bones stacked on top of one another formed a honeycomb pattern, with countless human skulls dotted throughout. On the other side of the room, another corridor, also lined with human bones, led deeper into the Catacombs.

  Ty stood frozen in the middle of the room. “Where did they get all these bones?” he whispered in horror.

  Sage put Gus down, then pulled his tape recorder from his back pocket and whispered nervously into the microphone. “I guess this is what happens when you hire a coroner as a decorator.”

  Rose looked at him and rolled her eyes.

  “What?” he replied. “I’m using humor to diffuse the tension in here.”

  Gus seemed unimpressed by the bones. He was more concerned with keeping his paws out of the puddles of water, and he snarled as he shook a stray drop off the tip of his tail. He glared at the mouse, who was still huddled inside the pocket of Rose’s sweatshirt. “Were you born here, Jacques?”

  “Zut alors, non!” Jacques blustered. “I was born in a beautiful village in Aix-en-Provence. I lived here in the Catacombs just after I graduated from music school.”

  “Why ever would you move away from such a sunny place?” Gus said drily.

  Jacques went on, ignoring the feline sarcasm. “My neighbor was a ghost named Ourson. He was a good man, but be warned: When he shows himself, do not mention the French Revolution. He’s still a bit touchy about that.”

  They all nodded. Jacques pulled out his tiny flute and played an upbeat little tune that Rose recognized as “Frère Jacques.”

  “I changed my mind!” screamed Ty. He retreated into a corner, his arms raised in a kung fu pose. “I don’t want to meet the ghost!”

  Jacques straightened his rumpled whiskers. “It is too late,” he said. “I just rang his doorbell—figuratively, of course.”

  Rose wanted to run from the haunted catacomb just as badly as Ty, but she wanted the Booke back even more, so she stood her ground.

  Having found a dry patch on the stone floor, Gus was sitting with his tail tucked around his paws. “Young Rose, you needn’t worry. The ghost can’t hurt you. Think of him as if he’s nothing more than an old, faded photo.”

  Rose took a deep breath and smiled her thanks at the gray fur ball squatting at her feet.

  Rose had shivered when she entered the Catacombs, but she began to realize it was growing colder still, so cold that her breath turned to vapor. Even Gus’s faint breath had turned to a steady stream of smoke.

  “Jacques!” someone cried.

  Rose turned. Standing in the corner—as if he’d been there the whole time and Rose simply hadn’t noticed—was a man about twenty-five years old. He was wearing pants, a vest, and a newsboy cap. Gus had been right—he looked just like a walking, talking cutout from a faded sepia-toned photograph, the kind her parents kept framed in the secret closet behind the walk-in refrigerator at home.

  “Mon petit ami!” the man said, his words echoing as if he were yelling from far away. “You return!”

  “We came to celebrate your birthday, Ourson,” said Jacques.

  “Ah!” said Ourson, raising his hand to his heart. “And you bring friends!”

  Ourson started across the room toward them. While he appeared to walk, his movement was more like floating than footsteps.

  “Hello,” Rose squeaked. “We, um, brought cake.”

  Giggling nervously, Sage grabbed the candles and matches from his sweatshirt pocket. He plunged the candles into the cake. His fingers were trembling so hard it took him three tries to light a match. “We’re from America,” he babbled as he moved the flame from candle to candle. They had managed to scrounge up five. Jacques had told them the number of candles didn’t matter. Like many ghosts, Ourson didn’t remember things clearly and began each day thinking it was his birthday.

  “We are visiting Paris for a baking competition,” Sage continued. He giggled. “You know, baking? Like this cake! That was baked. Paris is nice. We saw the Seine. We went to the Louvre. If we have time, we’re going to visit the Palace of Versailles.”

  From his seat in Rose’s sweatshirt pocket, Jacques looked at Sage sharply. “Monsieur Sage!” Jacques hissed. “Shh!”

  The merry smile dropped from Ourson’s face. His eyebrows lowered. “Versailles!” The ghost said it like it was a filthy word. “The palace of the rich and the royal. No expense spared! The king and queen stuffing themselves while the people of France starve!”

  Jacques’s whiskers wilted. “I warned you.”

  “We won’t stand for it!” the ghost continued. “We will fight—”

  Rose shoved the cake with the burning candles in front of Ourson’s face, while Sage held the blue jar over the candles.

  “Don’t you see?” the ghost was saying. “We fight for the dream that is France! Liberté, egalité, fraternité!”

  Ourson paused and seemed to notice the cake and candles for the first time. His eyebrows lifted, and the smile returned to his face. “Ah,” he said. “Lovely.” He filled his lungs, puckered his lips into an O, and funneled a slow stream of ghostly air across the candles. As the flames guttered and went out, Sage angled the jar to catch the ghostly breath, then flipped the lid closed. Sage stared sideways at the jar, then took his hands away. The ghostly gust was so light that the jar hung suspended in air.

  “My friends,” Ourson said quietly, “shall I tell you what I wish for?”

  “Freedom for France?” Rose hazarded. “Death to tyrants?”

  “Non, ma petite amie,” Ourson said with a smile. “I wish for a birthday party. I am angry at Louis the Sixteenth and the architects of the ancien régime for so long that I forget how to have a nice time. And so I wish for a party, to remember how. The best part is, my wish comes true, even before I make it. I cannot thank you enough, my friends, for helping me to remember. Thank you.”

  Rose smiled at the flickering ghost, her fear dropping away as he smiled back. Behind her, Ty whimpered piteously. “Can we go now?”

  Back at the Hôtel de Notre Dame, Rose tucked the blue mason jar with the ghostly gust under her bed. She patted Jacques’s little body, no bigger than a Ping-Pong ball, which was still tucked into the front pocket of her sweatshirt.

  By that time it was nine o’clock. It had been a long day, what with collecting the Mona Lisa’s smile, baking the Double Orange Whoopie Pie, and collecting the ghostly gust. Rose felt like she could barely stand up. Still, she wanted to press on.

  She paced behind the couch where Ty and Sage had flopped and begun to nod off. Even Gus was having trouble keeping his eyes open.

  “So, the next recipe we need to collect for is . . . ,” she said, searching for the sheets of paper, “SUGARLESS Better-Than-Anything Banana Bread.”

  “Are you kidding?” said Ty, covering his face with a throw pillow. “We need a break. Like, until tomorrow.”

  “Please, Ty? What if SUGARLESS is the category tomorrow morning? I’m going to lose because you wanted to sleep?”

  Ty grumbled. “Ugh, fine. What do we need to get?”

  Rose turned her attention to the sheet and read aloud:

  Better-Than-Anything Banana Bread, an ancient treat for the diabetic.

  It was in 867, in the Norse settlement of Jarlshof, that Lady Huegrid Bliss did create a banana bread for a nearby village of migrant warriors, none of whom could stomach sugar. The Ruriks, as they were called, suffered so as they smelled the sweet confections emanating from Jarlshof that Lady Bliss did create thi
s recipe, which satisfied the diabetic Rurik tribe’s insatiable craving for sweetness.

  Chef Bliss did combine two-and-one-half fists of white flour, the egg of a chicken, the mash of three ripe bananas, and a dash of vanilla, along with one fist of unspoiled rainfall.

  The resulting mixture he did place in an oven HOT as—

  “Unspoiled rainfall!” Gus interrupted, his ears perking up. “Balthazar used to attach a dozen blue mason jars to the tail of a helicopter and take it up during a thunderstorm just to collect it. But he didn’t bring any with him.”

  “What will water do?” Sage asked, rolling over and pressing his face into the back of the couch.

  “It’s not just water; it’s unspoiled rainfall,” Gus said. “The closer a raindrop gets to the ground, the more potency it loses. By the time it hits the pavement, it’s just a drop of tap water. But when it condenses inside the cloud, a single drop carries the sweetness of an entire colony of bees, or an acre of sugarcane.”

  “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, gato, but we left our helicopter at home,” said Ty.

  “Yes, Thyme, I am aware of your lack of helicopters,” said Gus. “There is another way. It will require unmitigated bravery, cunning, and a willingness to be carried away.”

  Sage turned around. “Mom says I get carried away all the time.”

  The rain started falling before they’d left the hotel. Heavy black clouds had obscured the moon and stars, and thick, cold raindrops beat the pavement like little nails.

  By the time Rose and her brothers piled into a freight elevator on the ground floor of the Eiffel Tower, they were soaked through despite the raincoats they all wore. Jacques had elected to stay behind, and Balthazar had put Leigh to bed for the night. Purdy and Albert were still out looking for their list of ingredients.

  “Are you certain you want to go up to the third deck, mes enfants?” asked the lift operator, who wore a black bellhop’s coat and hat. “It is raining very hard. Everyone else has gone home!”

  “We have to go up right now, sir!” Rose cried. This was their best chance to collect the magic ingredient they’d need to win in the SUGARLESS category. After yesterday’s small triumph in the arena of SOURNESS, Rose had begun to think that a victory was possible. She wanted to win. She needed to win. She had to do something to make up to her family, to Calamity Falls, to herself for losing the Booke. The desire burned in her like a bellyache. “Please.”

  The lift operator stared suspiciously at Sage’s rounded belly. Sage was wearing a thick yellow raincoat and yellow fisherman’s hat, and underneath the raincoat was Gus, strapped into the BabyBjörn and breathing through a buttonhole in the vinyl. As much as he hated to be out in the wet, Gus had explained that his weight would provide necessary ballast.

  “What is underneath that coat?” asked the lift operator.

  “I’m afraid it’s his natural stomach, sir. He subsists on a diet of microwaveable Tater Tots. Because our parents are always away.”

  The lift operator squinted suspiciously at Sage, then shrugged. “Please enjoy the highest deck on the Eiffel Tower. We close in fifteen minutes.”

  After a quick trip up the lift, the Blisses stepped out onto the top deck of the tower. The metal platform was slick with water, and rain blew in horizontally on a gale of wind. Rose tried to make out the curve of the Seine, but all she could see was black fog.

  “All right, little hermano, drink up the good stuff,” said Ty, handing Sage a thermos full of Helium Hot Chocolate.

  Under Gus’s direction, Rose had whipped up the syrupy brown liquid on the hotel stovetop before they’d left: milk, cocoa powder, sugar, and a blast from the rare Helium Beetle, an iridescent blue bug that Balthazar kept in a jar in his suitcase.

  “What does that bug do?” Rose had asked.

  “It expels helium,” Gus had said.

  “Expels it from where?” Sage had asked suspiciously.

  “If you must know, it expels it from both ends,” Gus had said as the beetle had let out a satisfied grunt.

  “Oh man! Beetle gas!” Sage had chuckled.

  But now that he was in the dark rain, the only illumination coming from a set of wandering searchlights, he forgot all about the hilarity of the beetle gas. He stared nervously at the clouds as he sucked down the warm contents of the thermos.

  As Sage drank, Ty tied the rope they’d brought with them in a crisscross harness around Sage’s chest and waist. “Tug on the rope twice when you’ve got the rain from the cloud. Cool?”

  Sage handed the thermos back to Rose and licked his lips. “Cool,” he squeaked. With all the helium he’d drunk, his voice came out sounding like a sped-up record.

  “Don’t let any rain get inside this jacket!” Gus yelled, his voice muffled beneath the vinyl. “If I feel so much as a drop of water on my delicate fur, I shall become very crabby!”

  Ty let go of Sage and played out the rope as Sage floated slowly off the deck and into the dark, wet sky.

  “Wait!” he cried. “I don’t want to go!”

  Rose had a moment of doubt. This was more dangerous than anything they’d ever done, more dangerous even than visiting a ghost in a catacomb. Wasn’t Sage more important than beating Lily and recovering the Booke?

  “Ty!” she cried. “Bring him back!”

  But it was too late. The bottoms of Sage’s feet had already disappeared into the black clouds overhead. The rope whirred through Ty’s hands as Sage rose higher and higher. Ty struggled to get a grip on it. “We shouldn’t have used nylon rope,” he grunted. “This rain makes it muy slippery.”

  Rose held her breath. It seemed to take forever as the wind and rain whipped the tower, but finally the rope jerked in Ty’s hands.

  Ty reeled the rope back in, hand over hand, until the soles of Sage’s feet broke through the clouds, followed by his legs and his yellow slicker-clad belly, and finally his head and hands. Sage held the jar above his head and grinned at them in triumph. “Got it!” he called.

  He was just five feet off the deck when Ty bent down to loop the rope around the railing.

  But before he could finish, Gus’s head popped out of the bottom of Sage’s raincoat. “Water!” Gus shrieked. “There’s water on my fur!”

  The cat twisted and writhed until he released himself from the BabyBjörn carrier and leaped away from Sage and onto a dry patch of the platform. Without Gus’s considerable weight to balance the helium, Sage shot up into the sky, and the wet rope whirred out of Ty’s grasp.

  “I lost my grip!” Ty cried.

  “Helllllpppp!” Sage wailed as the rope slithered along toward the edge of the deck.

  Rose screamed as the frayed end of the rope rose up in the air to follow Sage into the sky.

  Ty lunged forward and with his right hand caught the rope while with his left hand he held on to the railing. “I’m losing my grip again!” he said, the rope slipping inch by inch through his wet hands. “Rose, help!”

  Rose scrambled onto his back and wrapped her fist around the rope, too. But it was no use: they were too wet, and the rope was too slippery. “I can’t hold it!” she cried.

  That’s when Gus sprinted out from his dry hiding place and hurtled across the rainy deck. He vaulted over Ty’s back, landed on Rose’s head, and hooked the rope with one of his claws. “Nothing escapes a cat’s clutches!” he announced.

  “Youch!” Rose cried as Gus dug into her scalp with the claws on his hind feet. But his hind claws were no match for the Helium Hot Chocolate, and Gus himself began to float upward into the sky, taking some of Rose’s hair with him.

  “Rowr!” he yowled as he slipped up into the air.

  But now Rose and Ty had something to hold on to. Rose reached up and grabbed Gus’s tail. “Gotcha!”

  Rose, still sitting on Ty’s shoulders, pulled Gus toward her by his tail, hand over hand, until she was holding him around his fat belly. She strained and reached up past his claws to grab the rope that held Sage from floating away into o
blivion. Gus leaped back down to the ground and landed with a thud.

  “Why, oh why, did I ever leave Mexico?” he wailed.

  As Rose held tight to the rope, Ty backed away from the railing and sunk to his knees, then bent over, giving Rose enough room to climb down from his shoulders and plant her feet firmly on the ground. She and Ty pulled furiously at the rope, reeling their little brother in foot by foot.

  Rose sobbed with relief when Sage finally emerged from the clouds overhead.

  When his feet were just an inch above the deck, Ty tied off the rope so Sage couldn’t drift away again, and Rose ran forward and threw her arms around him.

  “I’m sorry I made you do it,” she said. “That was selfish and stupid of me.”

  “Eh . . . it wasn’t that bad,” he replied. He smiled, but even Rose could see he was doing it for her benefit. She hugged him harder.

  Bobbing just a few inches above the platform, Sage handed the blue mason jar full of water to his brother, then crossed his arms and glared at Gus, who, now soaking wet, was huddled miserably in a corner by the elevator, nursing his sore tail.

  “Water, Gus?” Sage squeaked with his helium voice, uncharacteristically serious for a change. “You were going to let me float up to Saturn because of a few drops of water?”

  With his gray coat plastered to his body, the fat cat looked a lot less fat. “To me, water feels like sulfuric acid. How would you like it if I dripped acid on you?”

  Rose glared at Gus.

  The cat huffed. “I’m sorry I jumped. I put my comfort before your safety. I suppose I panicked.”

  A smile flickered across Sage’s face. “It’s okay,” he squeaked. “It’s worth it to see you soaking wet! Now, how do I get all this helium out of me?”