A Dash of Magic: A Bliss Novel (12 page)

“I’m so sorry about dropping you when we were up on the Fantasy Floor,” Rose said. “I promise that will never happen again. Can you ever forgive me?”

“Of course I can,” said the quiet little voice. “I am usually not one for adventure. I am but a humble musician. Yet you have inspired me. I do, indeed, know a ghost, and I can take you to him. But first, the fanged one must rescind his warning.”

“It’s your lucky day, Gus,” Rose said. “I found Jacques! Now get over here and rescind your warning.”

Holding his head high and his puffy tail higher, Gus made his way across the Persian rug to the baseboard underneath the antique writing desk in Rose’s room. Looking away from the hole, he stiffly said, “As much as it pains me to say this, I formally rescind my warning. You may enter.”

Jacques stepped out of the hole holding his silver flute. He held the flute at one end, like a rapier, and pressed the other end to the tip of Gus’s nose. “I formally accept your rescinding,” the little mouse said, “on the condition that you never tell any of my relatives how foolishly I am acting by entering this suite again.”

“I won’t tell yours if you won’t tell mine,” Gus murmured. The two creatures looked each other in the eye, then the mouse nodded and lowered his flute. The cat extended one of his claws and presented it to Jacques, who grasped the claw with both of his paws and shook it up and down once.

“Great,” said Rose, tapping on her watch. “Now, where’s that ghost friend of yours, Jacques?”

“I will take you to him. We will need to bring a cake, and candles.”

Ty shined a flashlight down the dank, narrow staircase of the Catacombs of Paris.

“Be careful,” said Jacques. He was nestled comfortably in the pocket of Rose’s hooded sweatshirt, which was just big enough to fit the body of a tiny mouse. “The stones in these steps are very old and very slick, from the countless hordes of people who have trod upon them over the centuries.”

Rose kept one hand on her brother’s shoulder and followed Ty to the bottom of the dark stairs. Rose was carrying a mini chocolate cake and a carton of birthday candles and a box of matches. Sage was right behind her, carrying Gus.

Rose shivered. The hallway before them was narrow and the ceilings were low. Water dribbled down the walls and puddled on the floor. The Catacombs were about as warm as the walk-in refrigerator at the Bliss Bakery. Rose pulled her sweatshirt tighter against her. She had never even liked
above
ground graveyards, so she had been less than thrilled to hear that Jacques’s ghost friend lived in a graveyard beneath the streets.

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 this 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.