Bliss (4 page)

Rose shivered with excitement as Albert picked up the Bliss Cookery Booke.

“First things first,” he said, opening the stainless steel door of the walk-in refrigerator and carrying the Booke inside.

Rose and Ty followed their father through a narrow hallway lined floor to ceiling with cartons of ordinary milk, butter, eggs, chocolate chips, pecans, and more. A dim fluorescent bulb flickered from above.

At the end of the hallway hung a faded green tapestry.

Rose had seen it before, when she would unload cartons of eggs after a trip to the poultry farm, and it had always captivated her. It was thick, like a Persian rug, and covered in delicately embroidered pictures: A man kneading dough. A woman stoking a fire in an oven. A child in a nightgown eating a little cake. An old man using a net to capture fireflies. A girl sifting a snowfall onto a frosting.

Purdy rested her hand on Rose's shoulder. “Honey, do you have the key you copied this morning?”

Rose patted her breast pocket and removed the two silver keys—the tarnished one her mother had given her that morning and the shiny new one that Mr. Kline had just made. She handed them to her father, who pocketed the old key, then pulled back the tapestry to reveal a short wooden door with faded planks and cast-iron bars, the kind of door made back when people were shorter. He pushed the delicate prongs of the shiny new whisk-shaped key inside the lock on the door, which looked like an eight-pointed star, and turned to the left.

The door creaked open. Albert yanked an old brass chain, and a dusty bulb came to life overhead.

Rose stood with her mouth agape.

Beyond the door was a tiny wood-paneled room the size of a short closet, crowded with medieval treasures. A painting of a thin, mustached man wearing a long robe the color of an eggplant—on the frame was written
HIERONYMUS BLISS, FIRST MAGICK BAKER
in old English lettering that was almost impossible to read. An engraving of an aproned woman serving a piping hot pie to a king at a long banquet table:
ARTEMISIA BLISS, WOMAN BAKER, HONORED BY CHARLES II
. A sepia-toned photograph of a man and woman holding hands outside a bakery, alongside a newspaper clipping from 1847: “Bliss Bakers Arrive on Lower East Side, Feed Immigrants.” The four of them stood, huddled in the storeroom, peering at the ancient artifacts by candlelight. “Your mother and I call this room the library, even though there's only one book in it. The book is more important than all the books in all the libraries in this whole country, combined. So this is a library.”

Even Ty was impressed. “Bet you're glad you became a Bliss, huh, Pop?”

Albert nodded. When he married Purdy, Albert had taken her name instead of the other way around. “Who wants to cling to a name like Albert Hogswaddle,” he'd said, “when you could become Albert Bliss?”

Albert sat the Bliss Cookery Booke on a dusty pedestal in the middle of the little storeroom, and they all huddled around, barely fitting inside the room. “The book stays here. No one opens it, no one moves it. Rose, I am giving you the key to this room.” He slid it onto a string, knotted it, and handed it over. Rose wondered briefly how her mother had known they'd need an extra key. But then she shrugged it away: Her mother just
knew
things. It was part of her magic.

Rose took the key from his outstretched palm and hung it around her neck. She burned with excitement.

“But you are
not
to open this door unless there is a fire,” Albert said, the ever-present smile suddenly gone from his face. “In which case you should try to save the book. I repeat: Do not open this door. There will be NO magic.”

All the excitement flew out of Rose, and she deflated like a popped balloon.
No magic?
Why?

“Tick tock, people!” shouted Mayor Hammer from inside the Hummer. “The flu is spreading even as we speak!”

Albert huffed and puffed in the background as he hauled six leather suitcases from the house to the driveway and loaded them into the Hummer. One was filled with clothes, the other five loaded down with jars of Madagascar cinnamon and dried fairy wings, with special black sugars from a forest in Croatia and trapped doctors' whispers, with dozens of things mundane and mysterious.

Purdy gathered Rose and her siblings together in one big clump in the driveway. “Rose and Ty, you'll help Chip in the kitchen.”

Ty groaned. “Why do I have to help? That's Rose's territory.”

Purdy patted Ty sympathetically on his beautiful, tawny cheek. “I know you can do it, Thyme.” She went on, looking at Sage. “Sage, you'll stay with your sister Rose. I mean, help her.”

“Of course! I will be
very
helpful,” Sage said, winking devilishly at Rose and everyone else.

Rose rolled her eyes. Sage's idea of helping usually involved whining and trying to burp the alphabet.

Albert finished loading the suitcases. “Mrs. Carlson will be coming this afternoon and staying all week to watch Leigh. Be nice to her and do as she says.”

“But she yells in her Scottish accent and it hurts my ears!” said Sage. “And she falls asleep all the time while she's tanning or watching TV. And she smells weird.”

“That's not being nice, pal,” said Albert. “But … you're not wrong. Rose, just keep an extra eye on Leigh, in case Mrs. Carlson falls asleep.”

Purdy smiled wide, even though two fat tears were rolling down her cheeks. “We love you all!” she said.

“Wait!” Leigh screamed. “Picture!”

Purdy laughed. “All right. Mayor Hammer, would you mind taking a family picture?”

Mayor Hammer sighed loudly in a way that meant that she minded very much, but still, she grabbed the Polaroid camera from Leigh's outstretched hands, pointed it in the direction of the Bliss clan, and clicked the shutter.

Then Purdy and Albert hopped into the backseat and shut the door behind them. The Hummer lumbered down the street, three fake police cars filing after it.

Rose turned to Ty. She wanted to say something like, “I'm happy we're going to be spending some time together this week.” But Ty was already strolling down the driveway toward the street.

“My vacation officially starts”—he said, pushing a button on his watch—
“now!”
So much for Ty spending time in the bakery. Rose sighed. Her brothers never paid any attention to her, not even now.

Sage had already resumed jumping on the trampoline.

Leigh tugged on Rose's shirt. “Rosie Posie! An emergency!” she shrieked.

“What, Leigh?”

“A slug! I stepped on a slug!” Leigh lifted her sneaker to reveal a gooey corpse.

Rose undid the Velcro straps on Leigh's shoes, which used to be white but were now the color of a puddle, and wiped the sole on the grass until the dead slug came loose.

Leigh stared at the creature with her big black eyes. Everyone always said that Leigh looked like a miniature version of Rose—black hair, black bangs, black eyes, tiny nose—only cuter. There was something about the roundness of her little face that Rose's lacked, and not just because she was older.

“Should we have a funeral for him?” Leigh asked.

“The slug?” Rose asked.

Leigh nodded solemnly and thrust the Polaroid picture into Rose's hand: Purdy and Albert smiled widely, their arms wrapped around handsome Ty, hysterical Sage, adorable Leigh. Rose stood off to the side, but you wouldn't know it was Rose, because only her shoulder had made it into the photo.

Rose shoved the picture back at Leigh and began another week of the same old thankless routine.

CHAPTER 3

A Mysterious Stranger

T
o Rose, the prospect of helping Chip was far more terrifying than finding a slug.

Chip, who had been Purdy's kitchen helper since before Rose could remember, was already at the bakery, staring through the kitchen window, past the slug and past the swing set and past the hedges, past Calamity Falls. He was bald and tan and looked like he had just walked off a photo shoot for the cover of a bodybuilding magazine.

The one conversation Rose had ever had with Chip involved the silver metal ID tags he wore on a chain around his neck.

“Were you in the army, Chip?” she'd asked.

“The marines,” he'd grunted.

“Then why are you working as a helper in a bakery?” she'd asked.

He squatted down so that his face was square with hers. He breathed noisily, staring her in the eye. “I like to bake,” he'd whispered.

Rose pictured what the week ahead would be like—having to bake alongside the hulking bulk of Chip's chiseled torso, and having to use the recipes in the boring old Betty Crocker cookbook, which Albert and Purdy had given to Chip before they left.

“Here, Chip—use these recipes.”

He'd snorted. “What about your special cookbook?”

“This one is easier to read,” Purdy had said, handing him the paperback book with an ordinary cherry pie on the cover.

She was terribly upset that her parents weren't allowing them to use the magical Cookery Booke while they were away.

It wasn't fair. She had devoted her life to the bakery!

It was Rose who woke up early to help her parents prepare for the day while other kids her age were still sleeping. It was Rose who came home straight after school because she was needed to help clean the bakery in the afternoons. And Rose did it all without complaint, in the hope that one day she, too, would become a kitchen magician. And now her parents were denying her the only thing she'd ever wanted: to bake something magical.

And it was Rose who got stuck helping her little sister when no one else wanted the job. Rose looked down at Leigh, who was digging a hole with her hands in which to bury the fallen slug.

“I'm not in the mood for a funeral,” said Rose. “I'll push you on the swing. Come on.”

Leigh left the slug and bounded over to the swing set, a wooden contraption that Albert had erected a year earlier. The wood was wet and green with mold, and the rusty chains creaked as Rose heaved her little sister back and forth.

“Push!” Leigh pumped at the air as hard as she could by swinging her knobby knees. “Higher, Rosie, higher!”

Leigh was wearing her filthy red-and-white-striped shirt and red-and-white-striped headband, the same ones she insisted on wearing every day. When they were absolutely covered with mud stains and juice spills and marker mishaps, Rose stole them from Leigh's room while she was asleep and popped them in the wash.

Haven't I earned the right to try a little magic?
thought Rose.
When is all of this errand running and babysitting going to get me anywhere?

A minute later, Rose heard the faint buzzing of a motorcycle. The sound drew closer and closer to the house. Rose's heart thumped in her chest like an angry bullfrog trapped in a shoe box. She only knew one person in town who rode a motorcycle (or moped, anyway), and his name was Devin Stetson.

Her mind raced to throw together a few things to say if he were to stop in her driveway and stroll into the backyard.

Hi. How are you? My name is Rose. Have we met? Why are you in my backyard?

He would say that he saw that caravan of police cars and was worried about her. Then he would say that he needed to get to Poplar's Open-Air Market because his father wanted to start making blueberry donuts, but he didn't know where it was.

I know where it is
, she'd say.
Let me show you
.

Then she'd climb onto the back of his moped, and her knees would brush against his dark denim jeans. She would rest her chin on his shoulder for the entire ride and feel the sting of his blond hair whipping her cheeks in the wind. Even if they hit a rock and she was tossed into a ditch and broke both legs, it would be worth it.

But Rose wasn't like other girls her age. Rose had responsibilities.

The frantic whirring of the motorcycle slowed a bit as it pulled into the driveway. But this was not Devin Stetson's rusty red moped—this was a gleaming black beast with a head shaped like a bull, with a silver saddle and sharp silver horns for handlebars. A figure sheathed entirely in black leather hopped off the saddle and leaned against the body of the motorcycle.

Rose's heart raced. There had already been too many ominous people in her driveway that day.

She turned to see if Chip was still watching from the kitchen window—Chip would be able to tackle this person, whoever it was, if it came to that—but he was nowhere to be found.

Rose stepped in front of Leigh to guard her.

The figure removed its black helmet with gloved hands coated in silver spikes.

The rider was a young woman—the tallest, most sensational-looking woman Rose had ever seen outside of a movie screen. She had strong black eyebrows, a long Roman nose, and short black hair cropped close to her scalp in a chic pixie cut. Her full lips were painted red, and her big white teeth glinted in the sun. She was the kind of woman who looked like she belonged in the pages of a magazine—the kind of woman Rose secretly wished she would grow up to become.