Kathryn Littlewood - Sweet

For my beloved Grampy, a craftsman of the highest order

Contents

Title Page

Dedication For my beloved Grampy, a craftsman of the highest order

Prologue Prepackaged Magic

Chapter 1 The Challenge Will Be Televised

Chapter 2 A Cat of Many Words

Chapter 3 Enter the Master of Ceremonies

Chapter 4 Sweet, Sweet Nothings

Chapter 5 Quiet as a Mouse

Chapter 6 The Seventeenth Floor

Chapter 7 Picture Im-perfect

Chapter 8 Making Whoopie

Chapter 9 A Grave Birthday Celebration

Chapter 10 Head in the Clouds

Chapter 11 Bothered, Bewitched, and Beheaded

Chapter 12 Romancing the Stones

Chapter 13 Home, Sick Home

Chapter 14 A (Tiny) Thief in the Night

Chapter 15 An Unusual Challenge

Chapter 16 Tears from a Rose

Chapter 17 Caught on Tape

Chapter 18 The Cat Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest

Acknowledgments

Copyright

About the Publisher

IT WAS NINE months after her Aunt Lily stole the Bliss Cookery Booke right out from under her nose that Rosemary Bliss discovered something horrible on the shelves of Ralph’s Supermarket in downtown Calamity Falls.

Rose’s sneakers squeaked on the floor as she stopped dead in her tracks.

Staring back at her from the front of each of dozens of cardboard boxes was the smiling face of her lying, conniving aunt. Each box bore a banner reading LILY’S MAGIC INGREDIENT! AS SEEN ON TV.

The economy-sized tub of mayonnaise Rose had been carrying slipped from her fingers and fell to its death on the floor. “Mum!” she cried.

Rose’s mother, Purdy, ran over. “Oh dear.”

“No, Mum, not the mayonnaise. Look!” Rose pointed at the boxes of Lily’s Magic Ingredient.

Since she’d disappeared with the Bliss family’s magical Cookery Booke, Aunt Lily had made good on her promise to use it to become famous. She had written a bestselling cookbook, Lily’s 30-Minute Magic, and had a cooking show on TV. Now there she was, smiling happily on the shelves of their very own supermarket, while the rest of Calamity Falls had fallen into a grim malaise.

Without the Booke, Purdy and Albert Bliss had no choice but to make ordinary pies and muffins and croissants from the pages of an ordinary Betty Crocker cookbook. The baked goods were still delicious, of course, and the residents of Calamity Falls still came by every morning as they always had; but the magic of the town had dried out, leaving everything and everyone in it feeling a bit like warm lettuce: sickly, grey, and wilted.

In the picture on the box, Lily looked as beautiful as ever. She had grown out her close-cropped hair, and now it fell to her shoulders in perfectly wavy heaps the colour of black chocolate. She was smiling seductively, her hands covered with orange oven mitts and planted on her hips. “Add a tablespoon to any of Lily’s 30-Minute Magic recipes,” the box read, “for a dash of magic!”

“Listen to this!” cried Purdy, reading from the box. “‘Not a sufficient source of Iron or Vitamin C. Ingredients: Secret. FDA approval pending.’”

“Why would anyone eat anything that hadn’t been approved by the FDA?” Rose asked.

“Lily is a celebrity,” Purdy said, brushing her wild bangs from her eyes. “People see her face, and they plunk down a credit card. Plus, look at the size of this fine print.”

FDA APPROVAL PENDING.

“What do we do, Mum?” Rose whispered, the hairs on the back of her neck standing as straight as soldiers. Rose already felt guilty enough knowing that the biggest mistake of her young life – trusting her treacherous aunt Lily – had brought calamity to Calamity Falls. The thought that the calamity had spread to the rest of the world was just too much guilt to bear.

“What we do is figure out exactly what this ‘magic ingredient’ is,” Purdy said, rolling up the sleeves of her tattered blue coat. She swept box after box into her red plastic shopping cart until the shelf was empty.

* * *

Rose and her mother spent the rest of the weekend baking all of the recipes from Lily’s 30-Minute Magic and adding a dash of Lily’s Magic Ingredient to each one.

The Magic Ingredient was a blueish-grey powder that smelled like burned toast. When Rose threw a tablespoon of the Magic Ingredient into the batter for Lily’s Gooey Chocolate Pudding Cake, the batter sizzled like hot oil and whispered her aunt’s name with each pop: “Liiiilllllyyyyy!”

When Rose tossed a tablespoon into the crust of Lily’s Caramel Apple Tarte Tatin, the crust rattled on the table, giggling “Lily!”

The same happened with the Lily’s Vanilla Bean Crème Brûlée, the Cherry Clafouti à la Lily, and the Just Peachy Peach Pie.

Rose’s brothers, Ty and Sage, walked through the kitchen on their way to play basketball in the driveway. “Did someone say ‘Lily’?” Ty asked. In the time since the Bliss Cookery Booke had been stolen, Ty had grown taller still. He gelled his red hair straight up in the front so that it looked like he was wearing a tiara two inches high, or a tiny, red-picket fence. He had treated himself to a bottle of cologne from the pharmacy for his sixteenth birthday, and he smelled like a walking European discotheque.

“I thought we weren’t allowed to say her name!” Sage cried into his portable tape recorder. Rose’s younger brother had read that some stand-up comedians recorded themselves in normal conversation in case anything funny came out, and so he’d started recording every comment he uttered in case he later needed the material for a stand-up routine. Sage had grown taller as well, and his cheeks had grown proportionally puffier, as had the red curls atop his head.

“No one said her name,” Purdy replied.

“I was just telling Mum about my new friend, Tilly,” Rose said. “And my other friends Billy and Gilly. . . who live in Philly.”

Ty and Sage squinted suspiciously at their sister and their mother, then scooted outside.

Rose and Purdy continued their dreadful experiment. Lily’s Low-Fat Pound-for-Pound Cake came out of the oven smelling like burned rubber, as did the Deep-Fried Cookie Dough Balls, the Luscious Lemon Squares, and Lily’s Bodacious Brioche Bread Pudding.

“Are we overcooking them?” Rose asked.

“No!” her mother exclaimed, confused. “If anything, we’re undercooking them!”

By the time Rose and Purdy were finished, every surface of the Follow Your Bliss Bakery kitchen was covered with plates of cakes, cookies, pies, and puddings, each containing a tablespoon of Lily’s Magic Ingredient. The kitchen itself was filled with a subtle, acrid, sinister smell.

“How do we find out if they’re dangerous?” Rose asked.

Purdy brushed flour from the wild curls of her hair. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “Do we dare try them ourselves?”

As Rose pondered what to do with the potentially poisonous baked goods, Purdy clicked on the portable TV that the family kept atop the counter in case of emergencies.

Much to Rose’s dismay, Aunt Lily appeared on the screen, wearing a fitted black cocktail dress. They had happened to tune in to her cooking show. “Here it is, folks – the world’s best devil’s food cake!” Lily said. “And you know what that means: Time for the C-word!”

She raised her arms like a preacher while the live studio audience chanted wildly, “Chocolate! Chocolate! Chocolate!”

Rose changed the channel in disgust, then wiped the flour-ridden remote control on her jeans. A commercial popped on.

“Now for a limited time only, Lily’s Special Spatulas are only nineteen dollars and ninety-five cents! Order today and we’ll include a Bombastic Bundt Pan, absolutely free!”

Rose changed the channel again. “Jeez louise!”