A Dash of Magic: A Bliss Novel Read Online Free PDF Page A

pot and handed it to Rose. The Polenta of Plenitude was some of the best stuff she’d ever tried: velvety, fresh, moist—the perfect balance of savory and sweet.
    “Mom and Dad!” Rose said. “You have to try this!”
    Each tasted a spoonful of the masterful corn mixture.
    “Wow!” said Purdy. “You’ve really made something special here, Balthazar!”
    Balthazar swatted Purdy’s compliment away like a fly, grumbling inaudibly. “I don’t eat sweets anymore,” he said. “You eat too many sweets, you get too big to run away when people come after you. When this masa works its magic, you can’t eat like most people do, stuffing themselves to the point where they’re bloated like a couch potato. Eat a little of this masa as an appetizer, and you’ll eat just enough of your main course to stay healthy. Unlike my cat over there, if you could call him that.”
    “What else would they call me?” came a low voice from a dark corner of the room.
    Rose couldn’t believe her eyes: a pudgy gray cat as wide around as a bowling ball lumbered out from behind a box and climbed up a ramp onto a rolling wooden chopping block. He sat upright on his haunches and licked under his front leg, which was quite thin compared to his thick face and rotund body. Most striking of all were his ears, which didn’t stand straight up like a regular cat’s but were pinched and rumpled into two folded lumps atop his wide face. “Balthazar, you should have told me we were having people over. I would have bathed. I’m in a shambles!”
    “Whoa!” Sage exclaimed. “You have a talking cat?”
    “Unfortunately,” Balthazar replied. “He wandered into my parents’ kitchen when I was fifteen, and he got his grubby claws on a batch of Chattering Cheddar Biscuits I made. He hasn’t shut up since.”
    “Allow me to properly introduce myself since the old man can’t bring himself to do it for me,” the cat said. He sounded like a butler in a mansion outside of London. “My name is Asparagus the Green, but you should call me Gus.”
    “But you’re not green,” Sage said. “You’re more of a dark gray.”
    “Minor details.” The cat blinked. “I am a Scottish Fold, and—”
    “Is that some kind of soldier or something?” asked Sage.
    “It is the name of my breed. I am pure Scottish Fold, hence my exquisitely folded ears. I am not from Scotland, however. My dearly departed mother and father hailed from London. And who might you be?”
    “This is my great-great-granddaughter Purdy Bliss; her husband, Albert; and her herbaceous children, Parsley, Sage, Marjoram, and Thyme.”
    “Rosemary,” whispered Rose.
    “Sure,” Balthazar continued. “And they are here because—” Balthazar stopped and turned to Purdy. “Why are you here?”
    “We’re here for the translation of the Booke,” she replied nervously. “We need it, now.”
    “Why?” he asked. “Can’t you just use your own?”
    “Our copy is indisposed at the moment.”
    “What do you mean, ‘indisposed’?”
     
    Rose and the rest of the family gathered around one of Balthazar’s picnic tables, and Purdy recounted the tale of Aunt Lily. “So you see,” Purdy concluded, “we need a copy of the Booke if we’re to win.”
    Balthazar had listened to the story with his arms folded over his cardigan, his face growing steadily redder and redder. As Purdy concluded, his bushy black eyebrows sloped furiously downward to where they met in the center of his furrowed brow. He stood up, scowled, then disappeared into his kitchen hut.
    He reappeared a moment later carrying a dusty tome at least a foot thick, bound in ancient, disintegrating leather. He laid the book gingerly on the table and blew softly on the cover. A puff of black dust flew in Leigh’s face.
    “Is it customary in the land of Mexico to blow clumps of dust into the faces of small children?” Leigh coughed.
    Gus bolted upright and dropped the shell of the cream puff he’d been licking back into