“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!”
Lily again. This time she was on the set of a talk show, wearing a different fitted black cocktail dress. “The secret to my success?” she said, coyly batting her eyelashes. “Why, my passion for baking, of course!”
“Turn on the news!” Purdy yelled, and Rose changed the channel yet again.
“In entertainment today,” said the newsreader, “a new record has been broken: Lily’s 30-Minute Magic has become the highest-rated daytime cooking show in the history of television broadcasting. Its ratings have actually exceeded the number of televisions in America, a statistic that continues to baffle authorities.”
Rose and Purdy were busy ogling the television screen when Leigh waddled into the kitchen. “I want lunch, Mummy.”
“Lunch is in half an hour, Leigh.” Without looking down, Purdy reached a hand to tousle Leigh’s head. “I see you’ve had a haircut.” Since she’d turned four, Leigh had insisted on cutting her own hair. This resulted in a mop of shaggy black chunks of every conceivable length. “Why don’t you go get your bow, and I’ll tie up your hair.”
“Okay!” Leigh said, and turned to go.
But she didn’t go far. Mesmerised by the Lily-a-thon on the TV, Rose and her mother didn’t notice as Leigh reached atop the counter and gobbled down the entirety of Lily’s foot-long Pound-for-Pound Cake.
Leigh sat on the ground for a minute, licked her fingers, then stood and cleared her throat.
“Wow, that’s tremendous!” she said in a voice far too deep and gravelly and sophisticated to be coming from such small lips. “That was just a tremendous pound cake. So sweet – but not cloyingly so; velvety, rich, moist. . . Who is responsible for this confectionary delight?”
Rose and Purdy spun around and stared at the little girl, who, a moment before, had hardly known what a pound cake was, let alone the meaning of the word cloyingly.
Oh no, Rose thought.
Leigh looked up at the TV and saw Lily sitting on the set of the news show, her long, tanned legs crossed. “Of course! It’s Lily, of Lily’s 30-Minute Magic, hostess of the most highly-rated television programme in American history! Lily, the doyenne of Danish, the priestess of parfait, the grande dame of graham crackers! It’s a shame that her charisma should be confined to the realm of baking – she should run for public office!” Leigh stopped a moment, savouring this new idea. “Yes! Lily should be the first female president of the United States! She’s the centaur of cinnamon buns! The sultan of—”
Purdy clapped a hand over Leigh’s mouth and looked at Rose in horror.
Leigh’s irises had widened so much that her pupils were an endless vortex of shimmering black.
Rose sank into the red-leather booth of the dining table, stunned. “If Lily gets people to eat this mix,” Rose said gravely, “she’ll have the country in the palm of her hand.” Rose pulled the worn fleece hood of her green sweatshirt over her eyes. Not only did Lily want fame, but now it seemed she wanted power, too.
Leigh broke loose from Purdy’s grip and marched towards the back door. “I’ll not be chained like chattel! I’m off to find Lily and tell her how magnificent she is in person!” She shut the back door behind her, leaving Rose and Purdy among the mess of pans and tainted baked goods, sweaty and covered with flour and splatters of yellow batter.
“Our first order of business,” said Purdy, “is to turn Leigh back to normal. Then we clean this kitchen. And then—”
But Rose didn’t need to be told what the third order of business was. The country was in serious danger, and it was all Rose’s fault. She didn’t know how she was going to do it, but she knew she would have to steal back the Bliss Cookery Booke.
LILY BALANCED PRECARIOUSLY on a pair of high-heeled shoes as she pulled a tray of steaming pumpkin muffins from the convection oven in the wall of her studio kitchen. She turned to the audience and displayed the muffins, which looked slightly out of place in the hands of a woman wearing a short black cocktail dress and five-inch stilettos. “Have you ever seen anything more gorgeous in your life?”
Lily set the tray down on the countertop and raised both her arms. “Can you smell it, folks?”
Everyone in the audience hopped to their feet and chorused, “Cinnamon! Cinnamon! Cinnamon!”
Everyone, that is, except for Rose and Ty.
“Cheater! Cheater! Cheater!” Rose whispered to her older brother as they sank down into their back-row seats.
Lily’s studio kitchen had bright yellow walls, sunny orange cabinets, and an island in the centre covered with turquoise tiles. A window in the back of the kitchen opened on to a New York City skyline.
Fake, Rose thought, her fists clenched. Just like her. This studio’s in Connecticut!
Rose looked out at the rows and rows of giddy audience members, at the hundreds of bright lights hanging from a grid on the ceiling above, and at the cameras, five in total. Rose tried to imagine how important Lily must feel standing in front of all those doting eyes, and the millions more watching at home. So this was the glamour that Rose had turned down when she told Aunt Lily that she wouldn’t be going with her to New