“Why me?” Rose asked. “Why not any of the other bakers at any of the millions of bakeries around the country that were just put out of business by that crazy new law?”
Mr Butter tapped his finger on the tip of his broad nose. “You come highly recommended.”
“By whom?”
“Well … Jean-Pierre Jeanpierre, of the Gala des Gâteaux Grands, of course. He selected you as the winner of the most prestigious baking competition in the world, didn’t he? Wouldn’t it make sense that we would seek your help above everyone else’s?”
Rose blushed. It was flattering, if highly suspicious. Apparently she was never going to live down that competition. “But you said before that you wanted the book instead of the cook. What book were you talking about?”
“We heard that at the Bliss Bakery you use a … special book that makes your treats magically delicious,” Mr Butter said. “That the secret of your success is thanks to—”
“Nope!” Rose lied. How could they know about the Booke? “No special book! We do all our baking from memory. Whoever told you about a special book was pulling your leg. Yanking your chain. Lying through their teeth—”
“And that is precisely why we brought you here,” said Mr Butter. “You are our only hope, Rosemary Bliss. We desperately need your help. Not just for us, but for the good of anyone who has ever turned for hope and happiness to a sweet baked good.” He removed his glasses and dabbed at his eyes with the corner of his handkerchief. “Will you help us in this, our time of greatest need?”
Mr Butter obviously cared about baking, Rose thought. True, he had kidnapped her, but her mother would never have let her go anyway, so in a sense, Mr Butter had no choice if he wanted Rose’s expertise.
And her family was going to need the money.
Maybe she could do a little bit of good and earn some money for her family. True, she’d made that wish that she could be done with baking, but maybe baking wasn’t done with her.
“I can help you,” said Rose. Gus dug his claws into her leg, which made Rose yelp. “I wasn’t done!” she muttered to the cat through her teeth. She turned to Mr Butter. “I can only help if you if you let me call my parents and tell them where I am. They are probably insanely worried by now.”
“Of course you can call your parents,” Mr Butter said. “After you bake.”
The hair on Rose’s neck stood on end. “So you’re holding me hostage!”
“Hostage!” Mr Butter laughed. “I don’t even know the meaning of the word. You’re free to go at any time.” He examined the fingernails of his right hand. “After you’ve completed your duties, of course.”
“You can’t keep me here against my will!” Rose cried.
“Against your will?” Mr Butter fanned the idea away with his hand. “We are not holding you here. You may come and go as you wish … once our five main recipes are perfected.”
Rose was getting nowhere with this man. She thought of her parents, how Ty and Sage would have returned from their deliveries by now. Albert and Purdy would ask where Rose was, and they would say that she’d wanted to make a few deliveries on her bike. It would be conceivable that Rose was still out and about. Maybe her family wouldn’t start worrying until sundown. She could finish the baking here by then, or at least find a phone.
“Fine,” she said at last, gripping Gus so tightly that he knew not to scratch. “I’ll bake first.”
“Come,” said Mr Butter with a smile. “Let me show you where we work.”
Mr Butter led Rose down a bright corridor, with Mr Kerr taking up the rear. From within her backpack, Gus leaned forward, both his paws on her left shoulder, the sound of his constant low growl a comfort in her ear.
Mr Butter opened a steel door and Rose was hit with the smell of sugar and chocolate and bleach, the heat of roaring ovens, and the sounds of industrial hissing and churning and buzzing and pounding.
Mr Butter led them out onto a steel catwalk – with railings, of course – overlooking a vast factory of gleaming stainless steel. Giant metal paddles churned enormous vats of chocolate. Dozens of hairnetted workers piped white dots onto hundreds of chocolate cupcakes that rode on a conveyor belt, like luggage at an airport. A monstrous mechanical press sealed snack cake after snack cake into plastic wrappers, then another conveyor belt dropped the packages into cartons.
Rose stared down at the scene in distaste. She was used to individually packing each precious cake in a white box and tying it off with baker’s twine.
“Gorgeous, isn’t it?” said Mr Butter, inhaling deeply and spreading his arms majestically. “We produce eight thousand snacks of one sort or another every minute. Our facilities here are larger than the Pentagon, and we have more delivery trucks working for us than the U.S. Postal Service.”
When they reached the end of the catwalk, Mr Butter led Rose and Gus into a tiny glass-walled room that was suspended precariously over the factory floor. She looked down at the tangled mess of conveyor belts and was reminded of the stomach-churning feeling she’d had when she looked over the railing at the top of the Eiffel Tower.
The suspended room was empty except for an illuminated glass pedestal, on top of which sat a glass dome. Inside the glass dome was a small hemisphere of chocolate cake, stuffed with white pastry cream. She recognized it instantly as a Dinky Cake.
“Why do you have an entire room devoted to a Dinky Cake?” she asked.
“It’s not just a Dinky Cake,” said Mr Kerr, squinting his dark eyes.
“Beneath this hallowed dome,” Mr Butter began, like he was delivering a sermon, “lies the very genesis of the Mostess Snack Cake Corporation. Our empire was built on the Dinky Cake. Each year, the average person in the United States devours upward of seven pounds of Dinkies.”
“Ugh,” said Rose, remembering the way some of the kids at school used to gobble up the cakes in two bites. “So, why is this one in a jar?”
“This,” Mr Butter said, once again lifting his glasses and wiping his eyes, “is the first Dinky Cake we ever made. And it’s every bit as fresh as it was the day it was manufactured by my grandfather back in 1927.”
Rose was horrified. The Dinky Cake was almost a century old – it should already have rotted away. “That’s vile.”
“It’s sensational,” Mr Butter spat, pressing his spindly arms close to his sides. “It’s the power of preservatives – something your homespun cookies lack. Two days after you bake a cake, it dries out and winds up in the garbage. But with preservatives, each Dinky is guaranteed to be as delicious as the day you bought it, no matter when you eat it. The cakes are, in a way, immortal.”
Gus, who was staring at the Dinky, began to heave.
“Oops! My cat has a hairball!” Rose cried as she whisked Gus out of the room and placed him gently on the catwalk, where he continued to dry heave. “I would like to leave now,” he said quietly so that only Rose could hear him.
“I want to go home, too,” said Rose, equally quiet. “But we have to find a way out of here.”
“We want you to go home as well!” said Mr Butter, who had stepped out of the glass Dinky shrine just in time to hear Rose. “But there is work to do first, so now we are going to bring you to our main test kitchen. It’s the happiest place on Earth.”
“I thought that was Disneyland,” Gus whispered.
Mr Butter put his thin arm around Rose’s shoulder. “Your mission, which you’ve already accepted, will be to perfect the recipes for our five key products. After that, you will be absolutely free to go. With our thanks,