Stealing Magic (19 page)

Ruthie guessed Dora wouldn’t be in the room too long. “I don’t think it’s one of her favorites. Let’s see what she does next.”

Sure enough, in about a minute, she came out again, and walked along the corridor. The next room was E24. “That’s Sophie’s room!” Ruthie whispered. “We can’t let her take anything from in there.”

“Then let’s go and stop her before she does.”

Ruthie knew he was right—they had to confront her. They hurried to the entrance of the room. Jack looked at Ruthie and stepped aside for her to go in first.

Dora’s back was to them. She stood in front of the fireplace, inspecting objects on the mantel; a mirror over it reflected Ruthie’s image as she entered the room. It also reflected Dora’s face, so Ruthie could see her look of shock and then a quick correction to surprise.

“Ruthie! And Jack!” Turning to face them, she spoke as if they’d bumped into each other on the street. “What are you doing here?”

“We came with Jack’s mom to the gala and wanted to come down here while we had the chance,” Ruthie answered.

“You must be wondering how I did this,” she said. “And I could ask you the same thing, couldn’t I?”

Jack answered fast. “We know lots of ways to shrink.”

“Really?” Dora arched an eyebrow.

“You have our key, don’t you?” Ruthie asked, trying to remain calm.

“Well, yes, I have the key. I borrowed it from you two, just as you two borrowed it from whomever you borrowed it from.”

“Why didn’t you just ask?” Ruthie said.

“You see, I had a bit of a problem,” Dora began. “The curator gave me permission to remove a few items from the rooms to study them for my thesis. This was about two months ago. Most of the items were miniatures and stayed small. But a few of the items suddenly grew large as I was leaving the museum. Naturally, I was shocked and had no idea how that could happen!”

“And you didn’t know how to put the full-sized objects back,” Jack finished for her.

“That’s exactly right,” Dora said, warming to her story. “I could put the miniature pieces back in their places, but I didn’t know what to do with the ones that grew.”

“I can see what a big problem that was, can’t you, Jack?” Ruthie said.

“Really big,” he agreed.

“And that day when I took you back into the corridor and you told me about the magic, I could barely believe it. But at the same time it made sense because I’d experienced those objects growing right in my tote bag.” She watched their expressions carefully to see if Ruthie and Jack believed her.

“But why didn’t you tell me all this before?”

“I didn’t want to get you mixed up in my mess. And I only needed to use the key to put the objects back.”

“Have you put them back?” Ruthie asked.

“Not yet. I was too nervous to try the key while the museum was open. I thought tonight would be the perfect time to at least find out if the key would work for me. But it would have been tricky to bring the objects back during the gala.” She held up the small evening bag she carried to emphasize the point. “But tell me, how did you get small without the key?”

“My phone!” Jack said, reaching into his pocket, pretending it was vibrating. He looked at the blank screen as though reading a text. “It’s my mom—she’s looking for us. We’d better get out of here now!”

Ruthie had an idea. “If you come back tomorrow with all the objects, we’ll help you put them back—and show you more of the magic.”

“But the museum will be open,” Dora said.

“No problem,” Ruthie insisted. “We’ll show you everything.”

“What do you mean, everything?” Dora asked.

“There are a lot more secrets to the magic,” Jack continued.

“I’m not sure I can bring everything back tomorrow …” Dora was stalling, but Ruthie could tell she was intrigued.

“Some of the painted dioramas are alive,” Ruthie added to sweeten the enticement.

“Alive?” Dora asked.

“Yes. Like time portals,” Ruthie explained. “We’ve gone back to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. We’ve met people from then.”

“Have you ever … brought anything back from the past?”

They had no intention of telling her that was impossible, that things from the past disappear when they end up in the rooms. “We never thought of that,” Ruthie replied.

“But you mean, I—you—could meet Rembrandt? Or Picasso before he was famous?” She wasn’t really speaking to them when she said this. It was more like she was thinking aloud. “You could buy a painting for almost nothing!”

Ruthie observed a steely flicker of greed in Dora’s eyes, and at that moment she no longer looked beautiful to her.

“We’ll even show you the curse,” Jack put in, pitching a new twist.

“Curse?” Dora looked at Jack like he’d just interrupted the most delicious thought she’d ever had. “What curse?”

“Duchess Christina’s curse, placed on people who disrespect the magic,” he improvised. “We don’t know if it’s true.”

“But we didn’t think anything like this was possible before we experienced it—so the curse could be true,” Ruthie tossed in as embellishment.

“C’mon.” Jack hurried them along. “We have to go.”

They left the room, making sure they were behind Dora so she couldn’t steal anything on her way out. While Dora was turning toward the stepladder, Ruthie grabbed Jack’s hand, tossed the metal square over the ledge and jumped.

Dora turned just in time to see them growing in midair. The whole thing happened so swiftly—including Jack picking up the square and putting it in his pocket—that she didn’t get even a glimpse of it.

“How did you do that?” she exclaimed, her mouth agape.

“Nothing to it,” the full-sized Jack said to the tiny woman on the ledge. “You just toss the key to the floor. Try it.”

“I don’t know …,” she began.

“Really, Dora, don’t be afraid,” Ruthie coaxed. Being so large in comparison made Ruthie feel very powerful.

“All right. Here goes.” She threw the key to the floor and took a timid step forward, growing in midair.

Jack scooped up the key before its odd tinkling had even stopped and put it in his other pocket. It couldn’t have been easier.

Dora landed awkwardly in her high heels. “Whew. I don’t know if I like that!”

“It gets easier,” Ruthie assured her.

Dora looked on the floor around her. “Where’s the key?”

Jack, who had already started down the corridor, turned and flashed a smile at her. “You’d just shrink again if you pick it up in here. The magic doesn’t work on guys.”

Dora looked as if she suspected she’d been outfoxed, but there was nothing she could do about it without admitting her real motives. She squared her shoulders and followed.

When they arrived at the exit, Jack asked, “You have a
key to the door, right, Dora?” Ruthie knew he had no intention of taking either Duchess Christina’s key or the square out of his pocket.

“Yes, but how did you get in?” she asked.

“We’ll explain it all tomorrow morning. Meet us here at eleven,” Ruthie instructed.

“Yes. I’ll be here.”

“Don’t forget,” Ruthie reminded her, “bring all the objects you need to put back. We’ll help you!”

Dora smiled less easily than usual at Ruthie, smoothed her hair one more time, and turned the key in the lock. The three of them walked into the empty Gallery 11, the door locking behind them.

Ruthie spent the night at Jack’s. She made a quick call to Mrs. McVittie and had her nightly check-in with her parents before putting on her pajamas. Jack lay in his bed up in his sleeping loft while Ruthie bunked on the couch in his living room.

“Can you believe it?” Jack said from above. “It was so easy.”

“I know. But you know what I can’t believe?”

“What?”

“I can’t believe she stole the
Mayflower
. Of all the stuff she could’ve taken. Somebody’s bound to notice soon, besides us.”

“Yeah. Incredible,” Jack responded through a yawn.

“Do you think we really saved Louisa and her family?”

“Her dad seemed like a smart guy. Don’t forget, they’d already figured out that they should leave Germany. He said they would go to New York,” Jack answered.

Ruthie yawned. “I hope Dora shows up tomorrow.”

“You saw how interested she was in getting her hands on old art. She’ll be there.”

“I hope—” Ruthie started to speak, but was interrupted by another yawn. “I hope she brings everything.”

The last thing Ruthie heard was Jack saying, “We’ll find out tomorrow,” and then she was asleep.

In Ruthie’s dream she was back in her own bed, with Claire snoring softly on the other side of the room, as usual. For some reason, Ruthie got up and walked into the hall past the bathroom and her parents’ room until she stood in front of another room, one that she had never seen in their apartment before.
That’s funny, I’ve lived here all my life; how come I never knew we had this room?
She took a step to enter it, but hit a hard surface—the wall. Then she realized that the room was really a trompe l’oeil painting. As she stood marveling at how convincing it was, someone appeared in it. A tall woman with ghostly white hair walked around looking for something. “Dora?” Ruthie called out, but the woman’s face was in shadow and she couldn’t be certain it was her. Then Ruthie noticed that the room was filled with boxes of all sorts, many just like some in the Thorne Rooms. There was the silver box that Caroline Bell had taken, and one that Ruthie recognized from Sophie’s room. And there was
Jack’s bento box. The woman examined the boxes, opening all of them and putting something in. “Dora, is that you?” Ruthie called to her again, but the woman didn’t respond. Ruthie watched her looking in each box and then could see that the woman was actually placing apples in them. “Dora!” Ruthie nearly shouted. But the painting began to fade slowly, and Ruthie found herself staring at a plain white wall. She walked back to her bedroom, climbed into her bed and closed her eyes, listening to her sister’s steady purr.

I
N THE MORNING RUTHIE AND
Jack stopped at Mrs. McVittie’s before their eleven o’clock meeting with Dora. She fed them breakfast while they told her everything. Then Jack called Caroline Bell to finalize the last steps in the plan.

“All set,” he said, closing his cell phone. “She’s ready.”

“With all this excitement I almost forgot to show you this,” Mrs. McVittie announced, getting up from the table and going into the dining room. She retrieved a leather-bound scrapbook and magnifying glass from her book-covered table. She set them down in the kitchen and opened the book to the most recent entries, the clippings from last weekend’s newspaper. They saw the photo of Ruthie and Jack standing with Mr. Bell, a large crowd behind them.

“I was putting these in my album last night and
something caught my eye.” She handed them her magnifying glass.

They looked through the glass and cried out at the same time: “Dora!”

“That’s right! She was there. I knew when I met her in the museum the next morning that I’d seen her somewhere before.”

“Why wouldn’t she tell us she’d been there?” Ruthie asked.

“She never actually denied it, did she?” Mrs. McVittie pointed out.

“But she acted like she had no idea who we were, when really she did,” Ruthie said.

“Do you think she planned on meeting us?” Jack wondered.

“I wouldn’t doubt it,” Mrs. McVittie answered. “Dora Pommeroy doesn’t strike me as the kind of person who lets anything happen by chance.”

As Mrs. McVittie spoke, Ruthie had that funny sensation that comes when a dream you’ve had is trying to wriggle back into your consciousness. First she remembered the hallway in her apartment and the trompe l’oeil room appearing, and then the whole dream flooded back. “Jack—we still haven’t found out who wrote on the note in your bento box,” Ruthie said.

“Wow—I sort of forgot about it with everything else happening,” Jack said.

“I had a dream last night that made me think it was Dora,” Ruthie said, remembering the shadowy figure slipping apples into boxes.

Mrs. McVittie spoke up. “If she is the author, it would explain why she went to Edmund Bell’s opening; she had already found the note in the bento box, and then when she heard your names associated with Edmund, she wanted to see you.”