The Grimm Legacy (19 page)

“Okay. I’ll tell my parents Anjali’s staying at your place tonight.”

“I guess,” I said. “I still think it’s a terrible idea to steal the
kuduo.
”

“Can you think of any other way?”

“Not if you don’t let me tell the librarians,” I admitted. I still thought that was a better idea, but I could see Marc’s point. There was a chance that one of them could be in on the thefts themselves, and even if they weren’t, I couldn’t imagine them agreeing to trade away the
kuduo.
If that was the only way to get Anjali back, we had to try it. “I’ll see you at the repository tomorrow,” I told Marc.

Maybe we could even find a way to empty out the contents, like my sense of direction, before we turned it over to Mr. Stone.

Chapter 19:

Embarrassing reflections

After dinner, my phone rang.

“Elizabeth? It’s Aaron, Aaron Rosendorn.”

My heart did a little funny flip, like Doc’s mini acrobats. Stop it, heart
,
I told it. You have more serious things to think about than Aaron Rosendorn. “Hi, Aaron,” I said. “What’s up?”

“Can you come over to my place? There’s something I want to show you.”

“Really? What?”

“It’s just . . . an idea I had.”

“Okay,” I said. “Where do you live?”

“On West Eighty-first Street, down the block from the Museum of Natural History.”

“I have a bad sense of direction these days. I’m not sure I can find it.”

“Of course you can. It’s not that hard.”

“No, really. I get lost in my own bedroom.”

“You can at least get to the Museum of Natural History, can’t you? The subway goes right to the door. Tell you what, I’ll meet you there,” he said.

I found my way to the subway okay and managed to get off at the right stop. Then I had to circle the entire museum before I found the entrance where Aaron was waiting for me.

He was leaning against the pedestal of the statue of Teddy Roosevelt, his cheeks red with the cold. It was the first time I’d seen him since that embarrassing dream.

“So what’s at your place? The thing you want to show me?” I asked.

He looked around at the people on the museum steps: a school group, some nannies with their charges, a pair of older men. “Something from the GC,” he said, lowering his voice.

“Something you borrowed?” I asked.

He nodded.

“What?”

“Not here,” he said.

He steered me by the arm, preventing me from making at least three wrong turns. Even through my coat sleeve, I was very aware of the spot where he was touching my arm.

He lived in an old apartment building from the same period as Anjali’s, but less fancy.

“Hi, Aaron,” said the doorman.

“Hi, Jim. Is my mom home?”

“No, not yet,” said the doorman. “You have the place to yourself.” To my embarrassment, he winked at me.

We took the elevator to the seventh floor. Aaron unlocked a door and I followed him down a long, dark hallway, through a cluttered living room, to a small, dark room behind the kitchen.

He held the door open and cleared his throat. “So. Come in,” he said.

His room was neater than mine, but not by much. I wondered whether he usually kept it that way. Or had he cleaned it up for me? He took off his coat and I handed him mine. He put them both down on the bed, which was made, if sloppily.

I looked around for somewhere to sit. I had a choice of the bed, a beanbag chair, and his desk chair. I chose the desk chair; Aaron leaned against the wall, his knees bent.

“Did you borrow that invisible chair from the GC? Is that what you wanted to show me?”

He laughed nervously and stood up straight.

I felt nervous too. Something wasn’t quite right in the room. Slowly I figured out what: the place reeked of magic, the scary kind. It was laced with undertones of awfulness, the way air freshener might claim to smell like strawberries, but you would never willingly put it in your mouth. It smelled like Mr. Stone’s loft or the worst items in the Grimm Collection, the murky picture or the Snow White mirror.

No wonder. There on the wall over the dresser hung the Snow White mirror.

“Is that what I think it is?”

He nodded. “That’s what I wanted to show you.”

“You borrowed it?”

He nodded again.

“Did you leave a deposit in the
kuduo
?”

“Of course! What do you take me for?”

“What did you leave? If you don’t mind my asking.”

“My firstborn child.”

“But you don’t have—”

“My
future
firstborn child, silly.”

“Wow.” For some reason the thought of that gave me the shivers. I turned to the mirror. “Why did you take this creepy mirror home? Why not just talk to it at the repository?”

“It’s not safe to talk to it there. I’m not sure it’s even safe to talk to each other there. Things keep disappearing, and I don’t know who to trust.”

But he thought he could trust
me.

I felt flattered and a little guilty—I might not have lied to him exactly, but I hadn’t been entirely open with him either. I decided to tell him about Anjali’s disappearance and our trip to Mr. Stone’s. I left out the part where Mr. Stone told Marc to steal the
kuduo,
though. I didn’t think that would get a very positive reaction from Aaron.

“Anjali
vanished
?” The concern in his voice was painful to hear. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“What do you mean? I just did.”

“But why didn’t you tell me right away? Why didn’t you call me?”

“I don’t know, Aaron. It’s not like I was hiding it, it’s just . . .” What could I say? I couldn’t exactly tell him that it didn’t occur to me to tell him, and if it had, I might have been too worried he would blame Marc.

“I can’t believe it, Elizabeth! What am I supposed to do?”

“Help us find Anjali.”

“I meant, what am I supposed to do about
you
? Can I trust you? I thought I could. The mirror says I can.”

“Really?”

“Yes. Watch.” He turned away from me toward the mirror. His handsome face looked sinister enough in real life; his reflection was so bitter it scared me. I wondered what he must be seeing in
my
face in the mirror. That mirror could certainly put its own twist on what it saw.

Aaron asked the mirror:

“Elizabeth, who we discussed,

Is she someone I can trust?”

His reflection listened with a little smirk on its perfect chiseled lips. It looked me straight in the eye and replied in Aaron’s voice,

“Bitsy Rew is brave and true.

A pity she’s not pretty too.”

“Oh, nice,” I said. “For the record, my name is Elizabeth. Elizabeth! Nobody calls me Bitsy. Did you hear that, you vile object?” I started to scowl at the mirror but quickly stopped—I didn’t want to think about how my scowl would look once the mirror got through distorting it. I turned to Aaron. “What makes you think you can trust that thing? It’s evil!”

“I know, but it can’t lie.”

“Oh, thanks.”

“No, I mean, it’s right about you being brave . . . and it does tell people the truth about their looks—you know how it told Snow White’s stepmother the minute she stopped being the fairest of them all.”

Aaron’s reflection was smiling smugly, while Aaron’s own face twisted in an awkward combination of embarrassed and angry.

“So you’re saying you agree, I’m not pretty?”

“No—I didn’t say that! I think it has to tell the truth, but it doesn’t have to tell the whole truth. It can’t just lie, but it can be as mean and difficult as it wants. It clearly likes to mess around with people and get them in trouble—remember what happened to Snow White’s stepmother.”

“I don’t, actually. What did happen to her?” I asked.

“I don’t remember either. Something bad. But that’s not the point. The point is, the mirror likes to tease and torment, but it can’t just out-and-out lie. So if I have to think about it, it’s right:
pretty
isn’t the word I would use for you. As far as pretty goes . . . you can be beautiful but not pretty.”

“Oh, are you calling me beautiful, then? You’re saying that’s what the mirror meant?” Did he really think he could get out of the insult by pretending he meant it as a compliment?

Aaron threw his hands in the air. “What is it with you women? There’s a magic mirror that can tell you the truth about anything you want to know, and all you can think about is whether you’re beautiful!”

“What do you mean, ‘you women’? Who’s ‘you women’?”

“You and Snow White’s stepmother, for starts.”

“Oh, so you’re lumping me in with Snow White’s stepmother now? Watch out, I might poison you with an apple.”

Aaron’s reflection in the mirror looked as if it was enjoying this far too much.

“Don’t look at me like that, you!” I told it. “If I weren’t afraid of seven years of bad luck, I would smash you to bits.” Aaron’s reflection in the mirror doubled over laughing. I picked up a shoe from the floor and held it up threateningly.
“You suck. Don’t push your luck,”
I said.

The mirror answered,

“Silly girl, Elizabeth—

Don’t you know you rhyme with death?”

“You think you can scare me? You don’t scare me one bit!” My voice came out terrified.

Aaron gently took the shoe from me and put it down. “My firstborn child, remember? If you break it, I lose it. Let’s just ask the mirror about Anjali.”

I pulled myself together. “Okay, if you think that’ll do any good.” I considered for a while, then said,

“Anjali, the elder Rao,

What is her location now?”

The mirror answered:

“In a cabinet of glass,

Where only royal blood may pass,

From Versailles to the Taj Mahal—

There she stands, a real doll.”

“What does
that
mean?” said Aaron. The mirror didn’t deign to respond.

“I think it might mean she’s a doll.”

“Yes, yes, we know she’s gorgeous, but where
is
she?”

“No, I mean she’s
really
a doll. We think Mr. Stone turned her into a figurine. He tried to do it to us too.”

I turned to the mirror.

“Do you literally mean

That Anjali’s a figurine?”

Aaron’s reflection in the mirror nodded.
“Don’t get your panties in a whirl,”
it answered, demonstrating with an obscene-looking gesture.
“She’s a puppet, not a girl.”

“Oh, no, that’s horrifying!” I said.

“How are we going to get her back?” said Aaron.

I addressed the mirror:

“We’re terrified for Anjali.

Tell us how to set her free.”

Aaron’s reflection shook its finger at me teasingly and said,

“But Liz, your rival’s locked away.

Here’s your chance to seize the day.”

Aaron turned to me, his eyes widening. “Is that true? Is Anjali your rival? Why?”

“Oh, come
on
! Don’t tell me you believe that thing! You know it’s evil! You said yourself it likes to mess with people.”

“Yeah, I guess. She sounded pretty convincing, though.”

“Who did?”

“The mirror.”

“Why are you calling it ‘she’? It was talking in
your
voice.”

“No, it wasn’t—it was using yours. And now she’s smirking at me, just like you do.”

Aaron was glowering at me, but his reflection looked like it was about to burst out laughing.

“I bet that’s because we can’t see ourselves from where we’re sitting, just each other. The mirror has to show us what we see reflected. Come over here so it reflects us both,” I said. I sat on the bed, across from the mirror. Aaron walked over and sat down beside me, his shoulder touching mine.