Stealing Magic Read online

  ALSO BY MARIANNE MALONE

  The Sixty-Eight Rooms

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2011 by Marianne Malone

  Jacket art and interior illustrations copyright © 2011 by Greg Call

  Photography copyright © by The Art Institute of Chicago. Mrs. James Ward Thorne, American, 1882–1966, E-27: French Library of the Modern Period, 1930s, c. 1937, Miniature room, mixed media, Interior: 16 1/8 × 24 3/8 × 19 1/2 in.

  (40.3125 × 60.9375 × 48.75 cm), Scale: 1 inch = 1 foot,

  Gift of Mrs. James Ward Thorne, 1941.1212, The Art Institute of Chicago.

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  Random House and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Malone, Marianne.

  Stealing magic : a sixty-eight rooms adventure / Marianne Malone. — 1st ed.

  p. cm.

  Sequel to: The sixty-eight rooms.

  Summary: Chicago sixth-graders Jack and Ruthie return to the Thorne Rooms at the Art Institute of Chicago and once again go back in time while trying to stop an art thief from endangering the miniature rooms.

  eISBN: 978-0-375-89872-3

  1. Art Institute of Chicago—Juvenile fiction. [1. Art Institute of Chicago—Fiction.

  2. Time travel—Fiction. 3. Miniature rooms—Fiction. 4. Size—Fiction.

  5. Magic—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.M29646St 2012 [Fic]—dc22 2011000074

  Random House Children’s Books supports the

  First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

  v3.1

  TO ZACHARY AND JONAH,

  for supplies of wit and charm

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  1. Breakfast at Ruthie’s

  2. A Chance Meeting?

  3. An Anonymous Reply

  4. Louisa

  5. Lessons

  6. Confessions

  7. The Silver Box

  8. Something Found

  9. Phoebe

  10. A Funny Coincidence

  11. Bad Apples

  12. Another Photo Album

  13. The Curse

  14. Behind the Curtains

  15. A Whiskered Monster

  16. The Stakeout

  17. A Blackbird

  18. The Dead Letter

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  About the Illustrator

  IT WAS SOMETIME BEFORE DAWN when Ruthie Stewart opened her eyes. The room around her appeared strangely dark without the usual stripes of streetlight filtering through the blinds. She sat up and rubbed her eyes, noticing that she was no longer sitting on her nice, soft bed, but rather on the cold, hard floor. She thought she had fallen out of bed, something she hadn’t done since she was four years old. Her eyes began to adjust, and she could make out nothing familiar; she wasn’t even in her bedroom. With an unnatural light coming from above, the walls around her came into focus as shiny and black. What’s going on? She wanted to get out of this room—although it didn’t feel like a room, more like a box—but, standing up and turning a full 360 degrees, she couldn’t see any way out. Then a door appeared near the corner, and she wondered how she had missed seeing it. She ran through it and found herself in an almost identical room, completely empty, with shiny black walls and that peculiar glow from above. This room had slightly different dimensions, and the door she had just passed through seemed to disappear. Where am I? she kept repeating to herself. There must be a way out.

  With increasing panic, she continued to look for doors, which appeared only after she had gone over every wall a few times. Finally she entered a room with white papers scattered all over the floor, glowing as they reflected the odd overhead light. She picked up a piece of paper and saw handwriting—it looked like Jack’s—but she could read only one sentence: Get me out. The rest was certainly written in English, but she couldn’t make out any of the other words. At first she could see the letters clearly, but then they became foggy and unfocused. She picked up another piece of paper. Ah—this one I can read! But no sooner had she read Get me out than the following letters became unreadable. She threw the paper to the floor and tried again and then again. She was becoming more frustrated by the second and was ready to stomp out, but, unlike in all the other rooms, no door appeared through which to leave. All she could think was, Get me out! Suddenly the light from above seemed to dim, and she had the horrible sense that soon she would be enveloped in complete, claustrophobic darkness. Anxiety spread from deep in her stomach all the way out to her fingertips. Inky blackness surrounded her.

  With a jolt, Ruthie sat upright in her bed. She was hot all over and breathing rapidly, so she tried to take a deep, cleansing breath. With her knees pulled up to her chest, she shuddered a little.

  She glanced across the pile of stuff on her sister’s desk to see that the clock read 5:15 a.m.—too early to get up. Claire, lightly snoring, looked peaceful as she slept. Moments like this made Ruthie glad she had to share a room. The streetlight coming through the blinds sketched lines on the far wall, crossing over the posters and bulletin board. All this calmed Ruthie, and she lay back down, wondering why she had had such a scary dream. Everything had been so wonderful and exciting the day before.

  As she tried to fall back asleep, she pictured last night’s party in her head. The gallery opening of Mr. Bell’s exhibition had been such fun. Ruthie leaned over and felt under her bed for the box in which she stashed important stuff. She lifted the lid and took out the newspaper clipping from a couple of months ago that had first reported the amazing find. She reread her favorite lines:

  Ruthie Stewart and Jack Tucker (son of painter Lydia Tucker), students in the sixth grade at Oakton School, made an important discovery in the world of art photography. Collectors in the city may well remember the work of Edmund Bell, famous for his portraits of artists and others in Chicago’s African American community, and how his work seemed to vanish twenty-three years ago, ending his promising career. While the sixth graders were helping a friend, local book dealer Minerva McVittie, sort through unopened boxes from long-past estate sales and auctions, they came across a photo album. Stewart and Tucker had recently met Edmund Bell at the Art Institute, where he works as a guard, and learned of the lost photos. When they saw the album in a box buried deep in McVittie’s storeroom, they recognized its importance. “This is a one-in-a-million event,” a local art dealer commented. “We can all thank Miss Stewart and Mr. Tucker for not missing the significance of what they’d come across.”

  Of course, what the article didn’t say, and what nobody knew but Ruthie, Jack, and Mrs. McVittie, was that the album had not been found in her storeroom. They couldn’t tell reporters the whole truth—mostly because nobody would believe them. How could they explain about the magic they had stumbled upon? First, there was the key that Jack had found, created by Duchess Christina of Milan in the sixteenth century. Second, this key enabled Ruthie to shrink and enter the Thorne Rooms, the sixty-eight miniature rooms in the Art Institute perfectly crafted by Narcissa Thorne more than half a century
ago. Third, the magic—which they later learned could work on Jack too as long as he was holding Ruthie’s hand—let them go back and forth in time. And last, in a miniature sixteenth-century English room, they had found Mr. Bell’s album, shrunk and hidden inside a very old cabinet!

  Finding the key and Mr. Bell’s lost photographs had been the biggest adventure of Ruthie’s life; it wasn’t just exciting, it was important. Ruthie and Jack believed that the secret of the key must be protected, so it was a big responsibility to guard this powerful magic. And the whole experience made Ruthie feel that something extraordinary had finally happened to her.

  She put the article back and placed the box under her bed again. She rested her head on her pillow, imagining herself back in bed in the room where she had found the album. Closing her eyes, she saw the green silk canopy high overhead, the vines and birds in the patterned fabric, her fingers stroking the smooth sheets. Her breathing slowed, and before she knew it, her mother was waking her for breakfast.

  “Let me sleep.” Ruthie’s voice was muffled by her pillow.

  “Sweetie, it’s already ten-thirty!” her mother answered. “It’s not healthy to sleep so late.”

  “I need my sleep,” Ruthie grumbled back.

  “I hope you’re not coming down with something,” her mother said worriedly. “Let’s see how you feel after you’ve had some breakfast.” She went back to the kitchen.

  The tinny, irritating sound of Claire’s cell phone punctured what was left of the morning quiet. Claire ran into the room and lunged for her phone. She said hello in a dreamy voice.

  “Claire, can’t you talk somewhere else?” Ruthie groused.

  “No, and you should get up anyway.”

  Ruthie realized it was no use. The day had begun.

  She shuffled into the bathroom and closed the door. She couldn’t hear her sister’s weirdly syrupy voice from in there. It was strange to think how her practical, serious sister turned into another person when she talked to her new boyfriend. Whom did it remind her of? She thought about how Sophie, the French girl they’d met outside a room from eighteenth-century France, had batted her eyelashes—at Jack, of all people! That picture in her head helped clear the sleep fog from her brain, and she smiled at herself in the mirror. The unease and anxiety she had felt in the middle of the night lessened a bit, but she couldn’t rid herself of it completely. She brushed her teeth and ran a comb through her hair.

  “Good morning, sleepyhead.” Her dad kissed the top of her head as he passed her at the kitchen table. The smell of butter browning filled the air. They didn’t always have spectacular food at her house, not like at Jack’s, where his mother treated cooking like another form of art. But sometimes, on weekends or special occasions, her parents went all out. Ruthie’s dad’s breakfast specialty was pancakes. Her mother’s was crepes, and this morning she was cooking. She stood at the stove, still in her pajamas and bathrobe, expertly flipping the golden disks. A stack of them already sat on a plate in the middle of the table. Ruthie took one, spooned some strawberry jam onto the delicate, lacy circle, rolled it up, and took her first bite. It melted in her mouth.

  She had just taken another bite when her father said, “You must have been exhausted from last night—you never sleep this late.”

  “I was up in the middle of the night,” Ruthie answered out of her crepe-filled mouth.

  “Did you have a bad dream?” her mom asked.

  Ruthie chewed the last bite and then swallowed. “Yeah, it was weird. It was something about being stuck in some kind of dark maze.” As she said that, it dawned on her: it wasn’t a maze at all. It was Jack’s bento box—the shiny black lacquer box from Japan with several compartments, which he’d used as a lunchbox and which they’d left, shrunk, in the Japanese room! But she couldn’t tell her parents that. “I felt kinda trapped.”

  Her description of the dream was interrupted as Claire’s laugh rang through the apartment, all the way from behind the closed bedroom door. Ruthie and her dad gave each other the same knowing look.

  “It appears Gabe is Mr. Charming,” her dad said.

  “He seems nice enough,” her mom responded.

  “I get kicked out of my room when he calls. Which is all the time now,” Ruthie complained.

  “That doesn’t seem like fair treatment for a local celebrity, does it?” Her father handed her the morning newspaper. “Look—the party was covered, complete with color pictures.”

  Sure enough, on the first page of the Arts section, last night’s opening of Mr. Bell’s exhibition rated four photos, including one of Ruthie, Jack, Mrs. McVittie and Edmund Bell, all beaming.

  “I can’t believe it’s such a big deal,” Ruthie marveled. As she filled, folded, and ate two more crepes, she inspected her image on the page: not the greatest photo of her, but not too bad. Mrs. McVittie stood next to her at almost the same height, clutching her small beaded handbag, which glistened in the photographer’s flash. In her morning grogginess, Ruthie had forgotten that her new treasure lay waiting in her top drawer. She shoved another crepe into her mouth in a hurry.

  “It was so generous of Minerva to give you that beautiful handbag, Ruthie,” her mom said. “Where did you put it?”

  “My top drawer.”

  “I’ll get you some tissue paper to wrap it in,” her mother said. But Ruthie’s mind had already shifted to a mix of thoughts, her bad dream foremost among them. Looking at the newspaper photos triggered the unease that simmered just under the surface of what should have been a really good mood. She’d better call Jack.

  “Thanks for the crepes, Mom.” Ruthie pushed back from the table.

  In her room, Ruthie dug in her backpack to find her phone. With her sister gabbing on hers and hogging their room, Ruthie decided to claim the bathroom. She could call Jack from there; she didn’t want anyone to hear the conversation.

  Ruthie pushed the speed-dial number for Jack. It rang and rang. Finally, on the ninth ring, he picked up.

  “Hey, Ruthie,” he said in a sleepy but cheery voice. “What time is it?”

  “It’s just after eleven.”

  “Cool. That was a great party last night.”

  “Yeah—we’re in the paper this morning.”

  “Very cool. I’ll see if we got it yet.”

  “Wait, Jack. Before you do that, I have to tell you something. I had a nightmare last night. I think it was about your bento box.”

  “How could the bento box be scary?”

  “Easy—if it’s giant-sized, and you’re trapped in it, which I was. And then all these pieces of paper with your handwriting on them were scattered everywhere, only I couldn’t read most of them except one part that said Get me out.”

  Jack was silent on the other end.

  “What do you think it means?” she finally prompted him.

  “I don’t know,” he said, which Ruthie thought was an unsatisfactory response. “What do you think it means?”

  “I think I’m worried that we left it in the Japanese room. Maybe it was too risky. Do you think leaving it there with the letter in it was a bad idea?”

  “I hadn’t really thought about it that way. But now that you mention it, yeah, I guess it could cause trouble, like if the wrong kind of person finds it.”

  “When we left it, I was only thinking that people like us might find it—you know, other kids. But anyone could find it.”

  The line was quiet for a few seconds as the two of them came to terms with this new dilemma. Jack broke the silence. “What are you doing today?”

  “I don’t know yet,” Ruthie answered.

  “I’m coming over,” Jack said.

  When Ruthie, now dressed, reentered the kitchen, her dad was putting on his coat.

  “I invited Mrs. McVittie over for brunch. I’m going to get her and walk her here. Want to keep me company?” he asked.

  “I’ll wait here—Jack’s coming over.”

  “And Gabe is coming to get me,” Claire said. She was
looking at the paper, drinking coffee. She had just started that habit. Ruthie thought it seemed strange, as if her sister was trying to look older. “Hey, did anyone see this article?” Claire asked. “There’s an art thief on the loose!”

  Claire read aloud from the first paragraph.

  Local art collectors are on edge over a surge in art thefts in the Chicago area. Police suspect the crime spree is the work of a single thief. Victims have reported no missing electronics or other items usually sought by burglars. Instead, only single items, usually small paintings, sculptures, and objets d’art, have been reported missing. Chicago police have no leads and ask collectors to exercise measures to protect their valuables.

  “I wonder if Mrs. McVittie knows about this,” Ruthie said.

  “All I know is we’ll need more crepes!” Ruthie’s mom said. “Here, Ruthie, you flip a few while I get dressed.”

  Her mother made flipping the crepes look easy! She had taught Ruthie how to do it, but Ruthie wasn’t so good at it yet. She stood there watching the light yellow batter turn golden around the edges while little air holes formed and popped. Timing was everything. If she waited too long, the crepe would burn; if she flipped too soon, it would stick to the pan and she’d end up with a crumpled mess. She gave the pan a little shake, and the crepe slid a bit—time to flip. She held the pan with two hands and gave a slight outward and upward thrust. Like an Olympic gymnast, the disk lifted, turned over and landed perfectly in the pan.

  “Not bad,” Claire said from behind her coffee cup.

  “Thank you, thank you.” Ruthie took a bow. As soon as a crepe was done she slid it onto the plate. She was happy to have this task; she could give it all of her attention while she waited for Jack to arrive. She successfully made a dozen more crepes.

  When the door buzzer sounded, the two sisters ran to push the intercom button, saying hello in unison. Gabe’s voice answered back.

  Ruthie groaned.

  “What are you so antsy about?” Claire asked, buzzing him in. “Don’t be annoying while Gabe’s here, okay?”