Stealing Magic Read Online Free Page A

She felt her clothes tighten, then expand; her muscles tingled. The ledge appeared to descend to her height right in front of her!
    Taking the rope ladder out of her pocket, she untangled it and secured it to the ledge with the little wire hooks Jack had fashioned. Then she picked up the key and let herself shrink again.
    From her vantage point down on the floor, the ladder seemed higher than she remembered, and her head spun. But she had no other option, so she started the climb. She gripped the yarn, which was as thick as rope in her tiny hands. She could barely believe her weight was being supportedby toothpicks!
Don’t look down
, she repeated to herself until she reached the top. She hurried along the ledge and around one turn, then another, until she reached the end.

    Ruthie was out of breath by the time she reached the Japanese room. She hoped she could run in, grab the letter and the bento box and make her exit. Everything would be fine then, and she could stop worrying!
    She approached the back of the room. Tiptoeing into the small hall to the left of the main room, Ruthie listened.
    “Although Mrs. Thorne created the European rooms after her many travels there, she based the Chinese and the Japanese rooms on literary sources, having never visited Asia herself.”
    The museum docent must have stopped right in front of the room! Ruthie had no choice but to wait for her to leave. This could take forever. She worried about what would happen if her mom and Mrs. McVittie returned to the gallery before the tour moved on!
    There was nothing Ruthie could do about this, so she went back out to the corridor. The last thing she wanted was to waste what little time she had. Luckily, one of her favorite places was just three rooms away. She couldn’t resist; she decided she might as well slip in and explore for a couple of minutes rather than pace in the corridor.
    E27 was a French library from the 1930s. It was hard for Ruthie to explain why she liked this particular room somuch, but it had something to do with how open the space felt with its high ceiling. And of course it had a balcony! The room was entered by way of its roof garden—a luxury she would love to have in Chicago. She was pretty sure lots of rich people’s apartments had them, but her family’s didn’t. The elegant garden was enclosed on one side by a tall limestone wall. A statue of a woman stood in front of it. There were small rectangular patches of grass and bushes trimmed into perfect globes. The voice of the docent was distant.
    From the roof garden she peered into the room—no one was looking into it at the moment, so she entered. Because the room had two doors to the outside, a wonderful breeze blew through the space. And that breeze meant one thing: Paris was alive out there! The magic was working!
    Ruthie scanned the room. The furniture was covered in rich silks and satins. One wall was decorated with a tapestry of a city scene in geometric shapes, like a painting by Picasso. She walked over to touch the surface. Her hand felt the small stitches, and she marveled at how incredibly tiny they must have been to the full-sized hand that made them.
    Voices grew louder as visitors approached the viewing window, and Ruthie ducked behind an upholstered chair in the corner. She crouched there while two sets of people passed by, exclaiming about catching a glimpse of the Eiffel Tower through the balcony door.
    When there was a lull in the crowd Ruthie ran across the room to absorb the sunshine of 1930s Paris. The balcony—which was separate from the rooftop garden—was big enough for a table and chairs. The glass-topped table was set with two golden water goblets and shiny green plates. Cheery zinnias bloomed from two orange planters. Out of sight to museum visitors, a spiral staircase wound down to a small, enclosed courtyard between the building and the street. Ruthie had never seen a staircase like this on the outside of a building. Standing in a spot