AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Well, what did you do last time? Just do that again. But not Venice.”
Cassie met Izzy’s gaze.
“It should be easier,” Izzy said. “It’s a few miles away! Venice is across an ocean!”
“You wanna do it?” Cassie suggested, offering her the Book of Doors.
“Uh-uh,” Izzy said, stepping backward.
Cassie sighed and turned her attention back to the door. She closed it again and tried to calm her breathing—why was her heart racing so much? She tried to remember what she had done the last time.
She had been thinking of Venice. Of the street, the bakery. The door. She had been remembering—no, not just remembering, she had beenvisualizingthat door in Venice. And then she had felt funny...
She closed her eyes and thought of the door to the roof terrace of the hotel, a glass door cold to the touch, grimy on the outside. She visualized reaching for it as she reached for the door handle.
Then she felt it again, that fizzing, funny pressure all through her, and a detached part of her mind exclaimed:You’re doing it!
“Look!” Izzy gasped.
Cassie opened her eyes and looked down. The book felt heavy in her hand again, but now she saw that something else was happening. There was a glow, or an aura, around the book, like some sort of intangible shadow but gloriously colorful like a rainbow. Cassie moved her hand back and forth and the rainbow aura followed the book’s movement, swimming lazily in the air.
“It’s glowing!” Izzy said.
Cassie turned her eyes to the door. She reached for the handle and pulled.
And the door wouldn’t budge.
“Huh?” she grunted in surprise.
“What is it?” Izzy asked. “What now?”
“The door won’t move.”
Cassie looked down at the book. It was still glowing with that strange multicolored aura. It still felt heavy and solid in her hand. Something was happening.
She looked at the door again and yanked two or three times.
“It’s like it doesn’t open,” she muttered.
After a moment, Izzy said, “The door at the bar opens outward, doesn’t it?”
Cassie immediately realized she was right. The door—the normal door to the hall—would pull open toward them, just like the door in Venice. But if she was standing in the bar of the Library Hotel and stepping out onto the roof terrace, the door pushed away from them.
Cassie pushed. Their door had somehow changed, and it now moved in a way that was normally impossible. “No way,” Cassie murmured in amazement. The door swung back, cold air rushing in to meet them like an excited dog.
She looked down and saw the aura around the book dissipating, blown away by the breeze, and the book grew lighter in her hand once again.
She met Izzy’s gaze.
“Come on!” Izzy said, and the two of them tumbled out onto the roof terrace of the Library Hotel, giggling like children.
The night was alive with snow, the sky beyond the terrace swirling and white, the lights of the city blurred and indistinct. The tall buildings were giants silently watching, shrouded by the storm.
Izzy led Cassie to a bench at the far end of the roof and opened an umbrella on the table to shield them from the snow. There was a man out on the terrace with them, sitting at the other end of the roof and drinking by himself, but otherwise they were alone in the snow. “Wonder ifwe can order a drink,” Izzy said, peering through the window to the bar inside. There was a pianist, sitting on the other side of the glass from them, and the sound of his music drifted out into the night and swirled in the sky with the snow.
“This is unbelievable,” Cassie said, shaking her head in wonder. How could they have traveled across the city? She looked down at the book in her hand, the simple brown notebook, and realized that she loved it. It had come into her life and it was weaving miracles.
“It’s freezing but I don’t care!” Izzy said, throwing her laugh out into the storm. “We are at the Library Hotel!”
