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Izzy held up her hands in apology.
They sat for a moment in silence, but Cassie grew impatient to use the book again. She wanted to see where else they could go.
“Shall we go somewhere else?”
“Okay,” Izzy said. “Somewhere warmer.”
They made their way back to the door to the bar and Cassie saw that the man drinking by himself was still there. He glanced at them, dark eyes flicking to Cassie and then to Izzy, and then away to the surrounding buildings. Then Cassie used the book again, just as she had in the apartment, and it felt heavy and there was a burst of rainbow colors around her hand, and it all seemed even easier than the last time. And then they were through the door to the bar but arriving instead somewhere else.
They traveled to the New York Public Library, the reading room where Cassie spent many happy hours, now dark and quiet, the storm beating against the tall windows. They tiptoed around the darkness like giggling ghosts, Cassie terrified that there would be some alarm or a security guard who would discover them. And then they used a door at the side of the reading room to travel to the Strand Bookstore, just south of Union Square, one of Cassie’s other favorite haunts in the city. With each successive doorway Cassie was sure tedious reality would return and steal this fairy tale away from her, but each time she was proved wrong. The world was suddenly wondrous and full of possibility.
“I’m hungry,” Izzy said, as they stood in the Strand.
“Ben’s?” Cassie suggested, referring to the twenty-four-hour deli a few blocks from their apartment. It was the place where they had waited for over two hours to meet the rental agent on the day they had first moved into the apartment, and the place where they now went for takeout and sandwiches.
“Ben’s,” Izzy agreed.
Cassie opened a door at the back of the bookstore and they stepped into Ben’s Deli a mile across the city. They sat at the back of the deli and Izzy ate pancakes and bacon with a Coke, while Cassie sipped a coffee and tried to contain her excitement.
“Look at me,” Izzy complained miserably. “I am disgusting. It’s midnight and I am doing this to my body.”
“There’s nothing wrong with your body and you know it.”
“There might be if I keep eating like this. Have you seen my aunts? They’re all huge. That is my genes, Cass.”
“Why are you eating, then?”
Izzy shrugged. “My mouth is bored, and I’ve been drinking.” She clattered her fork onto the plate and pushed it away. “What are you gonna do about the book?”
“What do you mean?” Cassie asked.
Izzy frowned at her. “Well, you can’t just keep it, and keep using it like this, can you?”
Cassie didn’t understand. “Why not?” she asked. “It was given to me. It belongs to me.”
“You don’t know anything about it, Cass,” Izzy said. “It might be dangerous.”
Cassie sighed, hating the warning, hating that she understood it. She thought for a few moments as Izzy sipped the last of her Coke.
“I could try to find out more,” Cassie conceded. “About the book, about Mr. Webber.”
“How are you gonna do that?” Izzy asked. “He’s dead, remember?”
“I’ll ask Mrs. Kellner. She might know more about him. He was a regular customer.”
Izzy nodded. “Until you know more, you probably shouldn’t play with it. You don’t know what it might be doing.”
“We’ve been playing with it all night,” Cassie said.
“Yeah,” Izzy said, her expression serious. “Still. I wouldn’t.”
“Shall we go home?” Cassie asked, avoiding the subject. “I’m tired.”
When they got back to the apartment, walking through snow-covered streets arm in arm, they lay in Cassie’s bed together, both of them unable to sleep but trying to keep warm. They spoke about theBook of Doors, the crazy, fabulous magic and what it could mean. Cassie realized she was happy, lying with her best friend in the darkened room, talking about amazing things; the night was cold, but her heart was warm.
At some point Izzy got up to go to her own bed and Cassie was alone. She removed the Book of Doors from beneath her pillow and held it in her hands, rubbing the cover with her thumb. She flicked through the pages again, amazed by the dense text and the finely drawn images. She tried to identify the languages, but many of them didn’t even seem to use symbols she recognized. She flicked to the front of the book, to Mr. Webber’s message, and felt her mouth drop open again when she saw that his words were gone. The front page now contained only the few lines saying what the book was. There wasn’t any sign of Mr. Webber’s message, no trace of ink, no indentation.
Cassie couldn’t believe it. It was another piece of magic, but she found that the disappearance of Mr. Webber’s words pained her a little. She dwelled on that for a moment but then her mind turned back to what the book could do, to the gift that had been given to her. ThatMr. Webberhad given her.
