Chapter 38
38
Ambrose was talking to a customer when Dora and Lenny walked into the apothecary, but he stopped when he saw them. Excusing himself, he called Margo over to take over and hurried to where they were standing.
‘Is everything okay?’
Lenny didn’t speak, leaving it to Dora.
‘Lucine is dead, and I need a favour from you.’
His hand cupped his mouth. ‘I’m so sorry for your loss.’ His eyes filled with tears and Dora felt a little piece of her heart breaking away and moving towards him.
‘Thank you. I know you are, but we didn’t come to tell you that. I really do need a favour.’
‘Anything at all, just ask.’
Lenny shook her head. ‘Not so sure you’ll agree to this one, kid.’
Dora ignored her aunt. ‘I need my dress back. It’s in the Peabody Essex Museum and I need you to go and distract the staff while Lenny fakes passing out so I can take it back.’
Ambrose arched an eyebrow. ‘You want to steal your dress from the museum with our help?’
‘Yes, please. I need it, don’t ask me how or why I do, I just know that I do.’
He glanced at Lenny. ‘You’re all right with this?’
‘I haven’t got much choice; she will go get it herself if we don’t help her, and I think she stands more of a chance if we at least do our part to distract the staff.’
‘They’re going to notice an empty display cabinet. Have you not got something to replace it with? There are dresses in the shop across the road that are replicas of the style the Puritan women wore.’
‘This wasn’t exactly an authentic dress, although if we could get one a similar colour it might just do.’
Lenny left to go in search of an alternative dress, leaving Ambrose staring at Dora.
‘Are you okay?’ His fingers reached out to touch hers. ‘I mean, stealing from a museum is a serious offence, Dora. This has all been a huge shock to you and now Lucine has gone and you’re about to commit a federal crime.’
‘Even if I’m stealing my own dress? It’s not theirs, they stole it from me.’
‘Who is ever going to believe that?’
‘Well then, I’ll just have to make sure I don’t get caught.’
He smiled at her, which made her more determined than she had been moments ago and she pulled her hand away from him.
‘I will do what I can to help,’ he said. ‘The staff are pretty nice. We could always ask them if you could have it back or say you need to borrow it for a while. That it belonged to your great-great-great-grandmother or something.’
‘I haven’t got the time and if they know I want it and say no, they will know who has taken it. Better to borrow it for a little while and replace it with a replica. Sephy said she could make another, I just don’t know how long it will take her.’
‘I’ll grab my coat.’
Ambrose walked towards the counter where Margo was ringing up the sale for the customer and she looked at him.
‘You leaving so soon?’
‘Duty calls, I won’t be long.’
‘Jeez, you’re a huge help around here, you know that, don’t you?’
He laughed. ‘You know I love you, Margo.’
‘Yeah, I’m not so sure about that. You use me.’
He pecked her cheek and her cheeks flushed red.
‘Get out of here.’ She pushed him away, but Dora didn’t miss the kindness in her smile. Margo had a real soft spot for Ambrose, which was sweet. Lenny walked back in clutching a brown paper bag. She opened it and Dora peeked inside at the grey cotton dress.
‘It’s nothing like it, but if you can swap them over it might just buy us some time. Hopefully the staff won’t notice straight away. You know that stealing from a museum is a federal offence.’
‘I do know that, Ambrose just told me before you came back.’
‘Just checking, I don’t want you to end up in the cells without knowing it’s a possibility.’
‘Thank you.’
‘I will use my cloaking power as best as I can, but it’s October and I can guarantee the place will be full of tourists. Look around, there’s no room to manoeuvre, they’re everywhere.’
‘We might be able to use it to our advantage then.’
Lenny smiled. ‘Always the optimist, just like Sephy.’
All three of them made their way along Essex Street, the Salem Trolley full of tourists rang the bell as it drove past and an old guy waved at them with a kind smile on his face. Dora waved back, it was taking the tourists on a guided tour of the town and she thought how nice it must be to be able to enjoy being in Salem without the fear of a life-or-death battle with a crazed witch hunter. They reached the enormous glass-and-metal entrance to the museum in a matter of minutes. They had a plan: Ambrose was to go in first, Dora a few minutes after and Lenny after her. Dora was to make her way to the conservation hall where she would find her cherished dress on display.
Lenny turned to her. ‘Grab a lanyard on the way in or something. If you act as though you work at the museum, no one will bother you.’
Dora smiled. ‘I think you’ve been down this route before.’
‘Not for a dress. The last time I had to do this was to break you out of that god damn awful insane asylum you were locked up in. It was a very long time ago now, but I can still smell the urine and despair whenever I think about it. One day I’ll remind you just how terrible it was so you can appreciate everything you have now.’
‘You’ve got me out of a lot of scrapes over the years. Thank you, Lenny, for always being there for me. I love you more than you could ever know.’
‘Don’t get all soppy on me, Dora, I simply do what I have to in order to ensure you’re safe. It’s my duty as your aunt. Now get inside and do your god damn best not to get caught or we’re all going to be suffering for it later.’
Dora knew that she meant Corwin, not the cops. Cops they could deal with; Corwin was much trickier. They waited a few minutes as Ambrose went in first, as Dora walked inside the entrance of the museum, a security guard nodded at her and she paid her admission fee; she looked around at the busy cafeteria and wished she had time to stop for a latte. She could do with a caffeine hit before she committed her first real felony. Dora wandered over to the help desk where a flustered man was trying to deal with a group of teenagers on a day trip with their teacher. He was facing the other way, his hands in the air, and she spied his lanyard on the desk.
‘Could you all please just speak one at a time, I can’t hear myself think,’ he said.
The teacher was trying to get the kids to shut up when two boys began to push and shove each other, Ambrose and the guard rushed towards them to intervene. Dora, who had never stolen anything in her entire life, tripped forwards and, putting a hand on top of the lanyard to steady herself, she swiped it and walked briskly away. The ID badge clenched in her closed fist, she looked around then slipped the lanyard over her head. She followed the signs for the conservation hall, which had a barrier across it and a sign that read ‘Temporary Closure’. She slipped around it and into the darkened hall, looking around at the display cases, then finally she caught sight of it.
It was a plain linen dress with lace cuffs, a high lace collar and a row of tiny buttons on the back. She felt a rush of memories so strong they threatened to send her to her knees as her legs weakened just thinking about them. There were images from so many lifetimes. She was sitting by a riverside having a picnic with a wavy-haired man wearing a big, floppy bow tie, he was telling her the story of an inquisitive girl called Alice who fell down a rabbit hole. Then she was screaming as she was dragged by two men down a dark corridor that reeked of stale urine and thrown into a dirt-stained, once-white padded cell in a hospital ward. She was running through thickets of brambles in the woods at the back of their small cottage on the outskirts of Salem village with Ambrose pulling her hand, the fear inside her so great that she was running for her life.
Dora shook her head to clear it. She had to get her damn dress back. She rushed towards the glass display case and prayed that it wasn’t locked because she couldn’t break the glass, it would set off an alarm or something. As she reached for the back of it, she tried to pull the glass door open, but it wouldn’t budge. Closing her eyes, she pushed her index finger against the small chrome button and felt a fizzing, popping sensation and the door released.
Dora sucked in a breath of air through her teeth, taking a quick look around to make sure no one was running to see who had set off a silent alarm. Then she smiled to herself. What was the point of having magical powers if she didn’t use them and although she couldn’t use them to their full potential, they had helped her when she was in desperate need, imagine what she could do when she did know how to harness their strength? This thought both terrified and excited her at the same time.
When she was positive there was no alarm, she opened the door and reached inside, her fingertips brushing the soft, supple linen. She felt a burst of energy so powerful it ran down the whole length of her arm. She reached up on her tiptoes and began to undo the row of tiny buttons. Slipping the dress off the mannequin, she folded it and took out the one Lenny had bought in the gift shop, then pulled it down over the mannequin. She fastened the much larger buttons a lot quicker and pushed the glass door shut. It didn’t look anything like her sacred dress, but it was similar enough to buy her a little time. Placing her dress into the bag, she hurried towards the barrier tape and ducked back under it. Dora tugged the lanyard off her neck and walked past the customer service desk where she kept her head down and placed it back where she’d taken it from.
Then she hurried towards the exit and never looked over her shoulder, instead practically jogging all the way back to Sephy’s house. Lenny was loitering by the gift store, the group of students had provided a distraction so she hadn’t needed to, her and Ambrose could make their own way, Dora had to get the dress home. As she clutched it to her chest, she wondered how she would feel stepping into it again after all this time and realised that she was both terrified and excited. It would be like stepping back through time as all of her lives finally awakened her long-dormant magic powers.