Magickeepers: The Eternal Hourglass (10 page)

“This is the vault,” Theo swept his hand to the left, “that we show the Nevada Gaming Commission if they come to check out our casino.”

Nick looked and saw a bank of security cameras and a command center with lights flashing and occasionally beeping.

“If someone broke in, would alarms go off?”

“I don’t know. No one's ever tried. Those lights and beeps are just magic—for show.” Theo pressed a button. Inside the vault, a camera zoomed in on money. Piles and piles of money.

“Whoa!” Nick said, leaning in close to the monitor. “Look at all that. It must be…what? Millions? Billions? Zillions?”

“It's just money.” Theo walked on, but stacks of hundred-dollar bills mesmerized Nick, and they rose as high as the
wall. There were also sacks of what he guessed was more money and coins. More money than he could ever spend or even imagine, though he wouldn’t mind trying to spend it. Sure beat his five-dollar-a-week allowance.

“This,” Theo gestured to a wall, “is our real vault.”

Nick stared. “It's a wall.” He stepped over to it and ran his hand along it. The wall was cool cement, stories high.

“Maybe.” Theo walked over to the wall and stepped through it. One second, he was there—and the next, he was gone. “Come on,” he called out from behind the wall.

“How?”

“Believe.”

“Yeah, right.” Nick pressed his hands along the wall and shook his head. It was solid cement. He moved to the spot where Theo walked through. It was just as solid as the rest of the wall.

“Come on!” Theo shouted. “Believe, Kolya!”

Nick shut his eyes. Suddenly, he felt cool air on his face. Without opening his eyes, he touched the wall again and his hand shot through! Taking a deep breath, he stepped through. It was like walking through a wind tunnel, and as his foot reached the other side, a strange gust of magic whipped through his hair, standing it up on end, like static electricity. He joined Theo in an even bigger vault that looked like a museum. Glass cases lined every wall—ten feet high around the room.

“This is our most valuable collection. This is what we do, as Magickeepers. We are collectors.”

“What do you collect?”

“Come.” Theo led Nick to each case—hundreds of them. Each one had a small brass plaque—just like in a museum— denoting its significance and sometimes the donor.

Nick read the first plaque. “Sword of Life, recovered from the tomb of King Tut by Howard Carter. Donated by Howard Carter after the death of Lord Carnarvon.”

“This relic is from the Curse of the Pharaohs. Howard Carter was a minor Magickeeper. Weak bloodline—nothing like ours.”

“What's this death of Lord Carnarvon?”

“After the tomb of King Tut was discovered and disturbed, Lord Carnarvon died in a freak shaving accident.”

“Freak shaving accident?”

“Blood poisoning. Got into a nick he sustained while shaving. Howard Carter became frightened and smuggled the Sword of Life out from the tomb. He donated it to the family vault so that it would prevent any further deaths—and so it didn’t fall into the hands of any Shadowkeepers.”

“What is the Sword of Life?”

“There were two Swords of Life created in the forges of the Pharaohs. This one is safe in the vault. Damian uses the other in the show. You can pierce a person all the way through
and not kill them. It's the most masterful of illusions. Utter a different spell, and a soldier using it in battle is unable to be defeated. For obvious reasons, we would not want this falling into the wrong hands.”

The brilliant silver sword gleamed beneath the lights of the glass case. Gold wrapped around its hilt in the shape of a serpent's head. Jewels glittered on the hilt, including a diamond the size of a robin's egg. Emeralds gleamed for the serpent's eyes.

Nick walked to the next case. “This is nothing but a bunch of rocks.”

“Read the plaque.”

“Stones of Strength. Discovered by Igor Kashin, 1402. Recovered from the Shadowkeepers by Mikhail Kirov, who died in the valiant effort.”

Theo clapped a hand on Nick's shoulder. “Poor Mikhail.”

“What are Stones of Strength?”

“Have you ever heard of Stonehenge?”

“That place with the huge stones in England?”

“And my brother said you were awful at social studies. Yes, that place with the huge stones. Some of them weigh fifty tons. And yet, how did they get there?”

Nick shrugged.

“They didn’t have machines back in 3000 BC. Even with powerful machines, how indeed would they be moved?”
He pointed in the case at the small rocks. “The Stones of Strength. You place them in a formation, cast a spell, and they can move rocks many hundreds times their weight. Can you imagine? In the hands of a Shadowkeeper, they could be dropped on a building! A whole town could be destroyed. Hence, far safer in our vault.”

They moved several cases down, and Nick's eyes widened. “Fabergé egg belonging to Tatyana Petrov, donated after her death, for safekeeping.” He looked up at Theo. “This was my mother's?”

“Yes. And it is yours. But we keep it safe here for now.”

“What magic does it do?”

“This one is less about magic and more about our history. We had a relationship with the Fabergé family stretching back to the Tsar. Very few of these imperial eggs survived.”

“It's beautiful,” Nick said. The egg was large and ornate, gilded and encrusted with gems. It had to be worth a fortune.

Nick and Theo kept walking until they came to dozens of empty cases. “What are these? Invisible things?”

Theo laughed. “No. These are cases waiting for relics lost to us. Like the Eternal Hourglass. We have the pocket watch you saw in the crystal ball, but the Eternal Hourglass eludes us. And that case there is for the Chalice of Immortality. And over there, the Dagger of Mayhem. You don’t even want to know what that can do.”

“So, no offense, Theo, but I found that hole in the vault wall pretty easily—I mean, after you walked through. If all this stuff is so valuable, aren’t you worried someone—or something—will break in and steal it all? Just walk through?”

“No. That hole was there because I cast the spell. It will be gone when we leave. And the traditional entrance is booby-trapped. Damian designed the traps himself. Everything from a Floor of Death to ravenous Siberian tigers to a Door of Deception.”

“So no one's ever tried to steal the relics?”

Theo shook his head. “No. Well, there was one time, but the tigers had a lovely meal. But I put nothing past the Shadowkeepers. They came here for something. We just need to find out what. Then we can defeat them.”

Again, the key burned against Nick's chest. He wanted to tell Theo about it, but he wasn’t yet sure what to make of his newfound family. He still half-expected a bear or tiger to eat him. What kind of family kept man-eating pets?

T
HAT AFTERNOON, THEO AND NICK WORKED ON LEARNING the Russian alphabet.

“Can’t you people just have regular letters?”

“Can’t the rest of the world accept how much better our way is?” Theo asked.

“I’ll never learn this. It gives me a headache.”

“Study it and you will learn.”

Nick bent his head over the book. The letters swam in front of him. Then Damian entered the room.

“Cousin!”

Nick looked up.

“I heard about last night.”

Nick expected some sympathy—after all, he’d nearly drowned. But no sympathy was forthcoming.

“There is no time for licking your wounds. Come! Your horse awaits.”

So much for giving him a break. Nick groaned inwardly. Learn the Russian alphabet, or climb on a horse? Neither choice appealed to him. He shut his book and reluctantly followed Damian out into the hallway.

“I’m really tired, Damian. Maybe today isn’t the best day to try to learn to ride, to be in the show.”

“Nonsense. Every day is a day for magic. Come along.”

Nick glared at his cousin. Something about Damian bothered him—Damian thought he was always right.

They rode down in an elevator. Damian didn’t ask him a single question about the creature from the night before, about nearly drowning. Didn’t he care? When the doors opened with a near-silent whoosh, they walked down a long hallway in what Nick guessed was the basement of the massive casino. The walls were cement, the floors were cement, and their footfalls echoed, especially Damian's, because he wore black polished boots. Pipes were strung along the ceiling, and Nick heard the hissing sound of steam and water carried along the pipes.

At the end of the hallway, Damian pressed a button, and they rode up another elevator.

“So why don’t you just magically teleport us or whatever it is you do? Why walk? You’re the ‘all-powerful’ Damian, after all.” Nick glared at his cousin.

“If you’re trying to be an ungrateful little brat, you are succeeding.”

“Ungrateful? Let's see…you kidnapped me on my thirteenth birthday, and within forty-eight hours, I practically drowned. The entire time I lived with my dad, no one ever tried to kill me.”

“Oh, really?” Damian arched an eyebrow. “You’re so sure about that?”

“Yeah, I am.”

Something about how Damian asked him made Nick doubt all of a sudden. More secrets. Nick couldn’t wait to see his grandfather again and ask him everything he’d been hiding all these years.

When the elevator doors opened again, they were backstage, which bustled with activity and animals rehearsing.

Nick's mouth dropped open in amazement. He didn’t realize just how many people worked on a show like Damian's. There had to have been a hundred—some in costume, some clad in black like stagehands.

Nick peered out at the theater seats. He knew from the television commercials that the Winter Palace Theatre seated 4,200 people—and there wasn’t a bad seat in the house, according to the critics. Even with a theater that seated so many, the waiting time for tickets was measured in months and years, not days or weeks.

In the center of the immense stage stood the most beautiful horse he had ever seen. It gleamed as if its coat were really made of gold. And it was huge. Nearly twice as tall as Nick. Next to it stood the crazy horse trader he had seen in the crystal ball. The horse was snorting wildly, straining against its bridle, and lifting its front hooves off the ground in protest. Great. They got him a majestic but wild horse.

“Here's what will happen,” Damian said. He pointed to a spot so far off at the back of the theater that Nick had to squint to actually see it. “Nick, you will sit astride your magnificent horse and will rise up from a trapdoor in the floor over there, charge full speed down a special catwalk, jump over a huge snowbank configured to look like a glacier, dismount on the ice, fight two tigers, then cast a spell, changing Sascha into Isabella. They’ll switch places. Then you and Isabella will take a bow. Then… you’re done. Curtain drops.”

Nick started laughing—howling actually. “You have got to be kidding me.”

Damian looked at him sternly. “I never kid.”

“I can tell.”

Damian narrowed his eyes even more. “It will be brilliant. You will be brilliant. I insist.”

“First of all, you’re not getting me on that crazy horse. Second, if I ever got on the horse, maybe I would make it walk, but I sure as heck am not going to ride it full charge
down a gangplank or whatever you want to call it. Then… how do you propose I switch Isabella with Sascha? I’m just getting the hang of moving around a hedgehog.”

Damian stamped his foot. “That's my little brother Theo's way of babying you. Why start with a hedgehog? Start with a
tiger.
It's all the same magic anyway.” He snapped his finger in the air and stamped his foot again.

Nick couldn’t believe Damian talked about Theo that way. “It's easy for you, maybe. But in case you forgot, I just got here. Maybe you should have kidnapped me a while ago if it's so important to put me in your show! I’m new at this.”

“Doesn’t matter.” Damian waved his hand. “Up on the horse then. Rehearsal. You have to do this perfectly in two weeks. Opening night. For the summer tourists.” He rolled his eyes. “They think we have the best show on the strip. Like some Disneyland trickery. No one suspects that they are actually seeing the world's most incredible magicians at work. They do not appreciate the art.”

Nick crossed his arms. “I’m not getting on the horse.”

As if it had read Nick's mind, the horse reared up, causing Sergei the horse trader to command, “Come on, you crazy beast. Settle down!”

Damian walked behind Nick and gave him a little push. “Let's go, Nicholai. You have two weeks to learn this. Two weeks before opening night.”

Nick wheeled around on his heels. “Wait a minute. How did you know I was even going to be in the show?”

Damian started walking away, his black boots echoing on the wooden stage. Nick ran after him and grabbed his shirt.

“Tell me! You have the horse, the show, the whole thing planned. How did you know I was coming here? How long have you been planning this?”

The key against his chest burned again. He expected Damian to yell at him, but instead he pulled Nick very close, lowering his voice to a whisper.

“Since you were a baby, we all knew one day you’d come back to us. But this birthday…this birthday meant it was time, Kolya. Now, you are my cousin, but you also are my
apprentice.
Get… on… that… horse.”