Magickeepers: The Eternal Hourglass (21 page)

Nick woke up with a seven-hundred-pound tiger on his chest, smelling the fishy breath of Sascha and feeling the tiger's whiskers tickling his cheek.

“Get up!” Isabella screamed at him. She was standing next to his bed, already in her costume. “We’re due to go on in twenty minutes. If you’re late, Damian will kill you.”

“If you would kindly get your tiger off my chest…”

Sascha didn’t move until Isabella snapped her fingers. Sometimes, that tiger could be so infuriating.

Nick leaped from bed, hurriedly pulled one of his costumes from the closet, and started putting the shirt on. “Let's go!”

They ran down the hall, Sascha bounding beside them, as Nick buttoned his shirt, the jeweled collar scratching his neck slightly.

From beneath the bowels of the casino, they raced along concrete hallways and emerged in the full bustle of the largest show in Las Vegas and perhaps the world.

For the briefest of moments, Nick stood still, as his cousins and aunts and uncles and distant relatives, as the whole family ran around him, “Places! Come on!”

He could hear the violins tuning in the orchestra pit.

His cousin Olga walked up to him, adjusted his collar, and ran a comb through his hair.

Damian spied him and charged at him, fury on his face. “Get in the tunnel. Now! Get to Maslow! And don’t ever be late again!”

Nick looked at Isabella.

“Remember, no mess!” she joked.

In one wing off the stage, Irina rehearsed with the polar bears.

Theo nodded and waved from the other wing.

Smiling, Nick rode down a small lift to a dimly lit tunnel. Ahead of him, he could hear his beloved horse whinnying for him. Behind him was his family, his destiny stretching back through centuries and forward toward his future.

He ran, his boots echoing on the metal, reached Maslow, and climbed on his back. “You did good out there in the desert, my friend,” he whispered.

The horse lifted his head majestically, as befitting an Akhal-Teke.

The orchestra began.

Boom-boom-boom went the timpani.

The trapdoor opened, and Nicholai Rostov and his horse were lifted up out of the casino's basement into the spotlight.

Nick sat high on his horse. He lifted his head. He let the spotlight gleam on him.

As befitting a prince of the Magickeepers.

The adventure continues in Book Two of
the Magickeepers series

Spring Garden district, Philadelphia, 1844

E
DGAR ALLAN POE SAT AT HIS WOODEN DESK AND STARED out the window at the midnight sky. His wife, Virginia, was in the small back bedroom, coughing in her sleep. Tuberculosis was ravaging her health, and Poe was even more desperate now for a hit. A poem or short story that would capture the imagination of an editor and the nation and make him wealthy, famous, and able to care for her.

But inspiration did not come.

He stared down at the paper, quill pen in his hand.

But all he saw was a white page taunting him with its blankness. No words came to him.

He took a sip of dark red brandy. More than he cared to admit, that was often where he got his inspiration. But tonight, the muse did not come.

“Please,” he whispered desperately, almost a prayer. “Inspiration. That is what I need.”

From the back bedroom, he heard Virginia's rattling cough.

He put his head in his hands, anguish etched across his pale face.

“Tat-tat-tat.”

Poe jumped near out of his skin at the sound. He stared at the brandy bottle. Was he now having hallucinations?

But then he heard the sound again.

Something was at the window.

Yet that was impossible. He was on the second floor.

Shaking, he stood and crept toward the panes of glass, peering out into the darkness.

“Tat-tat!”

A more insistent sound. The pecking of a beak at the window.

Squinting in the lamplight, Poe cautiously opened the window. A large black bird stared at him inquisitively from the sill. Blinking twice, it stepped across the sill and alighted on the floor.

“Once upon a midnight dreary,” the bird spoke in a voice as clear as Poe's own.

Poe took three steps backward and fell into a chair.

“I
am
hallucinating,” he muttered to himself.

“Nothing of the sort. I am here to bring you your deepest desire.”

“A raven … to answer my deepest desire? How do you propose that?” Poe said, scarce believing he was talking to a bird, still half-certain it was all a dream or a bad batch of brandy.

“My name is Miranda. I have come as an answer to your prayer. Write down what I say, and you will be rewarded.”

Poe stared at the bird.

“Your pen. Begin writing,” the bird insisted. She took several hops and preened her feathers, which shone like mica in the lamplight.

Poe returned to his desk, still not certain of anything— including his own sanity. He dipped his quill in ink and began copying down the raven's words.

“While I nodded, nearly napping …” the bird spoke.

And Poe scribbled.

When the bird was finally done speaking, Poe stared down at eighteen stanzas of poetry, six lines each. It was perfection. The greatest poem he had ever written. Even if they weren’t his words.

“That poem shall make you famous, Edgar Allan Poe,” the raven said proudly. She stretched her wings and shook her tail feathers.

“But why have you come to me?” Poe asked, staring down at the poem, and still marveling at its perfection.

Miranda flew and landed on his desk, her eyes shone like two black diamonds of many facets.

“In exchange for this poem, someday I shall return to you and ask you for a favor. You may not refuse me, Edgar Allan Poe, or you will experience ruin and death. Is that understood?”

“But what kind of favor?” Poe asked.

“A magical favor. I may need for you to hold something for me, for safekeeping. From forces you cannot understand. Shadows.”

Poe swallowed. Could this bargain be worth it? But there, staring at him, were the words on the paper, so magnificent. They were worth anything. Surely they were.

He nodded at the bird. “We have a deal.”

“Excellent,” spoke the raven. Outside a fierce wind rose up from nowhere, filling the room with an icy chill. “They are near,” the bird whispered. She took flight and soared out the window, her call echoing through the night. “They are near! They are near!”

Edgar Allan Poe ran to the window and shut it, locking it, in fear for his life.

He returned to his desk, sweating nervously despite the cold air. What kind of deal had he just made, he wondered?

And what would it cost him?

ERICA KIROV is an American writer of Russian descent. Though she is not from a family of magicians, she is from a proud family of Russians, and she grew up hearing stories of their lives there.

Erica lives in Virginia with her husband, four children, three dogs, parrot, hedgehog, and her son's snake (she really hates snakes). She is busy at work on the next Magickeepers novel, and you can read more about the Magickeepers at www.magickeepers.com.