Magickeepers: The Eternal Hourglass (3 page)

Nick blinked hard several times. The crystal ball was foggy now, but he could make out a scene. His temples pounded, and for a minute, he thought he might throw up. The room felt hot. “I see…” He squinted. “I see a desert. It must be Las Vegas.”

“Never assume,
zaychik”
the old woman warned.

“Sand. Lots of sand. It has to be Vegas. And there's…the sphinx. It's Vegas. The Luxor Hotel.”

“Do you see neon?” Grandpa asked.

“Hmm, funny.” Nick looked hard. “I don’t. Wait…there's a pyramid. And camels.”

Grandpa leaned forward. “Go ahead, Nick, what else?”

“And…and there's a man, in robes. And around him are men with swords.”

Grandpa slapped Madame B. on the arm. “I told you!” he beamed.

“He's…there are birds around him. The men are cutting the birds’ heads off with swords.” He pressed forward, his nose almost touching the ball. “And he's making them come alive again. The man in the robes. It's a trick—an illusion. He's a magician!”

Nick's head ached, and he fell back against the chair feeling strangely tired. The crystal ball looked like a regular glass ball again. “What happened?”

“A
vonderful
thing,” Madame B. smiled at him. “A most miraculous thing. Our world has been waiting for you, child. You, Nicholai Rostov, have the
gift.
”

W
HAT HAPPENED IN THERE, GRANDPA?” NICK ASKED OVER supper. Grandpa liked to go to all-you-can-eat buffets on the Las Vegas Strip. The idea, according to Grandpa, was to eat so much you couldn’t move—to make sure you got your money's worth. He always insisted they start with the most expensive stuff—shrimp and crab legs—before even considering “moving down the food chain” to things like salad and potatoes.

Nick lifted a french fry drowning in ketchup to his mouth. “What kind of trick was it? How did she do that with the crystal ball?”

Nick knew how to do all of his dad's tricks. He could make a ball disappear and pull a coin out from someone's ear. He could make the ace of hearts jump out from the middle of a deck of cards. He knew how most magicians did levitations
and the disappearing-woman-in-the-box trick. But the crystal ball—
that
was cool.

“She didn’t do anything, Nick. You did.”

Nick looked across the table at his grandfather. Nick's father said that Grandpa was an eccentric in a town full of eccentrics. When Nick was younger, he asked his father what that meant. Basically, Nick found out that
eccentric
was a grown-up's way of saying someone was a little crazy. “But in a good way,” his father had said.

“So is this like the time you told me the moon was following us?” Nick folded his arms. “Or the time you told me that Damian's show is real magic?”

“Yes and no.”

“A grown-up's way of saying he told a lie.” Nick rolled his eyes.

“No. The moon didn’t really follow us. That's an optical illusion. But yes,” Grandpa lowered his voice to a whisper, “Damian's show is real. Nick, when he fights the swordsmen in his show and plunges a knife in a woman's heart and turns her into a dove to free her from the prison, it's
real.
No one has ever, in the history of magic, done what he can do. He is real. He's of the purest magic line. And yes, you really could see the past in that crystal ball. Back to the time of the Pharaohs. You did it, Nick.”

“Sure.”

“Your mother could, too.”

Nick exhaled, and his heart skipped a beat. “My mother?” He had no real memory of her, but her photos were all around the suite at the Pendragon. In each framed picture, Nick's mother was dressed in her magician's assistant costumes— ruby red sequins and feathers, her pale eyes sparkling with rhinestones on the ends of her long false eyelashes. Back then, Nick's father had been a successful magician. His tricks had always worked. Dad called his mother his good luck charm, and after she died, he told Nick that his tricks had broken, just like his heart. When Nick thought about his mom, his throat sometimes hurt.

“Your mother had the gift. You’re like her, Nicholai. Magic is real. Its roots go back to Egypt.”

“The pyramids I saw.”

His grandfather nodded. “It's a bloodline, Nick. Wait until we’re outside to talk about this more,” he said, looking around the room. “The walls have ears.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means I can’t say anything more until we get outside.”

Actually, Nick thought, it meant Grandpa was, just as his father said, crazy in a good way.

Grandpa left a tip on the table and stood to leave.

“I can’t move.” Nick rubbed his stomach. “Think it’ll help me gain a few pounds?” He was tired of his jeans always
sagging—and not in a cool way, but in a thin, dorky, few-pizzas-short-of-a-real-waist way.

“Nick,” Grandpa sighed, “I wish I had your problem, kiddo.”

“I still can’t move.”

“We have to. Come on. I’ve got to get you back to your father.”

Once they left the restaurant, they walked to the Pendragon, three blocks away. In front of them, down the street, Las Vegas rose like a neon Oz.

“Tell me more about magic. About what I saw in the crystal ball.” It wasn’t that he believed his grandfather's crazy claims—but the crystal ball had seemed so real.

“Magic goes back to Egypt. But then magicians were persecuted and they scattered across the globe. There's much about magic that's both secret and true.” His grandfather slung an arm around Nick's shoulders. “Too much for me to tell you about tonight. But I want you to be very careful, Nick.”

“Of what?”

“Magic can be dangerous when it falls into the wrong hands.” He looked over his shoulder and then whispered, “Into
enemy
hands. For now, we’ll keep your gift a secret. Okay?”

“Sure.” As if he would even know how to tell someone about the crystal ball. Besides, he lived in a hotel, not a neighborhood,
and didn’t have that many friends to tell. They strolled up to the Pendragon and stood beneath its neon dragon sign. Penny, as Nick called the dragon, breathed fire when the machine worked, but most of the time, it didn’t.

“Are you going to come up, Grandpa?”

He shook his head. “I think not. You know how he can be.”

Nick nodded.

Grandpa pressed something into the palm of Nick's hand. “It's your birthday gift. Open it when you’re alone. It belonged to your mother.”

Nick looked down at the small wrapped box. “Thanks, Grandpa.”

He hugged his grandfather good-bye and entered the Pendragon, which stood in the old part of Las Vegas, not the shiny, new, glamorously tacky part. The Pendragon didn’t have a roller coaster in its lobby, or a pirate ship complete with pirates. No dancing fountains greeted guests as they arrived. No gondolas floated on an indoor Venetian canal. It didn’t have one of the shows people booked years in advance to see, like the magician Damian. It didn’t even have much neon. The slot machines in the Pendragon were old, and the burgundy carpeting in the casino and the hallways was worn. Even the showgirls were old by showgirl standards. “Beats retiring,” Margot, the star of the show, once told Nick.

He shuffled toward the elevators and heard guests muttering in the lobby.

“Worst magic act I’ve ever seen.”

“I could do that trick.”

“He's no Damian, that's for sure.”

Nick sighed, shoved the gift deep into his jeans pocket, and took the elevator up to the thirteenth floor. He walked down the hall and opened the door. Posters of famous magicians like Houdini, Carter, and Blackstone hung on the walls next to framed glossy photos of his parents from when their magic act was a hit.

“Dad?” he called out.

“One minute,” his dad replied from the kitchen. He emerged a brief time later, holding a cake with glowing candles in front of him. “Happy birthday…” he sang.

“Please don’t sing.”

“You have to sing on your birthday. And make a wish.”

“Please,” Nick begged him.

But his dad barreled on through the song, off-key and really loud. When he finished, Nick shut his eyes and blew out the candles.

“Did you make a wish?” Dad was still wearing his tuxedo from the show, but with the bow tie undone.

“Sure,” Nick said, but he hadn’t. Wishes were for babies.

Dad put the cake on the counter separating the galley kitchen—just a half-sized refrigerator and a tiny stove and a microwave—from their even smaller living room. “Want a piece? The chef made it special for you.”

Nick looked at the lopsided cake with the red-hued icing. It had “Happy Birthday, Nicholai” on it, but the chef had clearly run out of room, so the last three letters actually dropped over the side of the cake. Besides having the worst magic act in Las Vegas, the Pendragon, Nick knew, was equally infamous for its terrible food.

“I’m actually so stuffed I feel gross.”

“Grandpa took you to one of those all-you-can-eat places again, didn’t he?”

Nick nodded.

“Still trying to get his money's worth?”

Nick laughed. “Yeah. I think he really did get his money's worth tonight. He ate four linebacker-sized plates of oysters and shrimp. I had three cheeseburgers. And a plate of fries. Oh, and a lobster tail.”

“Only in Vegas can you get that combination.”

Nick grinned sheepishly. “So if you don’t mind, I think I’ll save my cake for breakfast tomorrow.”

“Sure, Kolya,” his father said, calling him by the Russian nickname only he used. “I remember the first time I laid eyes on you.” He looked at Nick like he might cry, which made
Nick want to escape to somewhere, anywhere. His dad was too sentimental. Nick touched the gift in his front pocket and wondered what it was. “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure. Anything.”

“Do you think about her sometimes?”

He was positive his father knew exactly what he was talking about. His mother always floated in this empty space between them. “Yes,” his father said softly. “And you look more like her every birthday. Especially those eyes. Her entire clan had them.”

His father walked over to him and looked like he might hug him, but he ended up just patting Nick on the shoulder.

Nick sighed. Failed magician or not—make that the world's worst magician with very bad jokes—he was still his dad. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Bright and early. We can go together to pick out a brand-new skateboard for your birthday, just like I promised. Something rad.”

“Rad?”

“Just trying to get with the lingo. ’Night, Kolya.”

Nick went into his room—only big enough for a twin bed and a small dresser with his TV and video-game console on top. He turned on the light and pulled the present out of his pocket. He unwrapped it; inside was a small, black leather box with a gold crest embossed on the top of it. All right, he
had been hoping for a new game for his game system, but the crest was still cool. Holding his breath, he opened the box.

Nestled on a velvet cushion was a thick gold chain, and dangling from it hung a golden key about two inches long, the top part of which was a perfect circle. In the center of the circle were letterings in a strange script Nick couldn’t read. The key shape itself—the part that would go into a lock— was elaborate, intricate. Nick wondered what it opened. A safety-deposit box? His dad was always broke—they didn’t own anything you’d need a safety-deposit box for. Maybe the key opened nothing, but it was fun to imagine it opened a treasure. He wished he could read the lettering. Maybe that would tell him what it opened. He’d have to ask Grandpa.

Nick pulled the chain and key over his head, and it slid between his shirt and skin, falling to his chest where his heart beat. When the key touched his bare skin, it felt warm. Suddenly, a strange sort of buzzing pulsated in his chest, like a hive of bees.

His room began spinning around and around until he couldn’t even focus on anything and he thought he’d throw up. He held on to his bed, trying to concentrate on the blue bedspread but seeing only a blur. And then, as suddenly as the world had started to move, it stopped. He heard something. A thumping sound.

“Dad?” he called out.

Instead, the handle to his closet door turned, and the magician Damian stepped through. Nick shook his head. Damian looked like he did in all his posters, tall, with long black hair and pale eyes. Nick blinked hard, but Damian was still there.

“I must be dreaming,” he whispered, his heart pounding so hard, he wondered if that had been the thumping sound he heard.

“’Fraid not, Nicholai. Time to fly,” Damian said, waving his hand, and that was the last thing Nick remembered.