The Vault of Destinies (James Potter #3) (58 page)

I watch and I wait,
the voice repeated. My
name will be known throughout all of the destinies.
My name… is Morgan. She who strides between the worlds.

The vision shattered and flew apart. Darkness swirled, compressed, and vanished into a single dark point, which hovered over the pedestal of the Disrecorder like a hole in space. A moment later, even that winked from view.

James stood rooted to the floor of the hall, his hair sticking up and his heart pounding.

It's just a dream,
he told himself, repeating the words over and over.
It's just that part of Petra's mind—the Morgan part—wanting to get out. Petra has it locked away, imprisoned, under control. That's all it is. That must be all it is…

James shuddered violently, remembering the hopeless toll of that dreaming voice.

Footsteps approached, accompanied echoing voices; Zane and Ralph were returning. Quickly, James stepped forward to retrieve the dream story, but then he stopped, his eyes widening.

The bowl of the Disrecorder was empty. Petra's dream story had completely vanished.

N
ow that the Alma Aleron Halloween Ball had officially come and gone, the campus got down to the serious business of unwinding toward the winter holidays.

No sooner had the floating pumpkins in the cafeteria been taken down than a collection of papier-mâché turkeys and strange buckled hats had gone up in their place. Thanksgiving, the holiday that, according to Professor Sanuye, celebrated the successful harvest of the first American pilgrims (with the help and cooperation of the Native Americans whom they'd met there) seemed to be a surprisingly big deal among the Alma Aleron students and faculty. Most of them were making plans to go home over the long weekend, where they would apparently eat lots of roasted turkey, mashed potatoes, and pumpkin pie and listen to or attend a lot of commemorative sporting events, including a blockbuster professional Clutchcudgel match known as the Superbrawl.

Curious about the details of such a quintessentially American holiday, James and Ralph shamelessly invited themselves to Zane's family home near St. Louis, Missouri for the Walker's Thanksgiving dinner. Zane's father, communicating via James' owl, Nobby, happily agreed to host the boys.

Thus, on the last weekend of November, the three boys traveled by train to a small old station in the quaint little city of Kirkwood, which Zane proudly proclaimed as 'the first official suburb of St. Louis'. This fact was woefully lost on James and Ralph, however, who were both preoccupied with the narrow, snow-dusted streets and brightly lit Christmas decorations that adorned the city's lampposts. As the three boys waited in the purple dusk for Zane's parents to pick them up, they peered across the street to where a gaggle of gaily dressed Muggles milled around an artificial forest of neatly cut and arranged pine trees. Occasionally, a minivan or car would motor out onto the street with one of the trees tied to the roof by a length of twine.

"People around here get started early with their Christmases, don't they?" Ralph said with a happy smile. "I could get used to that, I bet."

"That's nothing," Zane replied. "There's a family in the block next to my house that leaves their Christmas tree up all year long. True story."

James frowned. "Are they magical folk?"

"Nah," Zane answered easily. "They're just weird. Here comes my mom!"

The boys waved and collected their duffle bags as a white car pulled into the circle drive that fronted the train station. It still gave James an odd sensation whenever he saw someone driving from the left side of the car, but Zane, of course, thought nothing of it. He climbed into the front seat with his mother, an attractive blonde woman wearing tortoise-shell glasses. She smiled back at Ralph and James as they clambered into the back.

"Hi boys," she announced, offering each one a cookie from a paper bag. "Welcome to Kirkwood. Hope you're hungry."

"I am," Ralph agreed eagerly. "Mmm! Chocolate chip cookies. And are those chunks of cherry?"

"Still hot too!" Zane nodded, his mouth full.

"Just came out of the oven ten minutes ago," Zane's mother concurred, steering the car back out onto the street. "Greer stayed home with her father, watching the last batch, but she's just as excited as we are to have you all over for the holiday."

James watched the small town unroll past the windows of the car until they reached a neighborhood of little houses and neat yards, not unlike the area surrounding the Alma Aleron gate. Zane's mother slowed and angled up a short drive toward a simple stone house perched on a hill.

"Home sweet home!" Zane announced eagerly, already opening his door. "Dad's got the fire going, I bet!"

"That's not very hard," his mother commented. "It's a gas fireplace. But I'm sure you're right."

As the four climbed out of the car, the back door of the house swept open and a head of curly blonde hair poked out, lit brightly by the overhead light.

"Dad's carving the turkey," the girl called, "but I can't get him to stop eating it as he goes. You better get in here right away."

Zane's mother sighed with weary affection.

"Hi Greer!" Zane called to his younger sister, waving, and then turned to James and Ralph, shaking his head happily. "Some things never change. Come on inside, I'll show you my room!"

Thanksgiving at the Walker family home turned out to be not unlike any family gathering that James had known back at Marble Arch. The dining room was rather small, and by the time Zane's aunt and uncle had arrived with their two younger children, the house rang with a cacophony of overlapping sounds: laughter and conversation, the clank of dishes, the burble of Christmas carols from the kitchen radio, the staccato of clambering footsteps as Zane's cousins and sister ran about the small house. Zane and Ralph spent a goodly amount of time playing video games on the family television, although James could never quite get the hang of them. The food was excellent and apparently never-ending, so that by Thanksgiving evening, James felt utterly stuffed. The family gathered around the table to play board games and James joined in, even though he had never heard of any of the games, and had no idea how to play them.

"Sorry, James," Zane announced happily as James marched his marker around the board. "You owe me two hundred bucks. Enjoy your commute, and thank you for patronizing Reading Railroad."

"He's ruthless about those railroads," Ralph commented as James counted out the last of his brightly coloured play money. "If I had known how much money those could make, I wouldn't have wasted all mine on these stupid utilities."

James had no idea what any of it meant, but he didn't mind. It was an excellent time, no matter what. He grinned as he handed the play money to Zane, and reached for one of the last cookies on a nearby plate. One more bite couldn't hurt. He decided he'd take chocolate-cherry cookies over fake money any day.

Over the course of the holiday weekend, James and Ralph shared the Walkers' guest bedroom, sleeping on a pair of narrow old beds. On Sunday afternoon, while Ralph, Zane and Greer played video games, James explored the small house alone. In the small corner office, he found Mr. Walker hunched over his desk, tapping furiously away at a laptop computer. His face was tense and scowling, as if he was wrestling with the tiny keys.

"What're you working on?" James asked, leaning in the doorway.

Walker looked up, his eyes wide and surprised, and James realized that the man hadn't noticed his approach.

"Ah!" he said, and smiled. "Sorry. I get pretty wrapped up in this sometimes. Hi James."

"I didn't mean to interrupt you or anything," James said quickly. "I was just curious."

Walker sighed and leaned back in his chair, stretching. "It's fine. I need people to remind me to take a break sometimes. Zane's mother says that when I'm writing, it's like I'm a hundred feet underwater. It takes a long time to get down there, and a long time to swim back to the surface, so when I am there, it's easy to forget everything else."

"I thought you made movies?" James asked, frowning.

Walker shrugged and bobbed his head. "I make stuff," he said. "Sometimes I make things for movies, sometimes I draw pictures, sometimes I write stories."

James was curious. "Do people read what you write? Like, are your stories in bookstores and stuff?"

Walker laughed and shook his head. "No, my books don't end up on any store shelves. Fortunately, though, I do get paid for the
other
things I make. Well enough, in fact, that I have the freedom to do some things just for the fun of it. That's what the writing is for."

James frowned quizzically. "You write for fun?"

"No better reason," Walker sighed, flexing his fingers.

"So what are you writing now?"

Walker pursed his lips and shook his head. "Just a little story."

James narrowed his eyes at the man. For some reason, he suspected that Mr. Walker was purposely avoiding any further explanation. James peered toward the screen of the laptop. Without his glasses, the image was merely a blur of lines, but he thought he could make out a group of words in boldface. The title, perhaps? For a moment, he thought he saw his own name there. He shook his head and blinked. That was ridiculous, of course.

Mr. Walker turned the computer slightly, and clicked a button. The text on the screen disappeared.

James noticed a small volume perched on the end of the desk. He gestured toward it. "Is that one of your books?"

Walker scooped the book up. "This? No. This is a classic. I was using it for research. It's called 'Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde'. Ever hear of it?"

James shook his head.

"It's an old story," Walker said, letting the book fall open on his palm. "A horror story, but a psychological one. That's what makes it so scary, really."

"What do you mean?" James asked, peering at the book.

Walker flipped the pages until he came to an illustration. In it, a man in coat-tails and a top hat was standing before a floor-length mirror. He was staring with wide-eyed terror at his own reflection, and it was no wonder: the reflection in the mirror was a different man entirely. The figure in the mirror was leering, grinning, with hands hooked into claws and boggling, mad eyes.

"Because," Walker replied thoughtfully, "this isn't just a story about a madman wreaking havoc on the innocent. This is a story where the villain and the hero cannot physically fight one another, where there is no clear-cut moment of confrontation between them, where one can win out over the other."

James stared at the image on the page and felt a pall of uneasiness settle over him. "Why not?" he asked in a low voice.

"Well, it's very simple," Walker said, glancing up at James seriously. "It's because the villain and the hero… are the same person."

James nodded slowly, unable to take his eyes away from the illustration on the page. In it, two different personalities stared at each other from within the same body, divided only by the mirror glass.

In the warmth of the small office room, James shivered.

A moment later he dismissed himself and went to find Zane and Ralph. All of a sudden, he wanted nothing more than to be around his friends, to hear their raucous laughter, and to forget that strange, old illustration.

The return trip to Alma Aleron, like all post-holiday journeys, was melancholy and quiet. Zane spent the train ride with his nose buried in a thick book called
The Varney Guide to Who's Who
in the Wizarding World
. James tried to read over his shoulder at one point, but almost immediately found the book unforgivably boring. Instead, he challenged Ralph to a game of wizard chess, using a miniature box set of chess pieces that Ralph had taken to carrying with him wherever he went. James hated playing chess with Ralph since he nearly always lost to the bigger boy, but even losing was better than simply staring out the windows at the passing, dreary cities and rainy sky.

The next day, Zane cornered Ralph and James in the hall outside of Mageography.

"I know who Rowbitz is," he said, his eyes bulging in his face.

"What?" Ralph frowned. "I thought you said he wasn't anywhere in that book?"

"He wasn't," Zane agreed. "It was a complete waste of time. Now, my head's all stuffed full of useless names and trivia, and all for nothing. Like, did you know that the wizard who invented the skrim was some crazy dude named Vimrich who was just looking for a way to nap while he was riding his broom? He never got it to work—the flattened broom just kept flipping over and dropping him on the floor—but after he died, some of his nephews found the homemade brooms in his workshop and tried standing up on them. The rest is history."

"Fascinating," James said impatiently. "Get to the Rowbitz part."

"Hey, if I had to learn it,
you
have to put up with hearing about it," Zane proclaimed, poking James in the chest. "But anyway, when I took the book back to the library this morning, I noticed something hanging on the wall. You know how the Vampire girls are always making those charcoal etchings of the gravestones in the school cemetery? Well, a bunch of them are hanging up by the librarian's desk; must have been some kind of class art project or something. The point is, guess whose name showed up on the one right by the return cart?"