Magickeepers: The Eternal Hourglass (14 page)

“I don’t know what to do,” Nick whispered to Isabella. “It's not my ball.”

“Well, do what you do with your ball.”

Nick touched the crystal. It was warm and growing hotter against his palm. He shut his eyes for a minute, and then he saw a flash in his mind.

He opened his eyes, and there inside the ball were people who looked as real as he and Isabella.

Paris, 1900

“Monsieur Verne?”

The bearded old man turned. “Monsieur Houdini!” He crossed the room, walking with a limp, and vigorously shook the famed illusionist's hand.

“It's a pleasure to meet you.”

“The pleasure is mine. Sit, sit.” He gestured to a leather chair in his study.

“I am a great admirer of your work, Monsieur Verne.”

“And I yours. I hear no locks can hold you.”

“They have yet to make one that can, indeed.”

“Cognac?”

“No, thank you. I am anxious. I must ask…these books, these novels you write that tell of a future, this book
From the Earth to the Moon
in which you write that someday man will actually travel to the moon, can they really be true?”

Verne nodded. “True. All true. Of course,” he lowered his voice, “I change certain details. I don’t need to arouse suspicion. But yes, someday man will travel to the moon.”

“I cannot imagine. As a child, my mother told me it was made of Swiss cheese.”

The two men chuckled.

“No, not Swiss cheese. But rock.”

“In a flying cannon, you say?” Houdini leaned forward, trembling with excitement.

“Indeed. A rocket, actually, but for my purposes, I called it a cannon. But yes. And I named my cannon in the novel the
Columbiad.
But it will be called the
Columbia
in the future. Not much of a name change. Perhaps,” he chortled softly, “I am not such a genius of the novel as people believe of me. I guess the details are so wonderful that I want to leave them all as I saw them.”

“That is the amazing part. You saw it. All of your predictions? In a glass ball?”

Verne nodded. “Many years ago, in 1862, I was playing a bit of cards —gambling—with three men from Russia. One of them, a man by the name of Petrov, owed me an outlandish sum of money by the end of the night. In exchange for canceling his debt, he showed me a glimpse of the future.”

“Then how did you come to possess the hourglass?”

“You know I walk with a limp.”

Houdini nodded.

“You have no doubt heard the story?”

“Yes. Your nephew shot you. Was he not put into an asylum for the mentally deranged?”

“Indeed. Tragic. No one knows why a man turns to paranoia. What goes on inside the brain. And although Gaston had shot me, I found myself deeply troubled by his predicament. So I paid him a visit, under cover of night. Not even my closest friend knew. No one. I even had my carriage drop
me off a half-mile from the asylum, and I walked the rest of the way, despite the great pain.”

“And?”

“I saw Gaston. But he was lost in a world of insanity. I got no answers as to his state of mind when he pulled the trigger. However, as I was leaving, another inmate reached out a hand from behind a locked cell. The guard told me not to draw near, but… I sensed perhaps that this person desperately needed human touch. So I approached, warily, mind you.”

“And?” By now, Houdini was almost entirely out of his seat with anticipation.

“He spoke with a Russian accent, and he thrust a piece of paper into my hand. I didn’t let the guard see.”

“What did it say?”

“It was the very same Russian, the one who had shown me the crystal ball. He had been imprisoned there when, drunkenly, he spoke of the future like a madman. The note begged me. If I helped secure his release, by speaking with the head of the asylum, and with, of course, my standing— I was knighted, after all—he would, in return, offer me an hourglass that stopped time.”

“The rumored hourglass that belonged to Houdin?”

“Yes.”

“But was it possible to secure his release?”

Jules Verne nodded and stroked his beard. “It was
secretive, of course. But yes, I vouched for him. I promised the director that as soon as the gentleman's release was secured, I would pay for his passage back to Mother Russia. He would no longer be France's problem. So again, under cover of night, the man was released. I took him by carriage to the train and arranged a series of passages for him, and in return, he gave me the hourglass. I had no reason to doubt what the hourglass can do, Monsieur Houdini. I have seen buildings as tall as the sky, and rocket ships, computers that allow people to communicate with the push of a button. And the hourglass does just as he said it would—though he did warn not to abuse it, as it can turn against a soul that does not respect its power.”

“But where has it been all this time?”

“It was stolen from Houdin. Apparently, these Russians are robber barons of a type. They have no problem lying and cheating and stealing, and even gambling. A trade had been enacted—a pocket watch that was capable of stopping time, briefly, for the merest of seconds—for the hourglass. But then, the Russians discovered the magic of the pocket watch wasn’t as strong. So they stole
back
the hourglass. And then, it appears to have lived a rather secretive but storied life all over Europe. Lost in a gambling match at one point. Stolen by some rather nefarious rival magicians another time. And now… now, my dear Houdini, it is here. Come.”

Jules Verne stood, wincing with pain he still felt from when his crazed nephew shot him in the leg. Limping and dragging his leg slightly, he made his way to a table on which sat an object hidden beneath a velvet blanket.

Houdini stood next to him. He looked as if he could barely stop himself from ripping off the black velvet covering.

Jules Verne said, “Monsieur Houdini, may I present to you the Eternal Hourglass.”

And with a flourish, he removed the velvet drape, revealing an hourglass with gold-flecked sand. Around its rim on the top and on the bottom were etched words.

In Cyrillic.

“What does the lettering mean?” Houdini asked, peering closely.

“According to the Russian, it is an ancient spell.
Time stands still for no man.”

T
HE NEXT MORNING AT BREAKFAST, NICK TRIED NOT TO look at Isabella. He didn’t want anyone to suspect what they had done. The night before, after seeing Jules Verne in the crystal ball, they left Damian's study exactly as they found it and sneaked back to their rooms. All night long, Nick had trouble sleeping, trying to imagine what the key opened. Had his mother stolen the Eternal Hourglass and hidden it somewhere? He certainly wouldn’t be surprised—seemed like he was from a long line of thieves. But then, how did Rasputin have it? And why didn’t it work anymore?

All during breakfast, he concentrated on his food. He was learning to choose his foods at each meal wisely. For breakfast, one silver tureen offered
kasha
, which was sort of like oatmeal. If he added about ten teaspoons of sugar, he could
almost stand it. Sometimes, he put syrup on it. Or some fruit. But always sugar—and lots of it. Same with his black tea. There were also
blinis.
But he never took the ones with fish eggs. No matter how much everyone in the family raved about caviar, he was never, ever,
ever
going to like fish eggs in jelly. So he took his
blinis
with sour cream and covered them with more sugar. In fact, he tried to cover everything with sugar. There were
ponchiki.
They were actually pretty delicious—hot donuts. But they didn’t have them every day. What they
did
have every day was
borsch
and
piroshki. Borsch
was beet soup. Nick thought it was ten thousand shades of wrong to make soup out of beets. Chicken noodle, maybe. But beets? He had learned to eat the
piroshki
, dumplings, when they had potatoes in them. But not when they were filled with meat—or worse, prunes.

So he focused on his sugar-loaded Russian oatmeal, and drank his sugar-loaded Russian tea, and he didn’t look at Isabella.

Theo entered the dining room at his usual time to collect them for school. As they walked down the hall, Nick felt himself relax. They had gotten away with it.

When they got to the classroom, Theo already had a crystal ball set up on his desk on a tall pedestal.

Already playing in the ball was a dark scene, the picture so dark, in fact, that Nick couldn’t tell what was happening.
When Nick got closer, he saw it was him—and Isabella—the previous night.

“Care to explain yourselves?” Theo asked, sitting down at his desk and folding his hands.

Nick looked at Isabella. She looked back at him.

Neither of them said anything.

Theo waited.

Nick thought he could hear his own heartbeat. The cuckoo emerged from its clock.

“Tell him! Tell him!” the bird squawked.

“I’m waiting, ” Theo said. “Patiently—for the moment.”

Still, Nick said nothing.

“If Damian finds out you were in his library, you two will be in so much trouble you’ll wish you were hedgehogs in a cage. Out with it. I can find out through magic, or you can tell me. I think it would be better to tell me. Don’t you?”

Nick looked at Isabella as if to say,
We have no choice.
Suddenly, the words tumbled out of Nick—the key, the burning against his chest, the Cyrillic, what they saw in the crystal ball, and the other library spy—though he left out that it was Boris for now, and he also left out Rasputin in his crystal ball. “Theo, what does this key unlock?”

“I don’t know what the key unlocks.”

“Can’t I gaze and…I don’t know, see if my mother stole the hourglass?”

Theo touched the crystal ball, which went clear again. “Kolya, you need to understand something about magic.”

“What?”

“It's everything. And it's not everything.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Well, it's like people who dream about finding a genie and getting three wishes. It's never what you expect— sometimes, wishes have unexpected consequences. So it is with magic. We can’t just gaze into the ball and ask it everything we want to know. That isn’t a pure heart. That isn’t our destiny. We aren’t like the Shadowkeepers. Magic is everything to us. But we must use our magic respectfully. We honor it. We can’t gaze every time we have a question, Kolya, or we would live in our crystal balls and in books of spells instead of amongst family.”

“But… this is an important question. It's really important.”

“So you think.”

“But it is important!” Isabella said, leaning forward at her desk. “It is, Theo! The Shadowkeepers tried to kill Nick. We saw that thing in the pool. It was life or death, Theo.”

“We each think our problems are the greatest, Nick and Isabella. But if we abuse the gift, it will turn on us. We will use it more and more for problems less and less dire. This time, it's to see what your mother may have done. Then tomorrow, it might be to see if you can find your lost shoe.”

“It's not like that.”

Theo shook his head. “I’ve seen it happen.”

“But can’t I see my mother? Can’t I find out what happened?”