Magickeepers: The Eternal Hourglass (15 page)

“I’m afraid not. The ball would recognize your motives, Nick. You need to unravel this without it.”

“But do you think it's why the Shadowkeepers are here?”

“Now that I know what's written on the key? Yes. The Eternal Hourglass is one of our most powerful relics—and it was lost. They want it.”

“What about us? Don’t we want it?” Nick was suspicious. “You have a vault full of magic relics. Isn’t that kind of hogging the world's magic?”

“Of course we want it. But the key burns because its rightful place is with us. It's calling us. It's calling
you
, more precisely. Now, we must turn our attention to your lessons. In particular, how you will make Sascha switch places with Isabella. We have less than two weeks to go.”

“I can’t do it.”

“But you can. My brother was right. If you switch a hedgehog, you can switch a tiger.” Theo snapped his fingers and a hedgehog appeared on his desk as if to prove a point. He snapped again, and it turned into a mouse.

“Yeah. I made my hedgehog disappear. But the hedgehog was lost for a whole night until I got it to come back. I wasn’t
able to do it right away. What if that happens in the show? What if I can’t do it and stand there like an idiot? I’ll be a joke. I’ll ruin the entire show!”

“Possibly.”

“And okay, let's suppose I
can
switch them. What if Isabella gets—I don’t know—stuck? What then?”

“That could be messy,” Theo said, wincing. “Best not to let her get stuck.”

“Messy!” Nick stood up. “You’re putting too much pressure on me! I don’t want messy.”

“That's why you need to
practice,”
Theo said.

Isabella looked up at him, “Please, Nick. Practice. I don’t want to be… messy.”

Nick shook his head. “I quit. I quit the show.”

“Too late. The posters are made.”

“Posters? All this because you already made up stupid posters?” Nick started to run out of the classroom, but Sascha leaped in front of him.

“Move, Sascha!”

The tiger stared up at him, raised one paw, and used it to push Nick backward. He fell against a desk and then tumbled to the floor.

He scrambled up again. “Knock it off before I…” He felt the increasingly familiar sensation in his stomach. He shut his eyes and envisioned Isabella and Sascha switching places.

When he opened his eyes again, Isabella was standing in front of him, grinning.

“I promise I won’t push you,” she said, laughing. “And look.” She twirled around. “All in one piece and no mess.”

Fine. He had done it once now. But in front of thousands of people? The thought made him queasy.

“Do it again,” Theo commanded.

“I don’t think I can.” Nick turned around to face Theo. “It's not easy for me. Why don’t you understand that? I wasn’t raised with you all. I’m a stranger here. A stranger. It's not easy.”

“Nothing worth doing is easy, Kolya.”

“But I
can’t.”

From behind him, he heard Irina's voice. “If you think you can’t, then you won’t.”

He turned around and saw her standing in the doorway. “But I just don’t know how to do it on command. Without getting mad and feeling something in my stomach.”

“You can. It's your destiny. Your mother used to be able to look at the most ferocious tiger and reduce it to a kitten with one glance. She had power. You do, too.”

Nick looked at Isabella. He shut his eyes, and instead of getting mad, he focused on his stomach. There was a buzzing in his gut, and he pictured it traveling up through his body to his fingertips. He opened his eyes, and Isabella was still
standing there, so he looked at her—stared
into
her—and in the blink of an eye, he was smelling Sascha's fishy breath and staring into feline tiger eyes.

He didn’t even see it happen.

“I did it.” He ran his fingers through Sascha's fur, marveling at its thickness. He smiled at Irina. “I did it!” He felt a pride welling up inside of him, in the place where he felt the magic. A joy that spread to his smile.

“Never doubt, Kolya. Now come along.”

“Where?”

“The Grand Duchess wishes to have a private audience with you.”

Nick turned to look at Isabella. She shrugged and mouthed, “I don’t know.”

He followed Irina out of the classroom and down the hall. She led him to a room at the very far end of the floor. Then Irina faced him.

“Let me see you. Hmm…” She smoothed his hair and straightened the collar of his shirt. “That's better. You know, no one gets a private audience with her. No one.”

He swallowed. “What do I say?”

“You don’t say anything. You listen. Now go on.” She rapped on the door.

“Come in,” came the tremulous reply.

Irina opened the heavy door with a snap of her fingers,
and Nick peered inside the room. It was dimly lit, but he could make out the Grand Duchess sitting by the window.

“Go on,” whispered Irina. He felt her push him, then heard the door slam, and suddenly, he was alone with the ancient woman.

C
OME SIT, KOLYA,” THE OLD WOMAN SAID.

Hesitantly, he crossed the thickly carpeted floor, his shoes sinking deep into it and leaving a track of his path. The room was filled with antiques, like stepping back in time somehow. On the walls hung dozens of oil paintings, and the lamps weren’t electric but were instead filled with some kind of oil or gas and flickered, their light dancing on the walls.

“Sit!” she commanded.

He sat down in a burgundy velvet chair with elaborately carved legs and arms.

“Sweet?” she asked, passing a heavy crystal bowl of hard candy. Nick took one—a candy shaped like a gift, complete with a blue bow on top—and popped it in his mouth. It tasted like an explosion of fresh blueberries on his tongue.

The Grand Duchess leaned back in her high-backed velvet chair and stared out the tall window through slightly parted velvet drapes.

“I like to sit here and remember. I miss the snow. I miss how it smelled just before a snow, the sky as white as cotton. I miss my girlhood home. This is all,” she waved a hand, “designed to recreate my home, but I cannot recreate my family. I cannot recapture my girlhood. I am old, Kolya. But I like to look at snow.”

Nick had never seen actual snow. He’d lived in Las Vegas for as long as he could remember. On very hot days, sometimes he liked to imagine moving to a place where it snowed. He started to ask her about the snow, about her family, but he remembered Irina's advice. He said nothing. He waited.

“Everyone calls me the Grand Duchess, but I am really her Imperial Highness. A Grand Duchess. Such a big name for such a tiny baby when I was born. When I was a little girl, my father used to worry so much, such extraordinary responsibility. Now, I am the one who worries. I am the one who stares at the snow.”

Her eyes were watery. “I’ve never told anyone. Not the whole story. Not everything.”

Nick waited patiently, but she said nothing more. Finally, he asked, “Told anyone what, Grand Duchess?”

“I survived because of him. Because of a spell.”

“Him?”

“The Shadowkeeper.” She spat the name like a curse. “I am Anastasia, Kolya. Do you know who I am?”

He shook his head.

“I am the daughter of the last tsar of Russia. My entire family was murdered—only I survived. But how and why—that is the tale, my little one. That is the tale.” She reached out a gnarled hand and put it on his. At her touch, Nick had a flash, a vision. He saw Rasputin in a freeze-framed moment, sitting with a family in crowns and jewels. It must have been Anastasia—the Grand Duchess—and her family.

“Oh, we loved him at first. He called me
Malenkaya.
Do you know what that means, Kolya?”

Again, he shook his head.

“It means ‘my little imp.’” She smiled. “The way I used to laugh with my beloved sister, Maria—I really was a little imp. I fit the name. Maria and I were the Little Pair. My two older sisters were the Big Pair.” She laughed softly. “Maria and I shared a room. We did our needlepoint together. Tiny little stitches, trying to imitate our mother. Intricate. I still try to do needlepoint, but my hands don’t always cooperate.”

Nick looked around. Now he saw that needlepoint scenes were framed and hung on the walls, or were made into pillows for the sofa.

“Maria and I loved each other so much. We did little plays, you know. Little plays to make my papa laugh. He worried so. Russia was in turmoil. And then my baby brother was born. He was very, very spoiled.” She smiled and leaned her head back and shut her eyes.

Nick waited, thinking she had fallen asleep, when she opened her eyes again. “Spoiled. He was the heir. The boy. Born after four girls. He would be the next tsar. We all coddled him. But my brother was very sick. If he fell, he would bleed. Horribly. This was long before modern medicine, so there was nothing the doctors could do for him. So my parents invited the monk into the palace. Rasputin. He would pray over my little brother. My mother believed he was curing him. But I think…I think Rasputin was really casting spells, Kolya.”

Nick remembered the family tree—the charred part of the tree. He tried to picture his crystal ball, to urge it to let him see inside his own mind. He flashed on the monk's eyes. He felt as though, somehow, the monk was eavesdropping at that very moment. Nick felt him, as if his reach were inescapable.

“I loved the monk. Oh, how I loved him—he made me laugh, the monk did. And he was kind and gentle. He hugged me and would come visit me and Maria in the nursery and tell us stories. And then times grew even stranger and more
dangerous. My family was arrested. We were taken to one of our palaces. Like this very building, Kolya. This entire hotel and casino is a replica right down to the plates we eat our meals on. No detail has been overlooked, my child. And in that palace, we were imprisoned—the entire imperial family.”

Nick stared, afraid to break her reverie. Her eyes were pale blue and when she spoke of her girlhood, they lit up, dancing. But now they clouded.

“I know a palace like this is hardly a real prison. But the strain on Papa was terrible. We didn’t know from one day to the next what would happen. Angry crowds called for our deaths. So one night, the monk cast a spell of protection over me.”

Nick saw him chanting over a tiny girl, saw a black ring forming around her—a spell of protection, yes, but this one was dark.

“He loved me best. But I didn’t know. I didn’t know what it meant. My entire family, as well as our most beloved servants, was brought into a room, and they were murdered. All of them. By soldiers.” At the memory, the Grand Duchess covered her face with her hands and wept, her delicate shoulders shaking.

Nick didn’t know what to do, but he was sorry she was so sad. He stood up, stepped over to her chair, and patted her back.

When she finally looked up, her cheeks were wet with tears. She opened a small velvet purse hanging from a silver chain on her wrist and extracted a delicate lace handkerchief. She dabbed at her tears and whispered, “For years, I didn’t want to live. Not without my sisters, my brother, my parents. I made my escape. But it was at a terrible cost. I now realize he had woven a spell over my parents. He blinded them to the world outside the palace windows. He blinded them to his treachery. To his greed. He stole from us. Imperial eggs, where I used to hide my treasures and jewels. And it was only later, as I sought to understand these spells, and what had happened, that I found out his true nature.”

“It is the monk who is looking for me, Grand Duchess, isn’t it?”

She nodded. “Indeed, Kolya.”

“How can he still be alive?”

“Oh, they tried to murder him.”

Nick saw flashes of gunshot, and felt an acrid poison on his tongue—just a vision, but very real. “How has he survived?”

“You know the answer. Black magic. Dark magic. They tried to shoot him, poison him, drown him. But he is indestructible. His power is too great—and still he wants more.”

“But I have no power. Do you know what he wants from me?”

She shook her head.

“Did you know my mother, Grand Duchess?”

“Of course. She was so beautiful, so lovely.”

“Would you know why she would hide something? What she would hide?”

“No, child. But I know when she left this place and hid from the clan, it was to make sure you were safe. I remember when she was pregnant with you.”

Nick shook his head. The duchess had to be mistaken. His mother would have long since left the clan before that.

“Anyway, I don’t know exactly what the Shadowkeepers want. I only know they are hungry for power. And so I look at the snow and worry. Perhaps I am very much like my father, after all. I worry, Kolya. For you. For the clan that has cared for me all this time. Rasputin is very powerful. He has indulged in dark magic for a long, long time.”

“But he
did
save you.”

“He did. But I think only because he hoped to one day marry me and have his children, have royal blood in his bloodline. It surely wasn’t out of kindness, Kolya.”

“Maybe he's misunderstood.”

“No, Kolya. No. You know, before you were born, your mother left the family. And when she did, she told me she would be certain that the monk never got his hands on anything that would make him more powerful. She was very
brave, Kolya. She wasn’t afraid of him. I think that was… her downfall.”