Magickeepers: The Eternal Hourglass (7 page)

Nick faced Theo. “Can I get a tiger?”

Theo shook his head. “Only the women in the lineage have power over animals.”

Nick bit his lip. “What about a lion?”

Theo shook his head again. “Only Isabella can have a cat.”

“Sascha is a lot bigger than a cat!”

“Still, only the women. Irina is in charge of the animals.”

“But you just said I have to learn to ride a horse. That's an animal.”

“You have to learn to ride your horse—just like an ordinary human.”

“I was afraid of that.”

“But no horse today. No, instead today, you and I must attend to your first magic lesson. Today, you are going to move this.” From beneath his desk, he pulled out a small gilded cage. Inside, a hedgehog nestled on a soft nest of grass. Next, Theo pulled out a second cage. An empty cage.

“Move it? What do you mean move it?”

“You are going to move the hedgehog from this cage to this one.” Theo pointed. “Using magic.”

“You have
got
to be kidding me. What? Do I say a few magic words?”

“Each magician must use his own magic words.”

“Okay. So what are mine?”

“I can’t tell you what yours are.”

“Why not?”

“Each magician must find his words on his own. Must give his own voice to the magic within.”

“Well, do I get a magic wand?”

“No wand. We don’t need one. Not that they work anyway. Occasionally, but they are unreliable. Please? You think we are like…a sideshow? We are real magicians. Wands are for amateurs.”

“All right, then.” Nick looked at the hedgehog. It made a sniffling noise and stared up at him with beady little black eyes. “Abracadabra!”

Nothing happened. Except Theo laughed. Loudly. He laughed so hard, his eyes were wet with tears.

“It's the only magic word I know!”

“Come on. How about hocus pocus?” Theo said, then slapped his hand on the table and howled with laughter all over again.

“I’ve never done this before!”

“First of all, cousin, you might try
krax pex phax.”

“What kind of magic word is that?”

“It's from our family. Our spell. It means,
I create as I speak.
It has some power.”

“Fine.
Krax pex phax,”
Nick said, repeating the words exactly as Theo said them, which sounded like kreks
peks feks.

Still nothing.

“This isn’t working.”

“No kidding,” Theo said.

Nick glared at Theo. “I don’t know how to move your stupid hedgehog! This is the dumbest thing ever! This is magic?” He leaned down close to the hedgehog and said, “Just move! Disappear!”

And then it did.

Nick jumped backward, knocking over a chair and nearly falling on the ground, his heart pounding. He had blinked, and it was gone. He looked all around. He even looked under the desk, but he didn’t see the hedgehog anywhere. It was no longer in its cage.

“Where’d it go?”

“Someplace.” Theo smiled. “Now you just need to bring it back and put it in this cage over here.”

“Bring it back? I don’t even know how I got it to move in the first place.”

“Yes, you do. Think, Kolya.”

Nick shook his head. “Honestly. I don’t know how I did it. Did
you
do it?” Maybe it was all a trick to make him think
he had magical powers—the crystal ball at Madame B.'s, the hedgehog; maybe all of it was fake.

“Of course I didn’t do it.” Theo stared meaningfully at him. “It starts here.” Theo pointed at his stomach. “When you laugh, you feel this joy inside. Right there. You feel it bubble up inside. Think of something happy. It starts there. When you are nervous, you get butterflies. You feel it flutter inside. If you are very nervous, it's more like bat wings beating against your rib cage. When you are angry, it starts there, too. Like a ball of heat and fire. With magicians, our power starts in the same place.”

“I don’t get it.”

“You will. You’ll learn to train that feeling, to use it, to direct it. And then, you will arrive at your greatness.”

“I don’t want to arrive at greatness.”

“It doesn’t matter. Sometimes greatness finds you. Now,” Theo handed Nick the empty cage where he was supposed to magically rematerialize the hedgehog. “I suggest you lock yourself in your room and work on bringing back your pet hedgehog. He is probably somewhere cold and lonely. Hedgehogs don’t like the cold at all.”

“My pet hedgehog?”

“Yes. His name is Vladimir.”

“So how come Isabella gets a tiger? And I get a hedgehog? If I’m destined for greatness, why do I get a small, rat-looking
thing with beady eyes and needles sticking out of his back and
she
gets a white tiger that follows her around?”

“Questions for another day. Be off with you.”

Handing Nick the cage, Theo stood, nodded, and disappeared. Disappeared just like that, with only the faint rustling sound of his robes remaining.

“They have got to be kidding me!” Nick shouted. He looked around the classroom, then took the cage, and stomped off down the hall to his own room.

They could abracadabra and hocus pocus him all they wanted, but he wasn’t destined for greatness. He was destined to get out of this crazy hotel and away from disappearing hedgehogs and horse dealers in crystal balls.

B
Y MIDNIGHT. NICK'S HEDGEHOG STILL HAD NOT reappeared in its cage. Nick had skipped dinner, which he now realized was a mistake, even if dinner did smell like cabbage and old socks. His stomach rumbled with hunger and displeasure. If Theo was right and magic started somewhere down in his gut, then he was in trouble, because all he could think about was how much he wanted a cheeseburger.

He sat cross-legged on his bed and stared at the empty cage.

“Come on, you stupid hedgehog! Come back!”

But the cage stood empty.

Then he heard a faint knock on his door. “If it's you, Damian,” he called out, “just zap through the door or whatever the heck it is you do.”

“Nick, it's me, Isabella,” a whispered voice replied.

Nick climbed off his bed, walked to the door, and opened it. Isabella stood there, in a wet suit, with Sascha next to her. His cousin had on flippers. And a snorkel mask. A beach towel was wrapped around Sascha's neck.

“What the…?”

Isabella pushed the snorkel mask up onto her forehead. “Come swim with us. But you can’t tell anyone.”

“Swim? Where?”

“In the swimming pool.”

“Okay. But won’t the hotel guests freak out just a little when they see a tiger swimming? And isn’t the dive suit overkill?”

“Not for our pool,” she grinned. “The family pool is a little different from the pool the guests use.” She held out a black rubber wet suit. “This one belonged to Peter, one of our cousins. He grew almost a foot this year, and it doesn’t fit him anymore. Come on. Put it on. I’ll wait.”

Nick nodded and shut the door, stripped out of his jeans and T-shirt—the last remnants of his old life—and pulled on the wet suit, which stuck to his skin as he wriggled into it. Finally, the rubber wet suit was on, fitting like a glove.

He grabbed his room key from the dresser and opened the door. Sascha eyed him and offered a low growl.

“Shh!” Isabella put her fingers to her lips. The tiger immediately quieted. Isabella looked at Nick. “What do you need your key for?”

“To open my door.”

“Silly. No you don’t. Go ahead and shut it.”

Nick pulled the door closed.

“Osnovyvat,”
she commanded. The door swung wide.

“Whoa! What did you say?”

“I told your door to open.”

“Teach me how.”

“You just speak it—but you must say it like you already believe it has happened. You picture in your head whatever it is you want to happen—as if it were already true. Concentrate. Magic knows if you don’t believe.”

Nick shut the door. Then he repeated the Russian word she’d taught him.
“Osnovyvat.”
The door swung open. “This is totally awesome.”

Isabella nodded. “I haven’t had to make my bed in years.”

“You have a spell to make your bed?”

She nodded. “I’ll teach it to you. I do it every morning. Except on exam days, of course.”

“What do you mean?”

“On days when Theo gives an exam, I don’t make my bed. It's bad luck.”

“Is that kind of like the spitting three times thing?”

She nodded. “It's best not to tempt fate, you know? Now, come on. Time for our swim. Quietly.”

She tiptoed down the thick-carpeted hallway dimly lit by sconces on the walls. Through the windows, the bright lights of Las Vegas blinked and danced. Nick watched the snow falling on the casino, never tiring of its beauty as fat, pristine flakes occasionally landed against the glass, frozen for a second before melting. He followed Isabella as she turned a corner, then another corner. Finally, they came to a door with a brass plaque on it that read, “POOL.”

She opened the door with her command, and Nick followed her into darkness. She quickly shut the door again and fastened a deadbolt. He couldn’t see anything. The pool room was dark, but he heard splashing and water lapping. And he heard breathing.

“Why is it so cold in here?” He shivered. “Aren’t most hotel pools so hot it feels like a bathtub?”

“Not this one,” she laughed and flicked on the lights that illuminated the pool. Suddenly, the water glowed with a greenish light, and Nick gasped.

“Polar bears!”

Isabella nodded. “They’re going to be part of the new show. The story line will have Damian escaping from Siberia, crossing the Bering Strait, and fighting off polar bears. And here they are.”

Nick had never even seen a live polar bear before, let alone polar bears swimming a few feet away from him. Three of
them swam. As each of them dove through the water, they looked at least ten feet tall. Their paws were bigger than his head. And they had big…sharp…claws.

“Please tell me they’re like Sascha. That they’re tame. I don’t want to be polar bear food.”

Isabella nodded. “Irina and I have been working with them. Come on, let's go swimming. Sascha, stay.”

The tiger flopped down to the tiled floor and rested her head on her paws. Isabella took a running leap toward the pool and did a cannonball into the water.

Nick held his breath, half-expecting her to be eaten alive. She was underwater for a while, then suddenly shot to the surface screaming. He started toward the pool but then realized her scream was actually a squeal of laughter. A polar bear came up from beneath her and hoisted her on its shoulders. She rested her head against its neck.

“Come on in. The wet suit will keep you warm.”

Nick peered into the pool. It was Olympic-sized—at least— with deep blue tiles embossed with the family crest in gold. Blocks of ice floated and bobbed and created a kind of steam as they melted. A polar bear swam by him and then turned on its back. Nick got a good look at its teeth. They were huge. But he sure wasn’t going to let a
girl
know he was chicken.

Shutting his eyes, he let out a yelp and did a cannonball into the icy water.

Even with the wet suit, when his face hit the water, it knocked the air out of his lungs. He kicked his legs and thrust toward the surface, gulping in air when he emerged.

“Holy cow! That's freezing!”

Isabella reclined on the belly of a polar bear, using it like a raft as it paddled on its back across the water.

“Well, there is
ice
floating in here, Nick. What did you expect? That's why you have the wet suit.”

Know-it-all.

“Mischa!” Isabella sat up. A polar bear with enormous black eyes approached her. “Let Nicholai ride on you. It will keep him warm.”

Before he had a chance to protest, the bear had lifted him like a rag doll out of the water and flipped him. Then the bear floated on his back, with Nick resting on his enormous belly.

She was right. He slid his hand through the bear's fur. It was so thick he couldn’t see his own fingers, and water repelled off it, gathering in thick droplets. The bear was warm and radiated heat. They splashed and floated, and Nick forgot he was cold.

“Now this is cool. A lot cooler than class with Theo.”

“Theo isn’t so bad, Nick. Despite all the history he’ll make us sit through. He is a brilliant magician, too.” She dropped her voice to a whisper. “Even better, I think, than Damian.”

“Well, then why does he just teach? Why isn’t he in the show? Why isn’t he the star of the show?”

“I’m not sure.” She slipped onto her stomach so she was nose to nose with her bear. “He once said that it was more important that the history of magic live on, that the secrets and craft go on, than the show. The show is just how we blend in.”

“But why blend in? I mean, if we’re so powerful, if you can just command a door to open, or Damian can push a sword through a woman on stage and turn her into a dove, or I can make something disappear, why should we hide that?”

“More history. Ever learn about the Salem witch trials when you were in school?”

“Wasn’t that when the Puritans thought people were witches? And put them on trial and then killed them? They were scared of them.”