Magickeepers: The Eternal Hourglass (2 page)

Finally, he started toward home, the sky clear and cloudless. When he arrived at the Pendragon Hotel and Casino, the doorman, Jack, asked him, “How’d you do on your report card?”

“Don’t ask.”

“That good, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“Then you may not want to go up. Your grandfather is here. Louisa in housekeeping called me. You can hear them yelling all the way down the hallway.”

“Great. Just what I need. Dad will be in an even worse mood.”

Nick sighed, picked up his board, walked through the lobby, and rode up in the elevator—the one with the light that sometimes flickered like a horror movie. He stepped off when it arrived at his floor. Out of the corner of his eye, he thought he saw something move. He whirled around in time to see a weird shadow on the wall. He took a few steps toward that end of the hall, and the shadow slid under a room door. Nick didn’t see a single thing that could have created the shadow.

“What the…?” Shadows didn’t appear from nothing. Nick hesitated but walked closer to the door where it had disappeared.

The closer he got, the more he smelled…well, he didn’t know what it was. But it was worse than his gym locker after not washing his P.E. uniform all year. It reminded him of the cafeteria's strange odor at lunch. Could a lunchroom stench follow you home? Or was it something weirder than that?

Nick shivered. Whatever had gone under that door— shadow and stench—he didn’t want to be near it. So he ran down the hall as fast as he could, looking over his shoulder every couple of strides. When he reached his door, he could hear his father and grandfather arguing.

“I told you, Gus, absolutely not!” his father's voice was loud. His dad never yelled. He gave Nick that “I’m disappointed in you, son” speech, but he never yelled, not even at Grandpa.

“It doesn’t matter if you refuse. It's in his bloodline.”

“Don’t talk to me about this. The answer is no.”

“She
would have wanted him to go. She would have wanted to know. For sure. Once and for all. I know my daughter. She would have.”

“She wouldn’t. That's why we’re even here, Gus. She was hiding from them. From her past.”

“You’re a fool! Sooner or later, he’ll find out for himself. You can’t fight it.”

Nick's heart pounded. He leaned his ear closer to the door.
Find out what?

Down the hall, he thought he saw something move.

Regardless of the fight on the other side of the door, Nick would rather be in there with his dad and grandfather yelling at each other, than out in the hall where things were getting creepier by the second. He slipped his card key in the lock and opened the door.

“Nick, my boy,” his grandfather turned around, a big smile on his face, acting as though nothing had happened. “I was just leaving. But I’ll see you for your birthday tomorrow. A teenager! I can’t believe it… thirteen. You make me feel older than I already am.”

His grandfather grabbed Nick in a bear hug. Nick looked over at his dad, who was glaring at them.

After his grandfather left, Nick asked, “What were you two arguing about?”

“We weren’t arguing.”

“I heard you. You’re always arguing lately.”

His father shook his head. “Your grandfather has his own ideas about how you should be raised. And I have mine.”

“I wish you two would get along.”

“Sometimes there are some things so important that people just can’t agree. Anyway, don’t worry about it, okay?” He glanced at his watch. “I need to get ready.”

His dad went to his bedroom to change into his tuxedo. He performed every night, twice on Saturday, as the magician at the Pendragon. He sawed an assistant in half, and he
could pull a white dove out of his hat. But Nick knew he was really, really bad at it. He also told horrible jokes. His father thought they were really funny—but Nick had been in the audience. People actually groaned.

His dad returned to the living room, looking dapper in his slightly thread-worn black tuxedo. He asked, “If Houdini were alive today, what would he be doing?”

“Dad, I’ve heard this joke before. I’ve heard it like fifty times before.”

“Humor me. What would he be doing?”

“Scratching on the inside of his coffin.”

His father started laughing. “That one always cracks me up.”

Nick just shook his head.

His dad walked to the door to leave.

“Oh, Dad, before you go out in the hall, there was a really weird smell out there earlier.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know, but…it was down at the other end of the hall.”

His father opened the door and sniffed the air. “I don’t smell anything. Maybe it was room service.” He laughed at his own joke. “All right, buddy, there's a microwavable TV dinner in the freezer. Or you can have room service make you something—if you dare. Have a good night, okay?”

Nick nodded. After his dad left, Nick poked his head out in the hall. Whatever that odor was, it was gone.

He shut the door and smiled to himself. He hated when his grandfather and dad fought. But there was one good thing that came from it.

His dad had forgotten to ask for his report card.

T
HE NEXT NIGHT—HIS BIRTHDAY—NICK STOOD INSIDE THE red-velvet and tarnished-gold lobby of the Pendragon Hotel and Casino, hands in his pockets, waiting for his grandfather. Finally, Nick spied him walking across the lobby's worn carpeting, a big smile on his face.

“Waiting long, birthday boy?” he asked Nick, giving him a hug.

“No. Where are we going to eat? I’m
starving.
” In fact, he thought he might just die if he didn’t get a cheeseburger soon.

“You’re always starving. I don’t know where you put it all. Anyway, I can’t tell you where we’re going. It's a surprise. But we’re already late.” He practically dragged Nick along as they hurried out of the casino and climbed into Grandpa's car.

Grandpa drove the biggest purple Cadillac convertible in Las Vegas, complete with fuzzy purple dice hanging from the rearview mirror. Nick supposed that it was the biggest purple Cadillac in the world, actually, as he didn’t imagine there were many people willing to drive around in something so unbelievably, horrifically embarrassing.

“And where did you say we were going?” Nick asked as they pulled away and snaked through the streets of Las Vegas.

“Do you honestly think I’m going to fall for that? Can’t trick me. I’m not that old. A surprise, I told you,” Grandpa said, his white handlebar mustache wiggling with pent-up amusement.

Nick stared up at the neon lights of the city. Bulbs danced in synchronized staccato, advertising casinos, hotels, and Las Vegas's most spectacular shows—including the most famous of them all, the magician Damian. Tickets were sold out three years in advance, and they were so expensive that Nick figured there was no chance he’d ever see the show, much as he wanted to.

A steamy June breeze ruffled his hair—which his father was always nagging him to cut—as they left the city. They were headed into the desert. Nick stared out at the expanse of nothingness, just dust and sand and highway. He looked at himself in the side-view mirror. He was tall for his age and thin, with dark brown, wavy hair that hit the collar of his
shirt. He had freckles scattered across the bridge of his nose, leading, like a crooked path, to his pale blue eyes. Those eyes were the same color as Grandpa's, which were the same color as Nick's mother's, who died when Nick was a baby.

Grandpa drove on and on in the desert until Las Vegas was nothing more than a glowing speck far behind them. Nick stared up at the sky, which was blanketed with stars. The farther they drove, the smaller and more alone Nick felt— even though Grandpa was right beside him. Eventually, they reached a side road and turned left. There was no sign.

“Are you sure you know where you’re going?”

“Absolutely, Nicky,” Grandpa replied. His round belly, which resembled a department store Santa's, nearly touched the steering wheel.

Up ahead, a wooden house stood lonely beneath a hollow moon. When they drove closer, he realized it was actually a store of some sort. Grandpa pulled up in front of it.

“Here we are,” Grandpa said as he put the car in park and looked over at Nick. “Come on, then. We’re late.”

Nick peered through the windshield at the sign on the door.

“Madame Bogdonovich's Magical Curiosity Shoppe?”

“She's expecting us.”

Nick clambered out of Grandpa's purple monstrosity and walked up the steps, Grandpa behind him.

“How the heck would anyone find this place if they wanted to buy something? This has to be the
least
successful magic shop ever.”

Nick peered in the window, but all he saw were shadows. He loved learning magic tricks, but his father hated it. Even though his dad was a magician, he always said he wanted Nick to become something—anything—else.

Grandpa reached the top step, and Nick opened the door. A bell gently chimed.

“Just
von
minute!” a high voice, almost like an opera singer's, sang out to them.

From behind a curtain that jangled with beads, an old woman emerged with makeup decorating her eyes that made them look like two butterfly wings and a deep purple and green scarf around her wild, gray, curly hair. Gold bracelets clinked, crowding her arms from her wrists to her elbows. She wore a long, green velvet ball gown and what looked like an enormous emerald necklace that seemed to glow.

“Gustav!” she purred at Nick's grandfather. “You’ve brought him!”

He nodded. “Nick, allow me to present Madame B.”

“Hi!” Nick lifted his hand in an awkward wave. He looked around the shop, which was mind-bogglingly crowded, a jumble of colorful scarves, hoops and rings, satin boxes, books on magic, top hats, wands, costumes, capes, and mannequins.
Crystal balls competed with mason jars that had labels handwritten in a spidery script: bat liver, ground Siberian caribou antler, condensed whale milk. Nick tried to avoid staring.

“Come!” Madame B. commanded. She glanced over her shoulder at Nick's grandfather. “He's
handsome
, with those
eyes
just like his mama.” Looking back at Nick, she said, “Happy birthday, my darling.”

“Thanks.” Nick tried to look over his own shoulder at Grandpa. He wanted to ask,
Who is this crazy person?
But he was quickly whisked behind a dark curtain and half-pushed into a huge velvet chair. Nick felt as though he had sunk almost to the floor.

Grandpa ducked through the curtain, too. He and Madame B. sat on the other side of a small, round table covered with a blood red satin, tablecloth. Grandpa's and Madame B.'s chairs weren’t quite as squishy as Nick's so they seemed to sit up much higher than he did, peering down at him like a specimen under a microscope. Nick squirmed.

Madame B. reached into a large, black leather bag and pulled out a crystal ball the size of an ostrich egg. She set it on a brass pedestal engraved with hieroglyphics.

“Look,” Madame B. commanded, drawing out the word with an exotic accent when she spoke. She tapped a long, red-varnished nail against the crystal ball. “Tell us
vhat
you see.”

“Well, I can’t…” sputtered Nick, thinking this had to be the strangest birthday ever, which, considering he was with Grandpa, was saying a lot. “I don’t know how—”

“Shh!” the old woman hissed.
“You can.
Look. Loooook!”

Nick stared meaningfully at Grandpa. They had to be kidding him. His father always said, in a town full of showgirls and oddballs, some of them were out of “central casting”— meaning Madame B. probably thought she was in a movie. But more likely, she was just crazy.

“Try, Nick,” Grandpa urged. “For me.”

Sighing and fidgeting in his seat, Nick rolled his eyes, then leaned forward as best he could in the chair to stare at the crystal ball. All he saw was his own face reflected back, distorted, while Grandpa and the crazy magic-shop owner seemed to look back at him with pin-dot heads showing through the other side, as if he was watching them through funhouse glass.

“I don’t see anything. There, you happy ?” He flopped back in his chair.

“Nooooooooooooo,” the old woman batted her long caterpillar-like lashes. She looked at Grandpa and snapped, “Gustav, I hope you are right about this one.”

“Trust me,” he said.

Nick exhaled loudly. He hated when grown-ups talked about him when he was right there. “Right about what?”

“Look,” Madame B. said. “You must breathe deeply, like this.” She took a big breath. “Then, you look with your
mind
, not your eyes. Easy.” She snapped her fingers. “I used to gaze in it for the Tsarina.
Eet's
a good ball. Try.”

Feeling hungry—and frustrated—Nick tried again. He took a deep breath and peered into the crystal ball. He tried not to focus on how ridiculous his face was reflected in it, but instead gazed inside his mind, kind of like daydreaming— which his teachers always complained he was exceedingly good at doing during class.

Suddenly, Nick saw a flash. He jumped, quickly moving his head from left to right as if to shake the images from his mind.

“He can see!” Madame B. whispered loudly. “Tell us, my
leetle
one. Tell us.”