The Pyramid of Souls (4 page)

   After lunch, Nick started down the hall to class. As he walked, he felt a shadow fall across the window, darkening the hallway.

   Normally, snow was the only thing Nick saw out the windows of the top floors where the family lived. The Winter Palace Hotel and Casino, though it stood in the arid, dry heat of Las Vegas, had a perpetual snowfall over it, meant to remind the family of its "mother country" of Russia. The snow was cold, white, and bright and glistened in the desert sun. Daytime in the hallway was impossibly light. But there, in the midst of the swirling snowflakes, flapped the largest black bird Nick had ever seen.

   Nick took a deep breath and froze. Slowly, he inched closer to the window. He pressed his nose to the glass, and the bird flew closer, staring right at him, its black eyes shiny as buttons.

   Nick swallowed hard. It was a crow, or maybe a raven with a black beak, and Nick could only assume a bird as large and dark as that must belong to one of the Shadowkeepers. He stepped backward and then rushed down the hall to Theo's classroom.

   Bursting into the room, he was about to tell his older cousin about the black bird, but he stopped himself before he could blurt out the words. If he told Theo about the bird, the entire family would snap into overprotective mode. No more pizza from Sergei. No more lazy dips in the pool with the polar bears. No more Magic Eights. No more riding his skateboard in the basement, far from Damian's prying eyes. No more fun. No more anything but sword fighting practice and school, school, and more school. He was just starting to get used to life with the family. He'd wait. He'd wait and see just what the appearance of the mysterious black bird meant.

   Nick slid into his seat next to Isabella. Theo tapped the face of his watch. "You are late, Nicholai."

   With that, the cuckoo clock on the wall ticked loudly, and a bird emerged, squawking, "Late, indeed! Late, indeed!" It flapped its wings and ducked back into the clock.

   "Sorry, Theo."

   "Young cousin, there is much to learn in a short amount of time. Now, just how are you going to make an elephant disappear?"

   Nick shrugged. "I guess the same way that I make Vladimir disappear," he said, thinking about his pet hedgehog. That first horrible time he lost poor Vlad, he'd felt like a failure. But he had become better with time and training. He just wasn't so sure he wanted to try to make an ancient elephant disappear—in front of an audience of three thousand people. And with Damian demanding perfection!

   Theo took off his horned-rimmed glasses and rubbed them on the black robes he wore nearly all the time.

   "When you make Vladimir disappear, is it exactly the same as making Sascha disappear?"

   Nick shrugged.

   "Think about it.
Exactly
the same?"

   Nick shut his eyes and thought about it. What did making something disappear feel like? He usually felt a strange sensation in the pit of his stomach, and his arms tingled—in the same way that they sometimes did when he could feel the electricity in the air before a thunderstorm. Then he usually felt a surge, an indescribable force hurtling through him. His temples always throbbed, and then he imagined the magic— what he wanted to happen. He pictured it in his head, and then when he opened his eyes again, whatever he wanted to disappear was gone.

   "Yes. Exactly the same."

   Theo put his glasses down on the desk. He waved his hands, and Nick felt himself being lifted from his seat.

   "What are you doing?" Nick asked. He tried to grab his chair, but he soon found himself suspended in midair.

   "And now Isabella," Theo said.

   Nick's cousin was soon in midair, too, only she started turning somersaults.

   "Showoff," Nick muttered.

   "Now…Isabella, you are light as a butterfly. And Kolya," Theo scolded, "you have been eating too much pizza." As Theo spoke, his left hand lowered, bringing Nick closer to the ground. His right hand—for Isabella—raised up, and she soon was touching the ceiling. "So no, it is not
exactly the same
. Not moving you in flight and not making you disappear."

   He moved his hands, and Nick and Isabella were once again seated at their desks. "Now think, Nicholai. You know the true answer to this. Does it feel
exactly the same when yo
u make Vladimir disappear versus Sascha?"

At the mention of her name, the big cat lifted her head lazily.

   Nick shut his eyes and tried to recall how it felt the first time he made his hedgehog disappear. Then he pictured the magic act at the precise moment when he had to transform Sascha into Isabella—and the big cat disappeared for just a moment or two. "Well, I guess now that you mention it, when I have to make Sascha disappear, I have to try harder. I can't explain it, really, but it's like the air is heavier."

   "Precisely. So then how do you propose to make an
elephant
disappear?"

   "I don't know." Nick sighed, grinning slightly. "Why do you always speak in riddles and questions? Why can't you just tell me?"

   "I suppose we should start, my cousin, with a little instruction on the physics of disappearing into thin air."

   "Physics? You do know I barely escaped sixth grade, right?"

   "Perhaps," said Theo, "but we have a fabulous teacher at our disposal: one of the world's greatest magicians, Sir Isaac Newton."

   Nick furrowed his brow. "Wasn't he the guy who discovered gravity? Like from a falling apple or something?"

   Theo pointed a finger at a crystal ball—one of hundreds perched on pedestals around their classroom—along with potions and mice in golden cages. There were also all sorts of mysterious ingredients and creatures that glowed and moved in mason jars—everything from hairy spiders, purple crickets, and speckled frogs to whale milk and gleaming fluorescent goop that smelled like cauliflower. "The boy who got a C in science and an F in math. Why am I not surprised you think it was all about an apple?"

   "You mean to tell me that one of the most famous guys in history was one of us? A Magickeeper?"

   The crystal ball was now floating through the air and landed on Theo's desk. Inside, it turned pink, then grew darker and darker until it glowed ruby red—and then darker still until it looked like the crimson color of blood. "Time, cousins, for another history lesson."

   "I was afraid of that," Nick sighed.

***

Sir Isaac Newton sat at a wooden desk furiously scribbling with a quill pen, which he repeatedly dipped into a short, square bottle of black ink as dark as liquid mica. His assistant entered the room.

   "Today, Professor Newton, is a day of great accomplishment," said the young assistant, dressed in clothes of the day, with a fancy ruffled shirt, cuffs and trousers that ballooned out, and a long coat. He grinned earnestly. "Today, your three laws of motion are published, and all the world will know of your genius."

   "Indeed," said Newton. "Lex
I: Corpus omne perseverare
in statu suo quiescendi vel movendi uniformiter in directum,
nisi quatenus a viribus impressis cogitur statum illum mutare.
Every body persists in its state of being at rest or of moving uniformly straight forward, except insofar as it is compelled to change its state by force impressed."

   "The law of inertia," said the assistant.

   "Followed, of course, by the ideas of mass and velocity…and movement," Newton lifted a finger, "and reciprocal actions."

   "The world will never be the same."

   "Let us hope," muttered Newton, adjusting his whitepowdered wig.

   "May I bring you your supper? I see, by the papers on your desk, that you are hard at work."

   A thick wax candle burned, and the room was cast in gray. Newton stood and looked out the window. "No. I haven't even touched my pot of tea from the afternoon." He casually waved to a silver tray laden with biscuits, jam, and a silver teapot perched next to a porcelain teacup. "My tea is quite cold now, I'm afraid."

   "I can bring you a fresh pot!" his assistant said brightly. "Sir…I have never understood how so wise a man could forget to eat. This is the third untouched tray this week."

   "No, no—don't bother. When I am hard at work, it seems I can scarcely remember to eat or drink. I am perfectly all right."

   "If you change your mind, sir, I shall have the cook prepare you some cheese and meat, perhaps with a pudding."

   "I will let you know if I require sustenance."

   "Excellent, sir." Newton's assistant bowed. "I will leave you to your most important work." He turned and left Newton's library.

   The famed mathematician waited until the door was shut. Then he turned from the window and the darkening sky. Smiling to himself, he lifted the paper where he had been writing. Though he had dipped his quill into the black ink, the words he scribbled disappeared, the letters seeming to melt away. And now, new words formed.

   "My fourth law," Newton whispered. "If the third law is that for every action, there exists an equal and opposite reaction, the fourth law is that for every magical action, there exists, in the magical realm, an equal and opposite reaction."

   Newton shut his eyes. In an instant, he disappeared, only to reappear several minutes later on the other side of the room. He laughed. Then he slapped his knee. "Ah, if the world only knew!"

   He strode over to his desk and blew on the paper. Once again, the words rearranged themselves into black letters in formulas and scratched-out equations. The magical words were gone.

Theo's little history lesson did nothing to help Nick understand how to make an elephant disappear. It only confused him more. Sir Isaac Newton even had a magical formula for making something disappear:

   Magic was emotional. Theo said it was rooted in the heart of a Magickeeper. It was in his blood, in what he believed, in what made him happy, and in what made him grieve. If Nick was angry, sometimes his magic worked more quickly, more powerfully. But if he was
too angry, the opposite happened
. Or his magic got sloppy. And if there was one thing Damian hated, it was sloppy magic.

   Nick knew for sure that he was never going to be able to make an elephant disappear by studying Sir Isaac Newton's formula.

   He would just have to find another way to make Penelope disappear.

***

The stage lights shone on him so brightly that he had to squint. Nick's heart pounded. It was only a rehearsal, but just walking on the stage always made his pulse quicken.

   Isabella rode in on Sascha, arms in the air, bareback. She grinned, looking as if she were riding a bicycle downhill and taking her hands off the handlebars, wind whipping through her long hair. The massive Siberian tiger pounced across the stage as if running after a tasty wild boar on the Siberian plains. Nick saw Sascha's muscles rippling, animating the thick, furry stripes. Then the tiger halted as it faced the elephant. Penelope rose up on her two hind legs and let out a deafening trumpet call that shook Nick's knees. She raised her trunk in the air, then danced nimbly on her hind legs as if she were a ballerina.

   Not to be outdone, Sascha rose up on her hind legs as Isabella wrapped her arms around her tiger's throat. Sascha roared fiercely, showing off her gleaming pointed teeth.

   Penelope, as if obeying the command of the tiger, then returned to all fours and slowly lowered herself toward the stage floor.

   Together, as one, Sascha and Isabella leaped onto Penelope's back. Isabella climbed down from Sascha. The tiger then scampered down Penelope's back and landed on the stage floor on all four paws.

   Isabella balanced on Penelope, pirouetting, before sitting astride the giant gray animal. She grabbed tight to the jeweled halter, which glittered brightly in the stage lights.