Free Magickeepers: The Eternal Hourglass by Erica Kirov

afraid of him or admired him.
    Irina left, shutting the door behind her. Nick stripped out of his wet suit. Sure enough, where his ribs hurt there was an ugly, reddish-blue bruise forming. He padded into thebathroom, took the longest, hottest shower of his life, and changed into his sweats and Death Note T-shirt. He climbed into bed and sat there, thinking about the night.
    And the more he thought about it, the angrier he got. That creature could have killed him. It could have killed Isabella, who was, about now, the only friend he had. A real friend who wasn’t going off to Belize or who knows where else tomorrow. He shut his eyes, feeling a fury rising up in him. It was that feeling—not quite anger, not quite sadness, but… power. It was what Theo described.
    Nick pictured the cage. The empty cage where he had somehow lost his hedgehog in space. He sat for a while, squeezing his eyes shut and concentrating on this electricity running through him, this feeling that started there, in the pit of his stomach. He imagined the feeling forming into a ball of electricity, with a glowing white-hot fury. He said the words Theo taught him. Whispered them, actually.
    “Krax pex phax.”
    And then he heard it. A faint rustling noise.
    He looked up, and it was there. The hedgehog.
    Nick leaped from bed and ran to the dresser. “I did it!” He leaned in close to the little spiny pet inside the gilded cage. “Sorry I lost you for a while, Vladimir.”
    Vladimir looked up at Nick with beady eyes. The hedgehogwaved a paw at him—like he totally understood what Nick had said. Then Vladimir shuffled off to the corner of the cage, curled into a ball, yawned, and went to sleep.
    “Sleep sounds good to me, too,” Nick yawned in reply.
    He climbed back in bed, the last of his chills chased off by the soft, warm blankets, and sleep came over him like a heavy curtain.
     

     
    Something was burning him.
    Nick bolted upright in bed and flicked on the light. His chest hurt. He pulled off his T-shirt and realized it was the key. It was hot. He touched it, and his fingertips burned, like touching a flame. He looked down at his chest. There, burned onto his skin, was a faint red imprint of the key.
    “Am I dreaming?” But he knew he wasn’t. It was hot. It was real.
    The key was trying to tell him something. He was certain of it.
    “What?” he asked it.
    The key throbbed feverishly.
    “What?” he asked it again, pleading this time.
    But as quickly as it had heated to a molten-like burn, the key turned icy cold, pressed against his chest like ahunk of metal, as though it had never tried to communicate with him.
    The key had to open something. Maybe something the Shawdowkeepers wanted. But what?
    He thought hard. His father had a small safe in his closet where he kept their passports and some important papers— but he knew there was nothing valuable. He had been next to his father when he’d opened it. No secret jewels. Certainly no magic talismans. And the key to his dad's safe didn’t look anything like this one. For one thing, the key around his neck looked ancient.
    For another, the lettering was foreign. He needed to know what it said, but if he asked anyone in the clan to help him read it, then they would know he had it. And for some reason, he thought it would be better to keep it a secret for now. He didn’t know how much to trust any of them.
    Then Nick thought of the library where Damian had first taken him. Surely somewhere in that library was a book that would tell him what the letters said.
    Nick lay back down and touched the key. His mother must have kept secrets from the clan. She definitely kept them from his dad. It was up to him to figure out those secrets. Before the Shadowkeepers did.

A PAIR OF VAULTS
    T HE NEXT MORNING, NICK DECIDED THAT NO MATTER what was served—even fish eggs—he was eating breakfast. He dressed in a pair of black pants and a white shirt from his closet. He hated the feeling of the cuffs