The interior of the Manse just didn’t make much sense, not even for a magical house that was bigger on the inside. The Training Room was easily the size of his school’s gym. The walls and floor of the room were padded, like the dojo where he took karate. Perhaps two dozen shades were huddled in the center of the room. They spun around and charged.

“I see two dark-hearts,” Morgan said, pointing them out.

Arthur aimed his pistol. “You try for the stones, and I’ll blast the shades.”

The two numina bunched their muscles, preparing to leap when the shades got close.

Arthur aimed at the mass of shades hurtling toward him and pulled the trigger of the gun in his right hand. With a psychedelic WHUM-WHUM-WHUM sound, rings of silvery energy pulsed out of the raygun and streaked across the room. By the time the first blast struck a shade square in the chest, the rings of energy had grown to the size of a melon. The shadow man staggered back as it disintegrated into nothing.

That had to be the coolest thing Arthur had ever seen. He grinned and pulled the triggers on both guns several times. Whenever he managed to hit one directly in the head or chest, they evaporated. A hit anywhere else hurt them badly, and slowed them down. He managed to kill two more and injure three. Not bad for my first time!

Even though the rayguns didn’t kick and were light, Morgan was a terrible shot. Her blasts went too high or too far to the side to hit the gems. Arthur kept blasting, and by the time the shades were close enough for the two numina to pounce at them, he had killed seven and severely wounded four.

Before Lexi and Vassalus could reach the enemy, he decided to try something different. He held the triggers down. A continuous stream of energy burst out of the guns, blasting the shades, as he swept the pistols back and forth. The continuous blast didn’t destroy the shades; all it did was knock them backward. Using it like that apparently made the shots weaker.

The guns stopped firing. He let his fingers off the triggers, waited a moment, then pulled the triggers again … nothing. That wasn’t good.

The shades recovered just as Lexi and Vassalus plowed into them. The three that weren’t tangled up with them charged toward Arthur and Morgan.

Finally, Morgan shot one of the gems. It shattered, and four shades disappeared. Lexi and Vassalus charged the remainder and made quick work of them.

They stood, catching their breath.

“These pistols are awesome,” Arthur said. “Hope I didn’t use up all the energy doing that.”

“The rayguns are all right,” Morgan replied.

“You just don’t like them because you’re a bad shot.”

She holstered her gun and stalked into the room. “Shut up.”

Arthur grinned; he was so right.

Valet rushed in, tapped him on the arm, and pointed at the other dark-heart hanging in the air.

“But we killed all the shades,” Arthur said.

The gem flashed four times, and in the shadows across the room, four shades appeared. Crap!

As Morgan drew her gun, Arthur took a shot at the dark-heart. Both his guns worked again — that was a relief. He fired several shots before he hit the stone. It shattered, and the shades disappeared.

“So they come back,” Arthur said.

“Hmm … judging from what we’ve seen so far, I think each stone must hold about a dozen shades,” Morgan said. “And then they come back in sets of four at a time. Not sure how long between sets, but the first set came out right after you destroyed them all.”

They walked on into the Training Room and looked around.

“What are those things hanging from the ceiling?” Morgan asked.

“Targets maybe,” Arthur replied, gazing up at the sheets of metal in various shapes and sizes hanging from the ceiling. “I bet there’s a switch that will lower them.”

She pointed to a set of levers on the far wall. “Probably those. I don’t see any other controls.”

Arms walked over and pulled the first lever. One of the sheets lowered from the ceiling. The sheet wasn’t metallic after all, but was some sort of glass material. It was hanging by a steel cable. This particular sheet was the size of a large man, and there was a bull’s-eye painted on its chest. Arthur drew a raygun and took a shot. The ray hit the target dead center. The target flashed bright red and a loud BING-BING sound rang through the Training Room.

Morgan pointed at the levers, counting. “There’s a lot more switches than targets. What do the others do?”

Arms pulled one, and a dozen padded blocks of various heights shot up from the ground all around the room. Arms pulled another, and a rope fell from the ceiling in one spot, nets and walls in others.

“An obstacle course?” Arthur asked, and Arms gave him a thumbs up.

“There are dials under the switches,” Morgan said. “I bet he can customize the entire area.”

Arms pulled a third level, and a platform lowered from above. On the platform were several benches along with dumbbells for weightlifting, plus strangely shaped exercise bikes and punching bags. This gym had everything.

“Well, we know what the rayguns do,” Arthur said. “And my father’s sword isn’t here. So now we just need to figure out your gloves, Morgan.”

Arms stepped up beside Morgan and placed his wrists together. Morgan mimicked him and pressed the gloves together so that the ruby buttons triggered one another. With a barely audible hum and a reddish glow not much brighter than a glow-in-the-dark sticker, the gloves sparked to life.

“Shiny!” Lexi cooed.

“I can feel them vibrating!” Morgan made a fist, and the gloves hummed louder and glowed brighter. “So, what do they do?”

Arthur turned his shoulder to her. “Hit me. Lightly.”

Morgan tapped him on the shoulder with her fist clenched.

ZAP! The glove flashed brightly and sparked on contact, like a pair of jumper cables being touched together. The delicate punch popped Arthur and made him stagger several feet back.

“Ouch!”

He was going to have a nasty bruise on his shoulder. That punch was as hard as any punch Derek had ever hit him with. If she had really hit him … yikes.

Following Arms’ gestures, Morgan made a fist with both hands and kept her palms and the rubies facing toward her. With an air-displacing SWISH like that of a spaceship door opening, the gloves projected a force field out in front of her. The humming energy shield was barely visible; it was just a red shimmer, like a heat wave coming up off of concrete at sunset. The field stretched a few feet over her head and was nearly as wide as she was tall. Following Arms’ cues, she practiced making it bigger and smaller by moving her hands toward and away from her body.

“I think the bigger I make it, the weaker it gets,” Morgan said. “See how the energy looks denser when I bring it close to me?”

Arms gave her the thumbs up.

“Well, that’s going to come in handy,” Lexi said, “seeing as you’re a bad shot.”

Morgan and Vassalus glared at Lexi.

Arms set his helmet down about twenty feet away from them, then demonstrated what he wanted Morgan to do. Mimicking his gestures again, she held out one hand with her fingers flexed wide and bent halfway. The helmet began to drag across the ground toward her.

She started hopping up and down giddily. “This is the best — I can use the Force! I’m sooooo glad we’re friends, Arthur.”

Arthur laughed at her.

The helmet finally reached her and popped up into her hands. Arms bobbed his head and shrugged his shoulders.

“I think he is saying you will need to practice with the gloves more, my dear,” said Vassalus.

Arthur hoped his father’s sword was awesome, because those gloves were way cool and Morgan had them and a ray gun. He knew it was stupid to feel jealous, but it was his house and his legacy. Of course, he was supposed to have some sort of powers …

Arms gestured to Morgan and pointed at the control board. She reached out and tried to flip a switch from a distance … but couldn’t manage it. Arms made more gestures, but they couldn’t decipher them.

Morgan huffed. “I think it’s going to take a lot of practice for me to —”

THUNK!

Arthur spun around. A small metal canister had been knocked off a shelf near the front of the room. The shelf held a line of similar canisters. Arthur didn’t know what they were for — he couldn’t read the labels from this far away and he hadn’t paid any attention to them on his way in.

“Oops,” said Lexi sheepishly. “Sorry — one can’t always help which way one’s tail swishes.”

Vassalus turned to her. “Oh Alexis, my sweet, I just want to note something the others may find of interest: That shelf is far higher than your bobbed tail could possibly swish.”

Lexi’s tail fell flat onto the floor. “Well … you see … um … curiosity and … I don’t have thumbs and … there was this — what’s that sound?”

Arthur noticed the hissing sound a moment later.

Vassalus reared back. “By the Oort Cloud, what is that foul, sulfurous — oh no!”

A trail of smoke began pouring out from the end of the canister, where the lid had been jarred loose. Arms had seen it, too; he sprinted forward and dove toward the container. Lexi and Vassalus uselessly recoiled from the stench, which must have offended their finely tuned animal senses, because it seemed faint to Arthur. The moment Arms reached the container, the lid popped off and flew across the room.

A cloud billowed out of the container. It spun out into a mini hurricane that moments later formed into a monster of solid shadow that was the size of a four-wheel-drive truck with an extended cab and dual-wheels on the back.