She stopped directly under the giant's now plummeting feet and opened her remaining book.

There was no way this would work. No way. She was going to die, and so was everyone in town. This could not work.

She did it anyway.

The giant came crashing down right on top of her. Bethany raised one hand into the air and dropped Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea onto the ground beneath her, stepping onto a page. Then she cringed and waited for the giant to hit.

The moment the giant touched Bethany's hand, they both went plowing right into the pages of the book, exploding into the middle of the book's ocean.

The force of the giant's fall sent both monster and Bethany rocketing into the deep, dark depths of the water, but Bethany didn't wait around. Without even bothering to figure out which way was up, she immediately jumped out of the book and back to the real world, her clothes soaked, but about as uncrushed as she possibly could have hoped.

Just to make sure, she frantically patted down her arms, legs, and head, then shrieked in absolute joy.

"KIEL!" she shouted. "Did you see that? I did it!"

"Bethany?" Kiel said, landing beside her with his dragon. "You may want to-"

"I just beat the giant!" she shouted. "ME! After it jumped up to catch you, I took the entire thing down! It's in the middle of a fictional ocean now! I can't even believe that worked!"

"Bethany?"

"Wow, my heart is racing!" she said, one hand on her chest. "I should have died! We all should have died! That was so amazing!"

Kiel grabbed her by the shoulders, then slowly turned her around.

There, right in front of her, stood the Magister. And behind him were far too many fictional fantasy monsters to count. Griffins. Unicorns. More dragons. Trolls and witches and enormous wolves and knights and huge blobs of monster and too many other things that Bethany didn't even recognize.

"Kiel," the Magister said, and Bethany couldn't tell if he was happy or sad to see his apprentice. "I thought . . . I believed . . . I am glad you have returned. Both of you. You must now be ready to admit the error of your ways, then?"

"Not exactly," Kiel said. "It's time to go home, Magi, and put everything back the way we found it here."

The Magister raised a hand toward Kiel, then dropped it, closing his eyes. He shook his head, and when his eyes opened, any trace of happiness at Kiel's presence was gone. "No," he said, his voice low. "We will not be returning to that world. It never truly existed, just as none of these creatures' worlds did. And to those who would control us, rule us, I say the time has come to take our lives back." His eyes hardened. "I don't understand what sort of power the people of this world have, to create us from nothing, then dictate our lives. But I will do everything I can to make sure that comes to a stop right now."

"What do you mean?" Bethany said, holding her copy of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea out like a sword. "What are you going to do?"

The Magister turned to her. "First, as I promised, I'll free all fictional creatures I can find. I've explained the way things work to my friends, here. And they'd like to speak to their creators, much as I'd still like to." He held out a hand. "Give me Jonathan Porterhouse, and no harm shall come to you."

Bethany swallowed hard. "What for?"

"He will accompany any and all other writers into a fictional world, where they will be free to live or die as they can." He spread his hands. "It is the only way to ensure an end to their power, and seems the fairest way to imprison them. After all, it is no more than they have done to us."

Bethany's eyes went wide. "You can't just send everyone into books! Do you have any idea what would happen?"

"Do you know what happened to me?" the Magister roared. "Fighting a war for the freedom of my people, only to find none of it is real? Let the writers of this world decide if their dystopian futures, their dangerous magic, their monsters and stories of terror are so entertaining once it's their own life or death they're living out!"

Her legs shaking, Bethany took a step forward. "I'm not going to let you do this," she said quietly. "I can't."

"Bethany, don't," Kiel whispered to her, but she shook her head.

"There's nothing you can do that I can't undo," she told the Magister. "So go ahead. Steal my power some more. I'll just find a way to put everything back where it belongs, and will keep at it as long as I live."

"I understand," the Magister said. "Then I suppose you leave me with no other option."

"NO!" Kiel shouted, but it was too late. The Magister gestured, and Bethany immediately crumpled to the ground, unmoving.

CHAPTER 30.

What's the problem?" Charm said, waving her robotic hand for Owen to hurry up. "We don't have much more time!"

"Give me a minute," Owen told her, trying not to look at the skeleton sitting on the computer-circuit throne. Kiel had mentioned wanting to bring his parents back to life using magic (before he found out he was a clone of Dr. Verity, of course), but the Magister had always forbidden it, saying that such dark magic led to horrible results. "It's dangerous, this kind of magic."

"So is letting Dr. Verity destroy all of Magisteria because we didn't find the last key." She checked her watch. "In just under ten hours, by the way."

Owen gritted his teeth. "Fine! But if this goes badly, then I'm blaming you."

"This went badly about a year ago, so blame me all you want." She moved away to watch back down the cave tunnel the way they'd come in. "I still don't understand why the First Magician would be here, in a cave made with computers and metal. It doesn't make sense. The bars weren't down. He wasn't imprisoned."

"Maybe you can ask him in a minute," Owen mumbled, running a hand over the spell book. The book started to snap at him, but he'd gotten used to dodging it now. Even with the hostility, it was nice to have the actual book back in his hands; the e-book version just didn't feel right. "I know you and I don't get along," he whispered to the book. "And that's fine. But right now, I need a forbidden spell to bring a dead person back to life for a few minutes. Notice I said need, not want, 'cause I don't want to do this any more than you want me to. So can we just agree that this is a horrible idea, and get on with it?"

The book's harsh glare turned to surprise, but it still didn't move, at least not at first. Finally, almost reluctantly, the book slowly flipped open toward the back, revealing pages of black paper and bloodred writing.

Um. There'd never been any mention of black pages and red writing in the Kiel Gnomenfoot books before. Nope. Not one.

The spells herein are forbidden to all but the most powerful magicians, the first page read. Without the utmost power and control, these spells will turn on you and destroy you as well as your surroundings. Be warned. Be AFRAID.

Okay. This was such a bad idea.

"What's taking so long?" Charm asked him, one foot on a Science Soldier body. "Do you need me to hold your hand?"

For the briefest of moments, the idea of her holding his hand derailed all his thoughts. He shook it off and showed her the black pages. "The book says we're messing with power beyond our control. Just so you know." He tried to grab the page to turn it, but for some reason, the paper resisted his touch, and he had to use his fingernails to pry the page free from the rest of the book.

The picture on the next page tied his stomach into knots.

"Um, maybe not that one," he said quickly, swallowing hard.

"Seriously, we don't have time, Kiel," Charm said. "Find a spell and bring the dead back to life already!"

The next spell was worse, followed by one he couldn't even look at, so he kept turning pages until he found a spell showing a person rising from a coffin. Conquer Death, the spell said, but that was about all he could read off the page. The spell itself was written in some other language, not even the fun nonsense words like the rest of the Kiel Gnomenfoot spells.

No, these words sounded dark.

This was so weird. Why would these spells be any different from the others? Wouldn't Jonathan Porterhouse have written them all the same?

"Krtttlqqqfbapr," Owen said, trying to work his way through the first syllable of the first word. Weirdly, he felt nothing this time. No warm or cold feeling, just strangely . . . empty.

A sudden chill made Owen shiver, like the entire cave dropped a good twenty degrees in temperature.

"Did it just get colder in here?" Charm asked, glancing at him and rubbing her arms. Great. He hadn't imagined it.

The next word came out, and the light spell he'd cast earlier flickered, struggling to remain lit. The shadows all around them seemed to grow taller and somehow hungrier.

Well. Things definitely seemed to be taking a very horror-movie-type turn, didn't they?

Instead of waiting, Owen just shut his eyes, recited the last word, and finished the spell as quickly as he could.

And just like that, his light spell fizzled out, leaving them in complete darkness.

For a second, nothing happened, and Owen and Charm both waited, holding their breath in the dark. Then a pair of sickly green lights lit up the darkness, right about where the First Magician's skull had been.

"Finally," Charm said.

"So, so bad," Owen whispered.

The light in the skeleton's eyes expanded, flooding that sickly green shade out to surround the First Magician's bones. The light wrapped itself around the body, then faded into ripped skin, fading organs, and other unpleasant things.

"Um, Mr. First Magician sir?" Owen squeaked, his voice somewhere at the bottom of his pants.

The green eyes didn't respond.

"Oh, Kiel," Charm said quietly. "Please don't tell me you just made him a zombie." Owen noticed that the green light reflected off her ray guns, which she'd pointed at the former skeleton.

Green Eyes shuddered once, then again. Finally, his formerly skeletal arms moved, and he pushed himself to his now flesh-ish feet. The decaying hands pointed somewhere generally in Owen's direction, and they began to glow green like his eyes.

Then the energy flickered out from his fingers to explode throughout the cave.

"DOWN!" Charm yelled, shoving Owen to the floor. She shot her ray guns at the magician, but the blasts just bounced off that green light and back into the cave.

"What's he doing?" Owen whispered, his voice hoa.r.s.e.

Behind them, metal began to creak and moan, almost like a living thing. Voice boxes crackled with static. Rock sc.r.a.ped against robot.

The First Magician's green eyes turned down and stared directly at the two of them.

"I might have zombified him," Owen admitted.

"That's not all," Charm said, nodding over her shoulder. Owen threw a glance behind them, where all the broken Science Soldiers now had glowing green eyes, at least the ones that still had eyes. Even those without eyes had begun picking themselves up and were shuffling mechanically toward Charm and Owen.

"Okay, great," Charm said. "Now the robots are zombies too. That's not even possible. This really went well. Nice job, Kiel."

"YOU were the one who told me to make him live again!" Owen screamed at her.

Charm started to shout back, then looked up just in time to see the zombie First Magician's hand light with green fire, then fire that magic directly at them both.

CHAPTER 31.

A birthday party. Four candles on the cake. Bethany watched, dreamlike, as a bunch of little kids screamed and yelled, while a woman and a man corraled them all toward the table.

In front of the cake sat a little girl with bronze-colored hair, wearing a bright-blue dress and a huge smile.

"Daddy, watch!" she shouted, bending her head over the cake.

Then she pitched face-first straight into it, sending frosting, candles, and cake flying everywhere.

The man laughed, long and loudly as the girl in the blue dress pulled her head out of the cake and laughed too, wiping the frosting off her face with both hands, then shoving those hands into her mouth.

"That's not how we eat cake!" the woman said, but smiled in spite of herself. "What about the other kids?"

"You heard her, kids!" the man said. "Go for it!"

One by one, the kids shoved their faces into the cake, taking away mouthfuls as they retreated for the next kid in line to have a turn. Cake and frosting ended up on every surface in the dining room, while the girl in the blue dress clapped her hands loudly. "I love my party!" she shouted.

Bethany walked through the room unnoticed, no one touching her, even as the kids ran around her, mere inches away. It was as if she weren't there at all, a presence that no one could see or touch.

She squatted in front of the girl in the blue dress.

"I'm Bethany," Bethany said to the girl, everything feeling unreal and foggy. "What's your name?"

"Bethany?" said the man, and Bethany turned. As did the girl in the blue dress.

The man held up a pile of wrapped gifts. "Who's ready to open some presents?"

"PRESENTS!" the girl in the blue dress yelled, and ran past Bethany toward the living room.

"Get them out of here," the woman told the man. "I'll . . . well, I was going to say clean up, but I think we're past that now."

"This should distract them for a little while at least," the man said, carrying the presents into the other room.

"No," Bethany whispered, but wasn't sure exactly why. What was this? Why did it seem so familiar?

"You know how this story goes, Bethany," said a deep male voice, a voice she recognized. Bethany looked around, but she was alone now, apart from the woman. The man and all the kids had left to open presents in the other room.

"I don't," Bethany said, fighting to clear her head. "Who are you? Where . . . where is this?"