CHAPTER 16.

All the years of boredom, math tests, gym cla.s.ses, working at the library, and imagining exciting worlds that he'd never be able to visit-all those years had been worth it.

First of all, Owen was Kiel Gnomenfoot. That still made him tingle all over with awesomeness.

Second, Charm, Charm, was here, right next to him. Well, pushing a cabinet into the spot where the door had been previously with her superstrong robot arm, but still, close enough!

And third, he was about to fight robot soldiers. With magic.

"Ready?" Charm said, clicking her ray guns on in a tough, awesome way. "I'd prefer not to have to do all the work this time. Try to hold up your end of the fight, will you?"

"You take the ones on the left. I got the ones on the right," Owen told her, grinning. He took out his wands and aimed them at the door. Now what spell should he use?

Spells? . . . Uh-oh. He didn't know any spells. Yet.

"Actually, give me one minute," he said, and turned around to where the Magister's spell book sat halfway across the room.

"What?" Charm shouted, just as the cabinet exploded inward, covering them both in wood fragments. Laser beams blasted through the doorway, exploding all over the room and incinerating whatever they touched. None had hit the spell book yet, but it was only a matter of time.

That just confirmed exactly what Owen needed to do. Something heroic.

"Cover me!" he yelled, since that's the kind of thing that one yelled in this type of situation. "I'm going to grab the spell book and hit them with something huge!"

"WHAT?" Charm shouted again. She fired her ray guns frantically through the door. "Don't be stupid! You're not even using a shield spell!"

"Who needs one?" Owen told her, then ran in a crouch toward the middle of the room.

Lasers. .h.i.t the floor all around him, some just inches away, but Owen barely even noticed them. All he could think about were the readers, the thousands of readers who were on the edge of their seats, watching him do something incredibly stupid and dangerous and not even get touched.

This must be making Bethany crazy!

"They're coming in!" Charm shouted. "I have to fall back!"

Owen glanced behind him at the door, where red eyes glowed from the smoke-filled hallway. Science Soldiers! He almost stopped moving, he wanted so badly to see what they actually looked like. But Charm shoved him forward, firing behind her as she ran.

"You useless magic-spewing pile of winged-cat droppings!" she yelled, smacking him with the back of her human hand. "This is what I meant by me doing all the work!"

If anything, she actually looked even cuter when she screamed like that. Owen flashed her a grin, then pushed himself the last few feet to the spell book, which miraculously had remained untouched, despite its pedestal being riddled with burn marks from the lasers. He yanked the book down and held a hand out over it, just as Kiel had always done. Give me a powerful and impressively cool spell to use on the robots! he thought.

A golden glow flooded through his body, like chicken noodle soup when you were sick in the middle of winter. Owen almost gasped. It just felt so right. All his life, he'd been waiting for something like this, and finally, finally it was here.

"Stand back," he told Charm, then stood up in the middle of the laser fire. "SCIENCE SOLDIERS! I will return thee to the metal pits from whence you came!"

"Are you insane?" Charm hissed, yanking at his cloak to pull him down.

"Insanely awesome," he told her, then winked.

Kiel always winked.

Five Science Soldiers entered the room, their lasers firing everywhere. For just a second Owen stopped to marvel at how cool the robots were. They'd evolved throughout the series, starting as just plain metal humanlike robots, but by book two, Dr. Verity began inventing new types. There'd been the Science Spies, who looked exactly like humans, and the Science Police, metallic robots in uniforms who stood on every corner of every Magisteria town in book five, watching for any hint of magic or rebellion.

But these . . . these were Science Soldiers, the most dangerous of them all. Their entire bodies were weapons, bombs ready to explode as a last resort, taking out anything nearby. Their arms were basically laser rifles with hands, those hands each holding more laser rifles. And their eyes could see through anything but metal, scanning constantly for magical energy.

Honestly, they'd have actually been pretty scary if Owen hadn't known they'd never managed to hit either Kiel or Charm in any of the six books so far.

"I've got just the thing for you, my friends," he told them, raising his hands. "A little spell called Explosion of Fiery Greatness!"

"You said that was too powerful!" Charm hissed from right beside him. "You'll kill us both!"

"I've got this," Owen told her, then ran through the spell in his mind. "Hope you like your explosions ENORMOUS!" he shouted at the robots, the spell's energy coursing through him. He raised his hands, then released the power straight at the robots.

And then everything exploded into fire and chaos and awesome.

CHAPTER 17.

Jonathan Porterhouse's bas.e.m.e.nt wasn't much of a dungeon. If the Magister had wanted them to suffer, he should have checked to make sure he wasn't dropping them into what looked like a movie theater, only with comfier seats. Three rows faced a large screen at one end, with a projection room at the other.

Bethany sat in one of the cushy chairs, her eyes on the floor, deliberately trying not to look at the clearly terrified Mr. Porterhouse, who sat two seats down from her, his eyes wide and locked on her. She wasn't sure exactly what to say: There wasn't a much more awkward conversation than trying to explain that an author's fictional characters had attacked him in his own house because you were half-fictional yourself, and your friend had wanted to meet them, but then they'd escaped using your power.

Except maybe explaining that now one of his characters wanted to free every other fictional character ever invented into the world, which might be fine if it were just Sherlock Holmeses or Gandalfs, but got a little questionable when you started talking about aliens, dragons, vampires, and other people-devouring characters.

"So," Bethany finally said. "I hear the books have sold well?"

"You have no idea how they end, do you?" Mr. Porterhouse whispered, his eyes flashing to the ceiling.

Bethany slowly shook her head. "I, uh, haven't actually read any of them."

For just a moment irritation pa.s.sed over Mr. Porterhouse's face. "You haven't . . . none of them?" He shook his head. "Doesn't matter. The ending is what's important. The Magister . . . he's not a hero. At the end of the final book, Dr. Verity tells Kiel that the Magister planned on using the Source of Magic to destroy Quanterium, just like Dr. Verity wants to destroy Magisteria. They're both villains." He ran his hands through his hair nervously, his eyes flickering to the ceiling and back to Bethany. "Do you understand what I'm telling you? That man up there is crazy, and willing to wipe out a planet full of his enemies. We have to get out of here, right now!"

"What?" Bethany whispered as loudly as she dared. "You authors and your stupid twists! Look at what you've done!"

"I didn't know he was real!" Mr. Porterhouse hissed back.

"So he's just going to kill us?" She sat back in a daze, fear and confusion fighting each other in her head.

"I don't know!" Mr. Porterhouse whispered. "He's off book, so he could do anything at this point. All I know is what he was capable of in the story. And that was to destroy an entire world to make sure his people were safe."

"Yup, he's going to kill us," Bethany said with a short nod, then shook off her confusion and fear, at least enough to think. "Okay. We can't stay here-"

"Oh, really? We can't?"

She glared at the author. "Is there any way out of here other than the stairs? Since those lead back up to the crazy magician man?"

Mr. Porterhouse shook his head. "Not even a window. I don't like the glare when I watch movies on the big screen."

Perfect. At least there wouldn't be a glare when the Magister came down to blow them up or whatever. "How about a book? Anything at all down here?"

"Everything's upstairs in the library. I doubt there's so much as a piece of paper down here."

Bethany glanced around, growling quietly to herself in frustration. Mr. Porterhouse wasn't wrong. Not only were there no books of any kind, there wasn't much of anything. Just the chairs, the movie screen, and the movie projector in the back, connected to a computer. Great, everything was digital. That didn't help when your weird book powers didn't work on a computer screen.

She just about gave up, then noticed a white booklet on the desk next to the projector.

Instruction manual. Hmm.

What would happen if she wrote something on paper, just even a simple sentence like The monkey hated the elephant with a pa.s.sion, and the elephant knew why? Would she be able to jump into that paper? Was that enough of a story? Or did she even need a story?

She slowly, quietly, walked over to the manual, flipped it to a blank sheet at the back, then quickly looked around for a pen or something. As she was rummaging through the desk, the Magister materialized out of nothing, with an unhappy-looking Kiel Gnomenfoot at his side. Bethany froze, dropping her hands immediately to her side to hide the paper. Back in the chair, Mr. Porterhouse straightened himself up, his eyes wide with fright.

"I believe you have had enough time to think," the Magister said. "Have you come to the right decision?"

"Please-" Mr. Porterhouse started to say, only to have his mouth erased off his face once more. The Magister gave him a careful look, then turned back to Bethany, waiting for her answer.

Bethany quietly folded the manual over so the blank page was facing up, then slipped it into her back pocket, trying to look like she was thinking things over. "Yes, I have," she said, then slowly, very slowly, began to walk back over to where the Magister stood over Mr. Porterhouse.

There was no way this would work. No way. Not only had she never jumped into a blank page before, there was no reason to even think it might work. There wasn't a story there, after all. No fictional world to enter, just a bunch of blank nothing. Not only would it not work, and not only would it be humiliating when it didn't, but the whole thing was probably just going to make the Magister even more angry.

Still. Between humiliation and a crazy magician, she'd take humiliation.

She stopped next to Mr. Porterhouse and took a deep breath.

"You will help me free the fictional from their stories, then?" the Magister asked.

"Um," Bethany said, "no." Then she grabbed the author's hand and shoved the blank instruction manual directly at him.

Half of her expected his hand to rip right through the page, that there was no way this could work, and why even attempt something so risky, so dangerous?

But weirdly, the other half of her was actually excited to see what might happen. And that must have been the half that made her grin out of nowhere as everything turned a brilliant bright white all around her and the author.

They were in empty s.p.a.ce! The blank page was just that: There wasn't anything here, but somehow, she could still jump into it. She almost laughed. It'd worked! How cool was that?

Any laugh immediately died in her throat when she noticed Mr. Porterhouse's death grip on her hand, staring at her with pretty much the same terrified look he'd given the Magister.

"It's okay," she said. "You're okay. I got you out. You're safe now." His eyes said he didn't necessarily believe her, but she didn't really have time to convince him. "We're going to be trapped in here if he burns that booklet, so I need to get back out. But don't worry, I'll come back for you. I just need to get the Magister and Kiel back into your books before they do anything crazy. So stay here, okay? I'll be right back." She paused. "And just so you know, this is all a kid named Owen's fault. You'll probably hear about him when he messes up your entire series of books. Don't worry, I'll get him back too."

Before he could stop her, she leaped out of the page and back into the movie theater, ready to grab the blank sheet of paper and run as fast as she could up the stairs. It wasn't much of a plan, but then again, the blank sheet hadn't been either, and that had worked. So maybe she had luck on her side for once?

She didn't. As soon as her feet hit the bas.e.m.e.nt floor, a glow hit her full in the face. Magic raced into her mouth and down her throat, infecting her lungs, which immediately froze up. She gasped, making a rasping noise in her throat. She couldn't breathe!

As Bethany gasped for air, the Magister lifted his hand, sending her floating up above the marble floor. She clutched her neck, desperately trying to pull in oxygen.

"What are you doing?" Kiel shouted from somewhere below her. "Don't hurt her!"

"You have forced my hand, Bethany," the Magister told her. "Why can't you see how wrong these stories are? Especially considering your heritage? If you won't help me, then you dishonor your father and your abilities. Far better for me to use that power, if you refuse to."

The same cold, shivery feeling Bethany had felt when she first met the Magister coursed through her, and she knew that he was pulling her book-jumping power straight out of her, but that seemed less and less important as the sides of her vision started turning dark from lack of air, and she slowly began to black out.

CHAPTER 18.

Owen woke up to find Alphonse, Kiel's winged cat, asleep on the Magister's spell book at his side. Silvery metal covered the floor, ceiling, walls, and every spot not taken up by a computer monitor or futuristic-looking chair.

"Excuse me," he said to Alphonse as he sat up. The cat gave him a dirty look, then closed his eyes again. Right beside the cat were some blackened marks, like the spell book had gotten singed in the magical explosion. Whoops. Owen frowned and rubbed at one of the spots, but it didn't come off.

Where was he exactly, anyway? He started to stand up, only to have the floor jump out from under him, slamming him into the wall. Just as quickly, the floor leaped in the opposite direction. "What is going on here?" Owen shouted at the floor. "Stop moving!"

"THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT," the floor yelled at him. Or, a speaker in the floor, probably. "GET UP HERE ALREADY!"

Up here? Owen gasped, grinning like an idiot. They were on the Scientific Method, Charm's s.p.a.ceship! But how had they gotten here? And why was everything so shaky?

He pushed the winged cat off the spell book, then grabbed it to take it with him. The spell book seemed to pull away from him in an odd way, but he ignored that and made for the door, which whooshed open automatically, like on Star Trek, or less impressively, like at the library.

The ship pitched forward, sending Owen stumbling through the door and out into the nerve center of the ship. There he found Charm seated at the pilot's controls, frantically running her hands over transparent boxes of light hanging in midair in front of her.

That part was pretty cool, but what made Owen stop breathing for a second was the wall just past Charm. The Scientific Method's viewscreen wrapped around almost half of the room, and from what Owen could see, it looked like they'd jumped out of Kiel Gnomenfoot and into Star Wars. More ships than he could count surrounded a green, yellow, and red planet, while laser blasts exploded on all sides.

"We won't live through this," Charm said without looking at him, "but if we do, I'm going to kill you anyway."

"That seems . . . harsh," Owen told her, unable to take his eyes off the screen. "What's going on?"

"Right now? Lasers," Charm said, a bit unnecessarily as the ship dove forward, sending Owen falling straight at her. At the last minute, her robotic arm lashed out and caught Owen's cloak right before he slammed into the viewscreen. "Also, your spell destroyed the Magister's tower, along with a whole transport full of Science Soldiers."

Owen grinned. "Really? How many are in a transport?"

"You'll probably get to count up close in a few minutes," she told him, tossing him back into the room. "If I hadn't teleported us back to the ship right after you cast that spell, we'd both be buried underneath an entire tower full of rubble, if not disintegrated. But besides that, do you know what happens when a transport of Science Soldiers gets blown up on Magisteria?"

"Everyone cheers?" Owen said.