Free Story Thieves by James Riley Page B

or how far from home she might be.
    Could she use the location spell to find out where she was? But then she’d have wasted it, and how would she find her father then?
    â€œOwen!” she yelled, not even caring. “If you can hear me, I will make you pay for all of this!”
    Two double doors swung open at one end of the room, and a man in robes with a long beard and a twitching hat strode in. The Magister.
    Well, that explained things. She hadn’t jumped out of a book because she was still in a book. That made a little sense, at least. She had stuck her head into that Kiel Gnomenfoot book.
    â€œI’m glad to see you’re awake,” the Magister said. “We have quite a lot to talk about.”
    â€œNo, actually, we don’t,” she said, and immediately jumped out of the book.
    Except . . . she didn’t. Instead, she just hopped a foot in the air, and landed right back where she’d started.
    A little more panicked, she tried jumping out of the book a second time, then a third, her heart starting to race as nothing happened. “What did you do?” she shouted at the Magister. “Why can’t I leave?”
    The Magister gestured to a huge comfy leather chair nearby, and it waddled toward her on its little feet. “Please. Sit.”
    Bethany began to hyperventilate. She’d had panic attacks before, usually when her mother had almost found all her hidden books beneath her bed, but this was something else altogether. Where was she? How could she not jump out of the book? And if she wasn’t in a book, how was a fictional character here too ?!
    Why had she ever, EVER trusted Owen?
    â€œSit,” the Magister repeated, and this time, her legs sat her down without her doing anything.
    â€œI don’t know what you want,” she said, words just tumbling out of her mouth. “Please just let me out. Let me go, please  ! I don’t want this. I need to fix it, before it gets worse, whatever’s happening. Please!”
    The Magister just tented his fingers in front of his chest and waited for her to finish. She realized he wasn’t going to answerher, so she took a deep breath, then another, and waited.
    â€œYou are no longer in my world,” the Magister said finally. “I apologize, but I used your power to transport myself and my apprentice here. Your magic is . . . strange to me. And my spells weren’t able to replicate it. In fact, if I hadn’t siphoned a bit of your power from you when we first met, I wouldn’t have been able to find your world at all.”
    Okay. Okay. This was about as bad as it could possibly be.
    â€œYou . . . you took some of my power. But how?” She paused, remembering the chill she felt when the Magister had first noticed her. “You mean, back in your tower?”
    The Magister nodded. “More to learn about it than anything, at the time. I wasn’t sure what you were capable of. As I said, the power seemed strange, foreign. Unreal, in a way.”
    She swallowed hard. “You’ve got no idea.”
    The Magister raised an eyebrow. “Actually, I do.”
    The implications of that statement made Bethany’s heart skip. “You . . . do?”
    â€œI do. But perhaps we should discuss where we are.” He gestured around the library. “What you see before you is the home of a man named Jonathan Porterhouse.” He stopped, apparently thinking Bethany should recognize that name. Itdid seem familiar, actually. Where had she heard it before?
    And then it hit her. Not heard, but seen. An image of a book cover came to her, and her heart just completely gave up for a moment.
    â€œOh,” she said, sinking back into the chair. “Oh, oh, no .”
    The Magister nodded silently.
    â€œNO, NO, NO!” Bethany shouted, jumping to her feet. “You need to get back now! Please! Where’s the book? I’ll take you