Free Tracked by Terror by Brad Strickland

an echoing crash. He had borrowed enough magic from the Grimoire to do that.
    But how could they escape from beneath the stage itself?
    His legs tingled with a terrible pins-and-needles feeling, as though he had been badly shocked, but at least some feeling was creeping back. “Come on,” Betsy gasped in the dark. “Can’t you walk?”
    Leaning on her, Jarvey staggered to his feet. He felt as if the floor were heaving and rising and falling like the deck of a ship in a storm, but he lurched along in the dark. Betsy threw open a door ...
    And they burst into one of those endless marble hallways.
    A dismal shout rose from a group of the audience members off to their left. Jarvey spun and raced away from them, with Betsy pounding along close beside him. The corridor turned a sharp corner to the right, and as they turned it, Jarvey saw a door opening not far ahead.
    His heart sank as Junius Midion stepped through, his face a mask of fury. Jarvey skidded to a stop. “Do it!” Betsy yelled, grabbing his arm. “Do it before he gets his hands on the book!”
    â€œA-abrire,” Jarvey shouted, his fingers fumbling at the catch that kept the book closed.
    He felt Betsy’s grip tighten on his left arm.
    Ahead of him, Junius pointed and shouted, “Frater!.”
    As if it heard Junius, the book flew open, an invisible hand reached out, and Jarvey heard Betsy scream in alarm as the book pulled them inside.

8
    Sea Change
    D arkness roared in Jarvey’s ears like a strong wind. For a moment he didn’t know where or even who he was.
    He forced himself to open his eyes, dreading what he might see. At first everything drifted in his sight in a shifting gray, foggy blur: dim moving figures and floating patches of light, pale in the darkness. Then, almost as if by magic, his mother’s face materialized from the fog, close by, so close he could reach up and touch her if he had the strength. “Jarvey?” she asked softly. “Are you all right? How do you feel?”
    His father’s bespectacled face loomed over her right shoulder. “How many fingers am I holding up?”
    Jarvey had to close his right eye to focus on his father’s hand. “T-two,” he said. “What happened? Where am I?”
    His mom and dad hugged each other for a moment, and then in a strangely husky voice, his dad said, “You’re in the hospital, son. You got hurt a little. Do you remember what happened in the baseball game?”
    Jarvey tried to shake his head and discovered he was rolling it back and forth on a soft pillow instead. And it hurt to do even that much. His forehead throbbed with waves of dull pain, making him wince and making his eyes water. A blood-pressure cuff was clamped around his right biceps, feeling far too tight. He croaked, “I don’t remember any game. What happened?” The weak sound of his own voice shocked him. He sounded exhausted and feeble, even to himself
    â€œYou got smacked hard by a line drive,” a third voice said. The voice sounded deep and hearty, a man’s voice, but it was one he didn’t recognize. Through the lingering gray fog, Jarvey could make out a white-coated figure standing at the foot of the bed. The drifting dimness concealed the man’s face. “Jarvis, you have a condition that we doctors call ‘traumatic amnesia.’ That means your brain got a little scrambled by a hard blow, so you probably can’t remember anything that happened to you during the game.”
    â€œI don’t,” Jarvey said, squinting, trying to make out the doctor’s face.
    â€œNot unusual. Now, while you were unconscious, you may have had some pretty vivid dreams. Don’t let them bother you. Your x-rays look fine. How do you feel?”
    Jarvey felt incredibly achy. His muscles and joints hurt in a hundred different places. In fact, he felt less as though he’d been hit on the head than as if