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number two: NO TALKING TO CHARACTERS. No matter what. Talk to a main character, you might show up in the book, and that’s the absolute last thing we want to happen. Even if it doesn’t change the story, everyone who ever read the book would see our names. That cannot happen .”
    Owen nodded, but his eyes lit up with excitement in a way that fundamentally disturbed Bethany, so she quickly continued. “That brings us to rule number three: WE DO NOT CHANGE THE STORY. No way, no how. If we touch something,it goes back exactly the way we left it. This is maybe the most important rule, except that all the rules are the most important. Do you understand?”
    â€œSure, but you’ve eaten chocolate and taken gobstoppers. How did that not change the story?”
    â€œBecause they’d never notice a little chocolate missing from a chocolate river, or a gobstopper that I took from the gobstopper machine while the Oompa-Loompas were teaching the kids a lesson,” Bethany said, feeling a little guilty since she really shouldn’t have done either thing. But that had been a really bad day. “Anyway, these are my rules for you . If you want to come, you follow them. Got it?”
    â€œGot it,” Owen said, nodding again.
    She gave him a suspicious glance, then grabbed the book. “Okay. Are we ready?”
    â€œWhat about the last two rules?”
    Bethany wrinkled her nose. “I really only had three. So the last two are LISTEN TO ME AT ALL TIMES and DON’T DO ANYTHING STUPID. That work?”
    â€œI’ll do my best on the last one,” he said, and laughed.
    Bethany stared at him without cracking a smile, and he slowly stopped laughing.
    â€œNow, you’ve got a chapter where Kiel and his teacher aren’t around?” Bethany asked him.
    Owen reached over and opened Kiel Gnomenfoot and the End of Everything to a marked page. “Yup, the spell book is just sitting out. Kiel’s off beyond the edge of the universe, where he just found the Sixth Key, but he hasn’t gotten back to existence yet. The Magister is distracted, casting a spell to locate the Seventh Key. It’s the perfect time to sneak in and learn the location spell. No one will ever know.”
    Bethany glanced at the page.
    It wasn’t easy sifting through the past, especially for things deliberately mislaid. The Magister carefully wove one thousand and eleven spells together into an elaborate tapestry, threading them in and out of one another. Some showed his life, or his children’s, his children’s children’s, or the school he once ran, or even old enemies.
    Other spells went back further, to the very beginning. The Seventh Key hadn’t been seen since the locking of the Source inside the Vault of Containment.To find the key meant finding the location of those who had been present, which meant only two: the original president of Quanterium, Favora Bunsen, and a figure lost to history: the very first magic-user.
    The spells pushed hard against the curtains of time, straining to part them. But something kept him out. Something from the very beginning.
    He banged his fist down. There was no time left! Dr. Verity had an infinite army from a multitude of alternate dimensions ready to attack Magisteria, and citizens were being rounded up and jailed for even owning spell books, let alone using the now-illegal magic. And if the hints Kiel had heard were true, the entire planet might be in even more danger than they’d thought.
    And all the Magister could do was search desperately for the seventh and last key and do what he could to help the boy who was never meant to be.
    Suddenly, the nine hundred and tenth spell opened a blazing portal, revealing President Bunsen, onlymuch more elderly, recording her memories into a computer of some sort.
    The Magister gasped. This was it, the first clue to the location of the Seventh Key, the one most hidden, the one designed to keep any and