[Threaten, Danger]

  In order to keep her journal in chronological order, I’m adding this entry to the journal for Rose, none of us knew what Brightspark was doing behind our backs until it was too late to do anything about it.

  The bookstore. “Ah, Mistralyn, what a delight. Did you tire of causing misery in Quintessence and decide to spread your brand of woe here in Wyldwood?”

  “Shut it, Brightspark, I’m here at the behest of the lady herself and you know that, or you’d have barred me entrance.”

  “Yes well, what can I do for the Queen?”

  “You know why I’m here, quit playing these games immediately.”

  “Alright, the girl is weak and sentimental, she gave rhymes to the bard because the bard herself is incapable of it. Go to Tranquility yourself and learn that I’m speaking the truth. The only Deeds of the Day song that the Bard knows is the Bakery Song. She’s never written a Deeds of the Day song before and she hasn’t written one since. Rose now knows that it’s illegal for a Bibliomancer and Bard to collaborate. I continue to send Rose on useless and sometimes dangerous training missions, where she spends her magic fruitlessly and sooner or later her luck will run out, she’ll die in some book somewhere. While the queen's hands remain spotlessly clean. Tell me Mistralyn, could your rival Puck come up with a more devious plan for making a target destroy themselves? You're jealous that you couldn’t dream up a plot so sinister. She weakens and each time I send her forth the chance increases that she’ll not return. Then you can deal with the bard yourself, she’s weak, just a girl.”

  “I’ll go to Tranquility and find the truth about this bard and the Bibliomancer, but if you are lying, I’ll enjoy meting out the punishment Titania rains down on you.”

  “Why would I lie? You know I hate this hinterland I’ve been banished to. How else am I to win her favor and allow me to return to the Undying city, how else can I win her favor? How else might I return home?”

  “Fine, I’m off to Tranquility, but I’ll return and you’d better have made some progress.”

  “Fear not, today I send her on her most dangerous trial yet and not in one of her own books but another of Earth’s authors. You know how those Earthers love to kill each other and she’ll be in one of the most dangerous time periods as well. She may well be dead by supper, even she can’t dodge a bullet. You best leave, she’ll be here any second and she thinks me her friend, I don’t want her to begin to suspect.”

  “Fine.”

  “You're late.”

  “I’m not, the bell hasn't rung yet.”

  “Are you sure? Perhaps you slept through the bells and you are extraordinarily late.”

  “I’m not extraordinarily late, I’m early, I was up before the sun and Lu and I were doing things around the apartment.”

  “Stop, I do not want to hear what twisted things you were doing to each other, I’m your boss and it’s inappropriate. Before you move out I want you to sterilize every inch of that apartment. Now let’s go get some sugar buns.”

  Sighs. “Sparky why mus….”

  Dong, Dong.

  “I told you I was early, I have lots to do today. You go get your buns on your own.”

  Dong. Dong.

  “I supposed you expect me to comfort Salome if she had a bad night.”

  “Why do you think she had a bad night, do you know something?”

  “No, why would I know anything? I said if she had a bad night, she had a bad couple of years so is it so unlikely that she’d have a nightmare about her past?”

  “You’re right, I have a lot to do but it can wait, let’s go and check on her.”

  “And get some sweet buns.”

  It was a beautiful sunny day, the rain from last night cleared the cobblestones clean and the air was oh so sweet, like walking in Tranquility’s forest. It was easy to let Sparky tease me, it was just too nice a day to complain, besides he never listened to complaints.

  “Welcome to Madd.. Ah, it’s you two. I suppose you want two dozen sweet buns, hi Rose.”

  “Yes, as a matter of fact I’ll take two dozen, and share them with my friends.”

  Laughs. “You have friends? I never see them in the store.”

  “No, I host my friends in the tower.”

  “You expect a measly two dozen buns to last you all day and still have some left over to share with your ‘friends’ do ya.”

  “Yes, Salome, I plan on pacing myself, I’ll have three here and two on the way back, then in an hour…”

  “Rose, what can I get you.”

  “Just a donut this morning honey, how are you doing? I haven’t seen you since book club.”

  “Blame your girlfriend, it seems every time she sings Lily’s song we get another hoard of customers, it’s busy but a good busy if you know what I mean. Have you picked a book for this week’s book club yet?”

  “I’m doing that this morning, but someone couldn’t walk to the bakery on his own, and besides I wanted to see you. How’s Lily still out gathering magical ingredients?”

  “Yep the magical requests are way up too, so she needs more magical stuff for her bakes.”

  “Thanks for the donut, honey, I’ll be back later with two copies of this week's book.”

  “It’s going to be hard to beat last week’s book, so exciting and that MacCracken he could squeeze my …”

  “YES, Salome, thank you very much see you later. Sparky, that’s your fifth bun. I thought you were pacing yourself. Well you two were going on and on and you wouldn’t stop talking about McCracken. I just won’t eat any on the way back.”

  He ate three on the way back. I was getting together copies of this week's book, "The Woman in White" by Wilkie Collins for book club when I had an unexpected visitor.

  “Rose, Rose please help my friend, her book and all of the characters are in danger.”

  “I’ll do whatever I can, where is your friend?”

  “She was afraid to step through the portal, so I left her in the hospital cafeteria. Can I buy you a cup of tea if you’ll hear her out.”

  “Sure, let's go.”

  That’s how I met Solene Blanc.

  “I’m not a fiction writer, I have degrees in history and a masters in Feminist Studies and I’m primarily interested in feminist history. I look for women throughout history who have accomplished something of significance while being discriminated against simply because they are a woman. I find what evidence I can in the historical record. I scored a windfall when I found the journals of a madame in San Francisco which detailed her history. After she graduated college, she found out that her father had lost the family fortune in the stock market. She crossed the country, a woman alone and wound up in a barbaric mining town in California. There she not only made a fortune, she changed the lives of women in New City that she imported to the town. She did so much for the miners they made her the Guildmaster of the mining guild, something never done before or since. She also had a real impact on a Native American tribe in the same area of the town. They were so taken with her that they named her the Chief of their tribe, she negotiated for the Native Americans against her own government, and won. Then she moved all her girls and friends to San Francisco where though women didn’t have the right to vote she made a huge difference in local politics, through donations and influence with the politicians of the day. A few years ago I published her journals along with newspaper articles of that time period that confirm the things that she accomplished. It was well received, but not widely read, as it seemed to only hold interest for historians. But now 175 years later, her reputation is being torn apart on the internet, and somehow it’s actually affecting the journal itself. I can’t enter the text like you and Paula seem able to do, so I don’t know how it’s happening if someone has entered the text and started making changes hurting people."

  “I’ll go in and have a look around, I’ve never done anything with non-fiction before but I certainly try my best.”

  “Not alone, you won’t.”

  “Paula I don’t know…”

  “That’s the point, you don’t know and I’m not letting you go alone, when it’s my friend you’re helping.”

  “Alright but if we get into trouble, I’m pulling you out.”

  “Only if you come with me.”

  “You’re as tough as Paula Becker.”

  “Thanks I’ll take that as a compliment, not you calling me hard headed.”

  “That’s the way it’s intended. Let’s dive right into the first chapter and get a look at Sienna, it’s not going to be easy following her around undetected in a town with so few women. Could we disguise ourselves as men, do you think?”

  “Maybe we could jump to the woods on the other side of the tracks, we’ll see what people are wearing, author up some clothes to change into, then act like we just got off the train. Do you think you’ll notice any changes from the original text?”

  “What if changing the text also rewrites my memory of what I read?”

  “That’s a possibility, another possibility is that changing the text now creates a second edition. You’ve already read the first edition so your memory may still contain that first edition even if the editor destroyed that first edition replacing it with the second.”

  “How does the journal start?”

  “Sienna gets off the train and finds a porter to carry her stuff to the hotel. She realizes as the bellboy puts all of her mining gear in her room that she is not physically up to mining. So she pivots, she finds a down on his luck miner, offers to stake him for a thirty percent share. He agrees and with her first partner profits start to trickle in.”

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

  “Is that her, what do you think?”

  “She looks like the description in the book, and she’s got mining gear there, so I’d say that’s her. Now she goes and gets a porter. Wait, who's that guy? He’s stealing her stuff, we have to stop him.”

  “No wait, we’ll follow him, that grubby guy can’t be the brains behind this and even if he is we need to learn more about him. We can’t do that if we accuse him of something here. Hopefully we can come back and edit this scene after we find out what is actually going on.”

  “Oh Rose you’re right, I hadn’t thought about that. What's the use of the mining equipment if we don’t discover what’s going on.”

  He stored the mining equipment in a shed behind a saloon, then he went around to the front of the saloon and started talking to a slightly less grubby guy leaning against the building. The main street was a sea of mud and smelled strongly of piss. The leaning man reached into his pocket and gave the thief a coin, with that the thief walked into the saloon. Which I later learned is a tavern.

  “We need some of those coins and we need to split up. I think the leaning guy there is the boss, we need to watch him but I want to talk to the thief.”

  “Be careful Rose.”

  “I will don’t worry.”

  I authored up twenty gold coins, put them in my pocket and headed toward the saloon. The assumed boss blocked my way on the boardwalk.

  “Where you going little lady, you new around here?”

  “Just got in on the train and I’m thirsty.”

  “Let me buy you a drink.”

  “That’s not necessary.”

  “Not necessary, something I want to do.”

  “Ok, why aren’t you out mining?”

  We went and stood at the bar, and the bartender came over. “Beer or rotgut.”

  Beer sounded safer. “Beer.”

  “A shot and a beer, Phil.”

  “Now little lady, tell me all about yourself.”

  “Like I said, I just got into town and wanted a beer. Aren't you a miner?”

  “Nah, there’s a lot better ways to make money in a mining town than breaking my back splitting stones.”

  “So a thief or a fence, did someone tell you to rob the woman?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about lady, but say something like that again and I’ll take you upstairs and teach you not to disrespect me, then I’ll put you out on the streets working for me.”

  “You tell me who you’re working for and I’ll gladly go up stairs with you.”

  “I’m Nathan Delaney, lady, I don’t work for anyone, people work for me.”

  “Alright, I’ll just ask the rat face over there.”

  “You ain’t talking to nobody but me I think it’s about time I taught you a lesson.”

  Delaney, Freeze and he froze. I was worried on two counts that might not work. I’m in a book authored by someone else even though I had my other powers I wasn’t sure I’d have power over characters. Also I was afraid in a non fiction book facts couldn’t be changed, but I should have realized they’d already been altered by rat face.

  I walked over to rat face, his eyes darted between me and Delaney. I put a gold piece on the bar and the bartender came over. “Whatever he wants, Phil.”

  “I’ll take a bottle.”

  “Good like that do you? Who told you to rob that girl? Delaney or someone else?”

  “You’ll get another bottle, if you tell me the truth. Who told you to rob her?”

  “It was a guy in a fancy suit, said he’d give me twenty dollars to rob her and I’d keep the stuff.”

  “Do you know him or his name.”

  “Nah, never saw him before.”

  “Which way was he headed?”

  “Towards the hotel.”

  I put another gold piece on the bar and walked out through the swinging doors. I met up with Paula and while we walked to the hotel I filled her in on what I’d learned. Then I released Delaney. The plan was to sit in the lobby of the hotel and look for the man in the suit, there couldn’t be many of them in this town. We were sitting in the lobby having tea when an idea struck me. I could control characters but could I control outsiders.

  “Paula, can I please try an experiment on you?”

  “Umm, sure I guess what do you have in mind?”

  “I just want to see if I can freeze you, like I did Delaney.”

  “Sure go for it.”

  Freeze Paula. “Are you frozen?”

  “Nope, not even cold.”

  “Excellent that’s how we figure out who’s doing this, but it also just got a lot more dangerous.”

  “How so.”

  “Well the man I won’t be able to control, we could go back and ask Lu for help, but what was that weapon your Italian Bus driver had?”

  “Wow you really read my book closely.”

  “I loved your book. Could you make each of us one of those?”

  “I love the way you think. Yours is in your right hand pocket.”

  ***

  “Hey you, what did you do to me.”

  “Delaney it’s called Hypnotism, it only works on the weak minded, notice how well it worked on you, move along or I’ll do it again. The next time I won’t bother releasing you. Now.”

  He went into the hotel restaurant. Sienna Rousseau came down the stairs and entered the restaurant. Paula rapidly caught me up on the plot, Sienna is going to be attacked. But she handles it herself. Then Paula came up with another plan, risky but she has more experience with men than I do so I couldn’t really object.

  The scene where Sienna is dragged across the lobby, a knife at her throat played out just as Paula had explained. Then I saw suit guy, I tried to freeze him and it failed. “Paula that’s him.”

  Paula walked up to suit guy, smiled and said, “Buy a girl drink, big guy, violence always makes me thirsty.”

  I’m going to crib that line for my next novel. They walked into the bar for a drink about an hour later they walked back out heading for the stairs.

  Sienna Rousseau approached me, but the plan was to give Paula five minutes then join her upstairs and five minutes was almost up.

  I walked towards Sienna. “That was very impressive before, but excuse me I have a prior engagement upstairs.” There was only one door ajar on the second floor, I slipped in to see suit guy, shirtless, pants around his ankles knocked out on the floor. Swiftly we tied him to a chair pinning each arm to an arm of the chair. Then I searched around for writing material, but the room had none. How can he write without pen and paper.

  “I can’t find a pen or paper anywhere.”

  “I think he’s using his phone to author with Rose. Let me check. Yep. Look at these messages, talk about toxic masculinity. He’s an Incel. He belongs to a group called Incels Against Wokeness on reddit.”

  “Great, now we got him. I'm not sure what we do with him. Short of killing him, how do we stop him from jumping from book to book until he’s right back here doing it again. Anything in there that he seems to care about?”

  “Just his Incels buddies. They say all these awful things about women and then they wonder why women don’t want to sleep with them.”

  “I have an idea but it involves another experiment.” Then I jumped us to a beautiful little town. It looked a lot like Tranquility but it wasn’t. Tested if I could freeze Paula.

  Whispered in his ear sleep for him to sleep for an hour more. Changed him into clothes like the locals were wearing and burned his suit.

  “Anything in that phone about an accomplice, Paula.”

  “No, but unfortunately it doesn’t mean he didn’t have one.”

  “Yeah you’re right we’ll have to question him. Wake up. You can’t move. Who are you working with.”

  “We are legion.”

  “You’re right Paula, I guess we have to kill him.”

  “Yeah I told you Rose he’s too dangerous and he’ll never cooperate.”

  “So Paula this group he’s in on Reddit is it, we really should kill them all. How do we track them down?”

  “Kill him first then go back to Earth and kill all of them. It's the only way we can feel safe.”

  “No, no you don’t have to kill me, I’ll tell you everything, I’ll cooperate.”

  “None of those guys even know I’m doing this, if you look in the drafts folder you’ll see a message I wrote about what I was doing. I wasn’t going to send it until after I succeeded.”

  “How did you learn to jump into books?”

  “A demon I met him on reddit. We were texting back and forth about how vile modern women are. He said to me if you had the power to make them pay would you use it. I told him in a heartbeat. A minute later this demon is standing in front of me. He told me what I could do and how to do it.”

  “Did he pick the target and what did he look like?”

  “Yes he told me to start with this book, then I could pick from now on. He was tall, thin, dressed like a drag queen, I think he’s a tranny.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Mistralyn.”

  “Your power has been removed and can never be restored, you will completely forget your old life on Earth where you were so unhappy. You will forget us when we walk away. Right now you have amnesia. If your memory recovers you’ll remember a loving mother and father who have passed on. You will find a job here and possibly a partner. You have a good amount of money in your pocket, go into town, find an inn, try to enjoy the second chance you’ve been given. Do you understand?”

  “Yes thank you.”

  Paula and I jumped back to the hospital cafeteria, where Solene waited. We explained everything we knew about the attack and I told her I believed it was over completely. We did an internet search for Mistralyn on reddit, but found nothing.

  “If you need anything you know where to find me. Should we do this book for the book club?”

  “Yes that’s be great and you might even find another Easter egg. I’ll put five copies in the locker in about an hour Ok.”

  “Thank you so much for saving my book, if I can ever repay the favor.”

  “Well you could speak at book club Friday night, we’re reading your book.”

  “I’d be honored.”

  “Terrific, I’ll see you both Friday night.”

  [An escape plan and a special reward]

  Jack in the Green has far fewer contests than the Black Dog but they do have one that I’m interested in and I’m a natural at it as well. It’s a foot race through the forest, up and over and back down again five mountains. To win this race you have to be strong, smart, in shape and ready to take some pain. Rose is my pit crew, she’s got a huge jug of water and lots and lots of baked goods. She’s got portal muffins so after supplying me at the first water stop she can portal to the second and so on.

  I love to run but by the time I hit that third mountain, my legs and lungs were aching, I’d never run so far and so fast before by the time I’d reached the seventy four kilometer mark, one more kilometer to go almost straight up the fifth mountain I slowed to a walk but I kept going I crossed the finish line first, I hadn’t seen another runner for hours. I was so sore I was afraid if I sat down I'd never get up again.

  But Rose had a surprise for me.

  We jumped and Rose said we were in a country called Japan in a light novel but we weren’t here for the story or the characters we were going to an onsen. It was glorious, they split a large pond sized body of water with a bamboo fence. One side for the women and one side for the men. First you bathe, and because I was so stiff and sore Rose washed and rinsed me and herself then you went back outside to a hot spring and soak. We had saki and snacks and stayed in the water for hours. Then we had a magnificent meal, then off to our private room where Rose massaged every inch of my body.

  “The onsen reminds me of our first bath together in grannies tub, thank you for taking such good care of me today and everyday Rose. I love you.” Then I passed out.