Disclaimer: I don't own ANYTHING, especially anything in bold down below! That is taken word for word from the books, as this is going to be the first in a collection of chapters following the 'reading the books' trend, hence the 'RtB' in the chapter title.

NOTE: I am not going to torture myself by typing out the entire series, chapter by chapter. Likewise, I'm not going to force you guys to re-read the series on here just for the bits I'm adding in. THEREFORE, there are only a few excerpts I thought might be interesting to see Alex's reaction too, not the entire chapter.

Note: This has already been posted on the Magnus Chase collection for a while.

Enjoy!

Alex blinked in surprise at the stack of books that had just flashed into existence on her coffee table.

Was it the hotel staff? They were constantly popping things into everyone's rooms, so it was hardly an impossibility.

She was about to ignore them for the time being, but the title of the first book in the stack caught her eye.

Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard: The Sword of Summer

Wait, what?

Eyes widening in shock at seeing her friend's name smack dab on the cover of the book, she picked it up gingerly, opening it to the very first page to read the summary on the inside of the cover.

'Magnus Chase has seen his share of trouble. Ever since that terrible night two years ago when his mother told him to run, he has lived alone on the streets of Boston, surviving by his wits, staying one step ahead of the police and truant officers.

One day, Magnus learns that someone else is trying to track him down—his Uncle Randolph, a man his mother had always warned him about. When Magnus tries to outmaneuver his uncle, he falls straight into his clutches. Randolph starts rambling about Norse history and Magnus' birthright: a weapon that has been lost for thousands of years.

The more Randolph talks, the more puzzle pieces fall into place. Stories about the gods of Asgard, wolves, and Doomsday bubble up from Magnus' memory. But he doesn't have time to consider it all before a fire giant attack the city, forcing him to choose between his own safety and the lives of hundreds of innocents…

Sometimes, the only way to start a new life is to die.

Alex stood still for a long moment, absorbing what she had just read.

She didn't know why these books had appeared in her room, but she got the feeling that she was meant to read them.

Maybe…if the first book started when Magnus died (or was about to die), the other books would tell them how to stop her mother, Loki (it was a long story), and prevent Ragnarok for a while longer.

On the other hand, Alex was a very big believer in the idea of 'privacy.'

She had been extremely reluctant to let Magnus heal her head injury she'd received in Jötunheim, even though it was infected, because she had known that sometimes when Magnus healed people he could see into their minds, and she hadn't liked that idea.

She knew, of course, that he had tried his damnedest not to invade the privacy of her mind when he had managed to convince her to let him heal her, or even when he used his powers to dispel an illusion later on, but she also got the feeling that he couldn't control it.

At least when he was dispelling the illusion she had gotten some tidbits from his own life to balance it out a little.

Anyway, that wasn't the point.

She shouldn't read these.

But…what if they did contain how they could defeat Loki?

It seemed hopeless at this point, with Samirah's mind stubbornly made up that nothing Alex tried to teach her would enable her to resist Loki's horrible ability to control his children's actions (the bastard could literally force their hearts to stop if he wanted to, which they knew because he had tried, and they had only survived by the skin of their teeth.)

So maybe…no.

She needed to talk to Magnus first, at the very least. She'd leave the decision in his hands.

Unfortunately, when she tried to leave her suite in order to ask him, she found that her door had been locked.

No amount of strength, einherjar or animal (she was a shape-shifter, after all), let her break the door down.

When she went to try and leave via window, they literally disappeared on her. She even tried breaking through the wall, but that didn't work either.

She glared up at the ceiling furiously.

"Fine!" she seethed. "I get it!"

So she, very reluctantly, picked up the first book in the series.

Alex would have definitely preferred gaining Magnus' permission to read these, but apparently she wasn't being given a choice, and if she wanted to be able to leave her room before summertime when they believed Loki would be making his move, she needed to get a move on.

Damn it all to Helheim.

With that thought, she finally opened the book once again, flipping through the first few pages containing acknowledgments and the table of contents to where the first chapter began.

Chapter 1: Good Morning! You're Going to Die

Yeah, I know. You guys are going to read about how I died in agony, and you're going to be like, "Wow! That sounds cool, Magnus! Can I die in agony too?"

No. Just no.

Don't go jumping off any rooftops. Don't run into the highway or set yourself on fire. It doesn't work that way. You will not end up where I ended up.

Besides, you wouldn't want to deal with my situation. Unless you've got some crazy desire to see undead warriors hacking one another to pieces, swords flying up giants' noses, and dark elves in snappy outfits, you shouldn't even think about finding the wolf-headed doors.

My name is Magnus Chase. I'm sixteen years old. This is the story of how my life went downhill after I got myself killed.

The green-and-black-haired shape-shifter snorted in amusement.

Figures the introduction to this weird book series involving her sarcastic friend (not that she would admit that) would involve so much sass.

My day started out normal enough. I was sleeping on the sidewalk under a bridge in the Public Garden when a guy kicked me awake and said, "They're after you."

By the way, I've been homeless for the past two years.

Some of you may think, Aw, how sad. Others may think, Ha, ha, loser! But if you saw me on the street, ninety-nine percent of you would walk right past like I'm invisible. You'd pray, Don't let him ask me for money. You'd wonder if I'm older than I look, because surely a teenager wouldn't be wrapped in a stinky old sleeping bag, stuck outside in the middle of a Boston winter. Somebody should help that poor boy!

Then you'd keep walking.

Whatever. I don't need your sympathy. I'm used to being laughed at. I'm definitely used to being ignored. Let's move on.

Alex's breath caught in her throat for a moment.

When Magnus had first told her that he had been homeless, she hadn't paid it much thought. At the time it had seemed like he was patronizing her, as if her own troubles were less than his own, or she had no right to complain about it because it had been the same for him, too.

Of course, once she got to know him a little better, she had realized that he hadn't meant it like that at all, he was probably trying to reassure her that she wasn't alone, in that adorkable, awkward way of his.

But hearing this—hearing him narrate his own story…this time it felt like he really did understand what it was like. Everything, to knowing how it felt to be simultaneously pitied and almost feared, to absolutely loathing that very same pity.

"Who's after me?"

"Not sure." Blitz rubbed his nose, which had been broken so many times it zigzagged like a lightning bolt. "They're handing out flyers with your name and picture."

I cursed. Random police and park rangers I could deal with. Truant officers, community service volunteers, drunken college kids, addicts looking to roll somebody small and weak—all those would've been as easy to wake up to as pancakes and orange juice.

But when somebody knew my name and my face—that was bad. That meant they were targeting me specifically. Maybe the folks at the shelter were mad at me for breaking their stereo. (Those Christmas carols had been driving me crazy.) Maybe a security camera caught that last bit of pickpocketing I did in the Theater District. (Hey, I needed money for pizza.) Or maybe, unlikely as it seemed, the police were still looking for me, wanting to ask questions about my mom's murder…

Alex froze.

She knew that Magnus' mom was dead, but he had never mentioned how she had died.

To find out that it was murder…and that Magnus himself might actually have been seen as a suspect because he decided to live on the streets instead of trusting the police…that struck a cord.

I packed my stuff, which took about three seconds. The sleeping bag rolled up right and fit in my backpack with my toothbrush and a change of socks and underwear. Except for the clothes on my back, that's all I owned. With the backpack over my shoulder and the hood of my jacket pulled low, I could blend in with pedestrian traffic pretty well. Boston was full of college kids. Some of them were even more scraggly and younger-looking than me.

I tried not to feel irritated. The local street people jokingly called Hearth and Blitz my mom and dad because one or the other always seemed to be hovering over me.

Alex smirked knowingly.

Magnus would never admit it, but he probably didn't actually mind all that much that people referred to Blitz and Hearth as his parents, even if Blitz, at least, was only a few years older than he was, and all three of them were different species.

She could understand why it would have annoyed him at the time, though.

He hadn't had a chance to try and move past his mother's death, and at that point he knew very little about his father, much less who (or what) he was. She didn't know what his feelings had been towards his father at that point, but she was fairly sure that his main issue was that he didn't want to feel like he was replacing his mom.

She wished that she had been close enough to any of her family—her dad, mom (Loki), or even her step-mother, but no such luck.

The only blood relative she could stand was her half-sister, Samirah, and she hadn't found out about her until after she had died.

Please review!

Not much content for this first chapter of the 'reading the books' part of the collection, I know. There's only so much drama that went on in the very first chapter of the series.