The Stolen Chapters (17 page)

“I should be upstairs,” Owen whispered, then grabbed Moira's arm and yanked her backward before she could take the lead. After the ankle comment, there was no way he was letting her take charge, not with his fictional self. Kiel brought up the rear, seeming more and more uncomfortable with this whole thing.

In the living room something small, furry, and extremely unexpected rubbed up against Owen's leg, and he almost shrieked before leaping backward. He quickly looked down to find a black cat with a white fur spike in the middle of its face staring back at him, purring.

His fictional self had a cat?! Owen didn't have a cat! When did
this
happen?

“Aw, kitty!” Moira whispered, and the cat immediately trotted away, then stopped a few feet away, blinking at Owen. “Hmm,” she said, her eyes narrowing. “
Not
cool.”

Kiel absently scratched the cat on its head as they passed, Owen giving the animal one last look. A cat? Really? But he'd always wanted a dog.

On his way up to his own bedroom, Owen avoided the creaky stair just by habit, and Moira followed his lead, but Kiel stepped directly on it, which at least confirmed that not everything changed. The noise didn't seem to wake anyone up, so Owen continued the climb, and after quickly confirming that his mother's room was empty, he walked quietly down the hallway toward his own bedroom.

That
was an odd feeling, walking toward your own room but knowing that it wasn't yours.

“Let me talk to him,” Owen whispered to the other two. “Out of all of us, I'm probably going to freak him out the least.” He paused. “And that's saying something.”

Moira silently clapped her hands excitedly. “And
then
we hang him out the window!”

“No hanging anyone out windows!” he whispered to her. “Kiel, you okay?”

Kiel just nodded quietly, so Owen slowly turned the doorknob to his bedroom.

Just like his own room, Fictional Owen's bedroom was a bit of a book graveyard. All the library books too beaten up to last on the shelves inevitably were either given to Owen or sold at fundraising sales, so his bedroom tended to look like the night of the living dead books.

The curtains let in just a bit of light, enough to show someone sleeping in Owen's bed (which sent an unpleasant chill down his spine), but not enough to see the titles of the books on the floor. Owen considered stopping for a moment just to see what kind of books Fictional Owen would have, but sighed, figuring that was probably not going to help things right now.

Instead, Owen crept toward the bed, trying not to make a sound, and took a deep breath.

Then he turned on the light.

There, sleeping in his bed, was Fictional Owen, looking exactly like the Owen that Owen saw in the mirror every morning. As soon as the light hit them, Fictional Owen's eyes flew open, and he proceeded to lose it.

“AH! What's going on?” he shouted, shoving himself away from the intruders until he hit the wall.

“It's okay!” Owen shouted at his fictional self. “Don't freak out! It's just me! It's you! I'm you, I mean!”

“AH!” Fictional Owen shouted again, his eyes frantically switching from Kiel to Moira to Owen and back. “Who are you? What do you want?” And with that, Owen saw his fictional self reaching for a nearby bat.

The same bat that Owen had used to knock out Dr. Verity, actually.

“This is
amazing 
!” Moira said, starting forward with her Taser. “He looks
just
like you! I'm so in love with this I want to marry it. How'd you do this, anyway?”

Owen caught her by her shirt and yanked her backward. “No!” he shouted. “Let me
handle
this.”

She gave him a sad look, then sighed and put the Taser away. “You're starting to sound like my dad.”

“Good!” he told her, then turned back to his fictional self. “Owen, it really is me, so,
you.
You know how you've always thought there was more to the world than school and homework and chores? Well, you're right, and I'm the proof! I come from a different world, and I need your help.”

Fictional Owen paused, looking closely at Owen. Then his eyes widened, and he jumped to his feet. “You're
real.
He said you were real, but I didn't believe it. I
couldn't
believe it. You're here, you're really here!” He turned toward the boy magician. “And
you
must be Kiel!”

Uh-oh.
“You know Kiel?” Owen asked, his stomach dropping into his shoes.

Fictional Owen nodded. “And is that Bethany?” He leaned forward and squinted. “You don't look like the version of you on the cover.”

“Nope!” Moira said. “I'm
Moira
!” She stuck out her hand, but Owen noticed the Taser behind her back, so he quickly pulled her away from his other self.

“Bethany?” Owen said to the other Owen, his mind racing. “Where did you hear that name? How do you know Kiel?”

“He told me you would come,” Fictional Owen said, shaking his head. “I can't believe it. You're actually here! All this time, I thought this was just a weird joke by that James Riley writer. I couldn't believe that he used my name and my mom's library in his book. But you're real! You actually exist!”

With that, his other self began rooting around on the books on the ground. Finally, he found what he was looking for and handed it to Owen.

“See?” Fictional Owen said. “
Story Thieves.
And you're really here! He was right! Doyle said you'd come, and you did!”

Owen reached out a trembling hand and took the book from his fictional self.
Story Thieves
, by James Riley.

And on the cover was a drawing of Bethany holding Kiel's hand and jumping with him into a book.

“Ah, congratulations!” Kiel said, leaning over his shoulder. “Looks like we're both in a series of books!” He clapped Owen on the back. “Think about all those people who've read all about you, Owen. Just think about it!”

Owen did. And then he threw up right on the floor of his fictional self's room.

00:30:56

B
ethany's face was the only thing that could still reach above the water. Her chains were on the highest of the shelves, and her arms were so tired of holding them that she wasn't sure she could keep swimming even if the chains weren't there at this point.

There was nothing else to it. What help would she be to Owen and Kiel if she drowned? None. She'd just have to go find them in whatever book Doyle hid them in. She could do it. It wasn't like what happened with her father, because this time . . .

This time, she'd brought them in on purpose. That made it even
worse
.

Bethany gasped for breath, slowly kicking as she pulled the chains up just a bit more, trying to keep her face above water.

Could she just jump a little ways out? Just enough to keep breathing, then slip back in it? But the chains would still be there, dragging her back in.

But maybe she could leave the chains behind?

She'd never actually tried that. Every time she'd been carrying something or touching someone's hand, she'd
wanted
to pull them in or out with her. What if she tried to leave the chains behind, in spite of them being on her wrists?

She focused hard on just one hand, then took a deep breath and dropped back into the water to stare at it. Instead of thinking about jumping, she concentrated on just that one hand, up to her forearm, rising up out of the pages of
The Baker Street School for Irregular Children
.

Her hand began to transform into letters and words, then disappear as it shifted to the nonfictional world, and she could feel the pages of the book on her fingers. She grabbed the pages and held on.

But the chain was changing into words too, and disappearing along with her hand. NO!

She yanked her hand back inside the book and, with her lungs burning, pushed back up to the surface, barely able to reach it this time. She gasped for air, kicking desperately to keep her head above water. The water had finally risen high enough that she'd have to hold the chains with her if she wanted to breathe.

It was now or never.

She dropped back into the water, let the chain hit the shelves again, and concentrated harder. Only her hand. Only the words “skin, bone, fingers, fingernails, thumb, veins, blood, wrist,” everything that made up her hand, and nothing else. Her hand began transforming again, and disappearing, but this time, before the chain itself could follow, she grabbed the chain and pulled it up and over her wrist, right where her missing hand had been.

The chain briefly turned into the word “chain” as it passed her missing hand, then solidified back into metal and tumbled down to the bottom of the floor.

She wanted to scream in happiness, but she didn't have enough air left. Quickly she brought her missing hand back to the fictional world, then concentrated on slowly pushing her other hand out, her lungs screaming for air.

Her left hand disappeared, and she immediately tried to yank the chain off her wrist, but it disappeared too.

Her vision started to blacken at the edges as she panicked, bringing both hand and chain back for another try.

All she wanted to do was breathe. If she didn't leave now, she'd pass out and drown.
Jump!
her brain screamed at her.
Jump out! You can't stay, you'll die!

She shook her head and concentrated on her hand. It disappeared more quickly this time, and Bethany frantically tried slipping the chain off her wrist.

It felt like the chain disappeared, but everything was turning numb, and she couldn't fight the impulse to just breathe in. Instead, she kicked as hard as she could, barely sure which way was even up, her legs burning with exhaustion, her lungs about to explode.

Then she felt cool air on her face, and she opened her mouth to gasp for air. She drank it in, sweet breath filling her lungs, and realized there was nothing pulling on her arms anymore.

The chains were both gone, coiled up at the bottom of the room.

Bethany let herself float for a moment, her face gently swaying in the water as she breathed in over and over, her body rising with each inhale, falling a bit with each exhale.

For a moment she let the water buoy her, just feeling what it was like to not be chained down. Her wrists still felt like they'd been torn up, but they'd heal.

And then she caught sight of the countdown on her watch: 00:27:18.

In twenty-seven minutes, she'd have to leave Owen and Kiel behind forever.

00:26:11

T
his couldn't be real. There was no way. Owen opened the copy of
Story Thieves
and flipped through it. It had to be a joke, some kind of prank.

Owen thought back to all the books he knew, and what he could remember about the ends of chapters. Most seemed to stop on some kind of ironic one-liner, or a cliffhanger. Cliffhangers would be a bit tough in here, with no cliffs to hang off of, but maybe he could trick the book into chaptering by saying something horribly ironic, and then waiting for it to (
surprise! 
) happen.

That . . . that had
happened
. He'd thought those things, when he'd been trapped by the Magister between pages. How could this author have known that? Was someone seeing his thoughts right now? Was he a made-up character too?

Was someone reading about him right at this very moment?!

“Cool, huh?” Fictional Owen said, grinning widely. “You're
so
lucky. I mean, you're not on the cover, and basically Bethany and Kiel do all the cool stuff and are the heroes of the book, and you're just the jerky guy who messes everything up, but other than that, it's pure awesome!”

Owen just stared at his fictional self, his mouth hanging open but nothing coming out. He barely even noticed as Kiel grabbed the book from his hands and gave the cover a quick glance. “A bit stylized, but it does look like me. Glad to see I didn't stop with just the first series.” He grinned, almost looking like his old self. “These readers just can't get enough of me, can they?”

“Someone wrote a book about you?” Moira asked, trying to grab the book out of his hands, but Kiel moved it out of her way too quickly.

“Wait your turn,” Kiel told her with a smile.

Fictional Owen gave Moira a strange look. “I don't remember a Moira in the book, so you must be new. A lot's probably changed since the first book, I guess. Hey, what's the title of this one?”

“Title?” Owen asked, still barely able to follow the conversation.

“Yeah, I mean, the first one was just
Story Thieves
, but the second one must have a title, right?” Fictional Owen said. “The book you're living out now. What's it called?” He frowned. “Though honestly, I wasn't altogether clear on who the story thieves were.
You
obviously were stealing Kiel's story, but it's almost like the nonfictional authors are the real thieves, since they're the ones saying they made up stories, when really they're just somehow watching fictional people's lives. There's no way someone made us up. That's just ridiculous. The Magister should have realized that.” He shrugged. “Guy needed to relax, honestly. Even if he
was
made-up, who cares? That's, like, the first step to breaking out of the story and becoming real anyway.”

“You're not . . . we're
not
made-up,” Owen said, slowly shaking his head. They weren't, right? Owen wasn't, that was for sure. . . . Was he?

“We've been through this,” Kiel said. “Probably in that book right there, actually. How about we hold off on the life-changing revelations until we find Bethany? Then we can all come to terms with whether we're real or just made-up by someone named Jonathan Porterhouse, of all things. Who'd you get?” He glanced at the book and made a face. “James Riley. Okay, not much better.”