Story Thieves Read online

  Owen shuddered and slowly nodded. “I . . . I’m sorry,” he started to say, but she just glared at him, and he immediately shut up.

  “We don’t talk, remember? EVER AGAIN!”

  And with that, Bethany slammed his bedroom door and stomped down the stairs to go home. For a moment, she was so angry she couldn’t even get his front door open. In frustration she smacked the door so hard that her hand stung, and she groaned in pain.

  A friend would have come out to see if she was okay. Or just come out to apologize again for ruining her life in the first place.

  Bethany gave Owen five seconds. He didn’t show.

  Maybe even angrier now, she yanked the front door open, then slammed it shut, too furious to notice the bright light exploding from Owen’s window.

  CHAPTER 9

  Bethany looked in her living room window before going in, just to see. Her mother seemed to be reading something, maybe a magazine.

  And her eyes were red.

  Not again. Not tonight. Bethany just didn’t have the strength to deal with this, too.

  Instead, a few minutes later Bethany found herself in the library, walking through the stacks, checking to make sure no one else was around. Forget her mother, forget that jerk Owen, forget everything else. It didn’t matter. None of it did.

  Not if the location spell worked and found her father.

  She took a deep breath, running through the spell in her head. This was so wrong. Magic, in the real world? What if other people saw? What if it created a gigantic flaming arrow that pointed out the book her father was in? What if it started screaming the name of the book, and she couldn’t turn it off quickly enough, like she’d forgotten to turn her cell phone off in a movie?

  Didn’t matter. Not anymore. This was it. All she had to do was say the words, and she’d know exactly where her father was.

  So why couldn’t she? And why couldn’t her legs stop shaking?

  But she knew why. Because as bad as today had been, it could get much, much worse.

  What if she found her father and he didn’t want to come home?

  The words to the spell were ready, right on the tip of her tongue. Her father had gotten himself out of a book to begin with, hadn’t he? Why couldn’t he now? Wasn’t that the real question? What if her father just didn’t care? What if he didn’t remember her, somehow?

  Or worse, what if he didn’t . . . if he didn’t . . . ?

  A one-time-only spell. She could find her father. She could find her father !

  No. She couldn’t.

  Someone turned the corner and gave her a concerned look, and she realized she was sweating, that her legs were still shaking. She forced a smile, then walked too quickly to the children’s section and fell into a seat.

  The books helped. Being around all the stories somehow let her breathe again. They didn’t want anything from her, or think badly of her. They were there just to tell their stories.

  When her legs stopped shaking, she wiped her forehead with her sleeve, then stood up to walk along the shelves, touching random books here and there. Something would be here to distract her, some strange world that didn’t care about fathers or mothers or Owens. Island of the Blue Dolphins? Beautiful, but way too dangerous with the dogs and devilfish and everything. A Wrinkle in Time? A little too much quantum theory for a night like this.

  “Can I help you find anything?” asked a woman behind her, and Bethany glanced over her shoulder to find Owen’s mother giving her a pleasant look.

  Bethany quickly turned away, shaking her head. “Oh, no thanks. I’m fine.”

  “I can make some suggestions, if you want,” the librarian said, standing next to Bethany. “What kinds of books do you like?”

  “I’m not really a big reader,” Bethany said quietly, turning her body away as much as she could.

  “Oh, I always see you in here,” Owen’s mom said, running her hands over the books like she was looking for something. “Don’t worry. Maybe you just haven’t found your favorite book yet. I honestly don’t think anyone has. Just when you think you might have a favorite, something even better comes along. It’s the one rule they taught me in librarian school.”

  “You went to librarian school?” Bethany asked in spite of herself.

  “You can quiz me on the Dewey decimal system if you want. Ask me about what number Victorian biographies go under. I dare you.”

  Bethany smiled, then remembered what was happening. “I’m okay. I just wanted . . . this one.” She grabbed something random off the shelf and tried to make an escape, but Owen’s mother stepped in front of her.

  “Half Upon a Time ? I met that author once. He misspelled his own name in my book when he signed it. Weird. If I were you, I’d try . . . Here, what about this? It’s one of my favorites.”

  “I thought you couldn’t have favorites,” Bethany said.

  “Nah, the second rule they taught us in librarian school is that you can have as many favorite books as there are books,” she said, not cracking a smile. “Do you want to know what the third rule is?”

  “That there are no rules?”

  The librarian laughed. “That’s the fourth rule, actually. The third is that if you want to find a new favorite book, ask a librarian. They always know.” She handed Bethany a copy of something called The Great Brain. “Give it a try and let me know what you think.”

  Bethany nodded, giving up, then followed Owen’s mother back to the checkout desk and signed the book out. She turned to leave, then paused. “Um, thanks. For the book. That was nice of you.”

  “Let me know if you like it,” the woman said. “And next time, maybe you can recommend something for me.”

  Bethany smiled and waved good-bye, then left the library holding her new book close, her mind not at all on what she was doing. Weirdly, it took her longer to get home from the library than usual. Even weirder, she found herself at Owen’s house again without even realizing it.

  Ugh. What was she doing? It’s not like she owed him anything. He should really be the one apologizing to her.

  But what had he really done wrong?

  He’d told a character in a book that—

  Okay, there was that. And that was huge, yes. But it hadn’t shown up in the book, and for all she knew, maybe it never would. After all, that wizard guy had been supposed to die, right? So maybe he wouldn’t even have a chance to tell anyone what had happened. She could go back and check in a few days, before the last Kiel Gnomenfoot book came out, just to make sure that nothing had changed.

  Too bad she hadn’t actually let the forget spell infect her or whatever. That would have made things a lot easier.

  In the meantime, she could go in and at least listen to Owen apologize again. That wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world to sit through, at least for a few minutes. Better wrap it all up now than have to deal with him throwing her guilty looks in school or whatever, assuming he’d even care.

  Besides, Owen’s mother wasn’t the worst or anything, so somewhere in there Owen had to be not so bad too.

  She knocked on his front door and waited for a few seconds, then knocked again. No answer. Maybe he couldn’t hear her, up in his room? He was probably listening to depressing music, thinking how sad it was that he’d betrayed her like he had. That just made sense.

  She tried the door, and it was still unlocked, so she pushed it open and walked in. It wasn’t breaking and entering if you’d just been in a place and had stomped off, she was pretty sure.

  The lights hadn’t been turned on since she left, so it looked like Owen hadn’t even come out of his room. That made Bethany feel even more sure about letting him apologize again. Obviously, he was upset. So upset he couldn’t even bear to go downstairs.

  Unless he was playing video games in his room or something.

  No, he had to be upset. You couldn’t just do something like he’d done and not feel horrible. No one was that heartless.

  She took a deep breath, practice
d a stern but forgiving face, then knocked on his door at the top of the stairs. “Owen? It’s Bethany. I, um, forgot my book.” Yeah, that sounded like a good reason to come back. “I’m still mad, obviously. Because you were a huge jerk, and you never should have done what you did. It was like you betrayed me, Owen, you know? You promised one thing and lied. You know how messed up that is?”

  She paused, waiting for a response, but didn’t hear one. He probably felt too guilty.

  “It’s very, very messed up,” she said, answering her own question. “So let me have my book, and we can go back to never speaking to each other again.” There. Now that she’d made her point, she could take the high road and let him apologize his way back into being friends with her. After a while, at least.

  Feeling good about things, she opened the door to an empty room.

  Empty except for the Kiel Gnomenfoot book, which was still lying open right in the middle of the floor.

  He couldn’t have. No way. He couldn’t have gone back. It wasn’t possible. Only she could jump into books, right?

  Right?

  She slowly picked up the Kiel Gnomenfoot book and opened it to the last page.

  “Good-bye, Sebastian,” Dr. Verity said, and his gun began powering up to fire.

  So it still read the same as before. But maybe it wouldn’t hurt to check?

  She pushed her head in, just to make sure, since it was impossible, but—

  Something slammed into her head, and the last thing she could see before everything went black was Owen’s surprised face as someone yanked her all the way into the book.

  CHAPTER 10

  As Bethany slammed his bedroom door, Owen sighed, then started to go after her. This wasn’t how things were supposed to go. How was he going to be best friends with Kiel Gnomenfoot now? Would anyone even know that he was the one who’d saved the Magister if his whole saving scene hadn’t made it into the book?

  Plus, what about Narnia?

  And there was that other small issue of, well, Bethany being hurt. Not just annoyed or irritated, but actually hurt by what he’d done. And that gave Owen a heavy feeling in the back of his shoulders, like when his mother wasn’t mad, just “disappointed.”

  Stupid guilt.

  “Bethany,” he tried to shout after her, but for some odd reason his lips didn’t move, and all that came out was a weird sort of “hunnnnnh.” Why couldn’t he move his lips? He tried to bring his hands up to touch his mouth, but now his hands decided to play the same lip game and not move either.

  Arms, legs, toes . . . nothing worked.

  And that’s when Owen noticed that his bedroom seemed quite a bit brighter than it had a minute ago.

  “I’d just like a minute of your time, if it’s all the same to you,” said a voice from behind him. Owen’s body froze from disbelief, along with whatever it was that had already frozen him a few seconds ago.

  That was the Magister’s voice.

  The Magister shouldn’t even have a voice, because books don’t have voices, unless they’re audiobooks, and really, that wasn’t the character’s voice so much as the person who read the audiobook. And yet, there it was in Owen’s house, all polite and magical and Magistery!

  “I apologize for such treatment,” said the Magister, and Owen’s legs turned the rest of him around like some kind of puppet. There, behind him, was a doorway made from brightness, lighting his entire room.

  And inside the doorway stood a fictional character.

  Um. This had to be a mistake, right? Sure, the Magister existed in the book, but this was the real, actual, nonfictional world. Wasn’t it?

  The magician raised a hand, and Owen’s body jerked forward, walking like some kind of zombie toward the doorway.

  “It’s just that you disappeared in such a hurry,” the Magister said, beckoning Owen forward with one finger. “And after riling up my curiosity in such a way! We can’t have that, now, can we? I promise this won’t hurt a bit.” He frowned. “Well, I shouldn’t think, at least.”

  Well, that didn’t bode well. Owen tried to shout again for Bethany, hoping she’d hear and rush back upstairs to shut down this doorway made of light and save him, but his lips still wouldn’t move. His legs kept jerking him forward, though, and soon he was just inches from the doorway.

  And that’s when he saw the one thing in the world that would cheer him up.

  “Are you taking on a new apprentice without asking me?” said a younger voice, and Kiel Gnomenfoot—KIEL GNOMENFOOT—stepped into view behind the Magister.

  Just like in the books, Kiel was dressed in black pants, shirt, and cloak, the better for sneaking in and sabotaging Quanterium labs. A rope belt weighed down by pouches hung around his waist, and two different knife-wands were holstered at his side like pistols.

  All in all, he looked like the coolest thing Owen had ever seen in his entire life.

  “Ah, Kiel,” the Magister said. He gestured toward Owen. “This is the boy who saved me from Dr. Verity. And somehow knew that I would need saving.”

  “You fought Dr. Verity?” Kiel Gnomenfoot, the actual real, live (sort of) Kiel Gnomenfoot, said to Owen. “With what ?” He grinned. “I’m just kidding. Nice job, buddy! I owe you one. Doesn’t matter when or where. You just tell me what you want done. The more dangerous, the better. In fact, if it’s world-being-destroyed dangerous, that’s the most fun, so really, you’d be doing me a favor.” His grin widened, and he winked.

  Owen fanboy-giggled in response, only since he couldn’t move, it came out like a weird moaning ghost. Kiel winked ! That was just so Kiel!

  Kiel’s grin faded and he gave Owen an odd look, then turned to the Magister. “So the Seventh Key’s location is in the Original Computer? You know how much I hate going to Quanterium.”

  “That will have to wait for just a moment, apprentice. This might be of greater importance.”

  “But even if you captured Dr. Verity, there’s an infinite army of Science Soldiers waiting in orbit around Magisteria, ready to attack! We still have to shut them down. And all the magic-users that were arrested, I need to free them—”

  “If this child knows of Dr. Verity’s plans, we might do well to find out how that is possible, before you run off again,” the old man said, flashing a patient smile at Kiel. “Something already worries me. Do you see what I see, through the portal?”

  Kiel squinted past Owen. “Someone doesn’t know how to hang up his clothes?”

  The Magister shook his head. “The world this boy comes from has no magic. None at all. We could be looking at another alternate reality, where magic was truly destroyed. It’s even possible that this boy knows of Dr. Verity’s plan because, in some manner, Dr. Verity exists there, as well.”

  Uh-oh. That didn’t bode well either. “No Dr. Verity!” Owen tried to shout. “No Dr. Verity! And magic wasn’t destroyed! It just never existed here!”

  None of that got said, of course. Just a lot more moaning.

  “He says that magic never existed there,” Kiel translated, then paused. “You know, I’ve seen alternate worlds, desolate futures, and the nothingness beyond the end of the universe. But I’ve never seen anything like that room.” He shook his head. “It just screams boring. You have to feel bad for whoever grew up there.”

  “Ah, appearances might deceive,” the Magister said. “Look closer. This boy and another, a girl, mentioned a book while they were here. Take a look at those books on his shelves.” The Magister gestured, and several books popped off Owen’s shelf and began flipping their pages. “There’s magic in their histories, Kiel. Magic everywhere. Schools for magic. Wardrobes leading to magic lands. Gods and monsters, impossible things. And yet, that magic no longer exists in their world. How would that have happened?”

  Kiel frowned. “Let him talk. Maybe he knows why. Maybe he even wants to help?” He turned to Owen. “You do want to help, don’t you? You saved my master here. I bet you want to learn magic and become amazing and do impossible things,
yeah? Of course you do. Everyone does. That’s all science people are, just jealous of magic. Want me to teach you some right now?”

  Owen’s eyes widened, and he tried to nod vigorously. Tried and failed.

  “Answers it shall be,” the Magister said. “If you wouldn’t mind, my boy, just a short trip back to my study?”

  “Let’s keep it as short as we can,” Kiel said. “I still have to find the Seventh Key.”

  Owen’s feet picked up off the floor and walked him into the shining doorway, then over to the wall in the now-familiar Magister’s tower. There, his uncontrollable hands reached down and fastened chains to his ankles, then to each wrist. The chains magically tightened, making sure he wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

  “Just for your own safety,” the Magister said, giving a friendly wink.

  This really, really wasn’t boding well.

  The Magister murmured something, and suddenly Owen was free to speak, to move, and to escape.

  Unfortunately, the chains kept him from doing two of those things, so he went with the third.

  “You’re making a big mistake!” he shouted. “There’s no magic in my world. Those books are just made-up stories! You know, for entertainment! We love magic so much that we tell each other stories about it, like we wish we could do it! That’s it! Trust me, if any of us could, we’d be magicians in a minute!”

  The Magister watched Owen for a moment as Kiel made “see?” gestures with his hand, fidgeting from foot to foot, clearly anxious to get on with his quest/book series. But the Magister ignored his apprentice. Instead, he whispered something else, and a weird sort of fog slid into Owen’s brain.

  “Now,” the magician said, his voice low and commanding, “tell me again how there is no magic in your world.”

  “There isn’t,” Owen said, meaning to repeat exactly what he’d just said. Only the strange fog didn’t want him to. And for some reason, the fog seemed to be in control of his mouth now. “Just in fictional stories. Like you. You’re made up. You don’t really exist. None of this is real. It’s all just the product of someone’s imagination, a writer, an author, his name is Jonathan Porterhouse. He made you all up. You don’t really exist. All this? Your whole war with Dr. Verity? Made-up. It’s not real. There’s no such thing as magic, never was. You are just a bunch of words on a page, and the only reason I’m here is because my friend Bethany—well, not really my friend, because I annoyed her—she brought me here, because she does that kind of thing.”