The Stolen Chapters (26 page)

He could have done this before, of course. There'd been plenty of time since he'd taken Kiel's spell book and wands. But Owen wanted every detail just right for when Bethany and Kiel burst in to find that he, Owen, had just beaten Doyle. And that meant that Doyle had to still be woozy from getting his memory erased.

Taking the wands and shrunken spell book from his Sherlock Holmes coat pocket, he laid them on the desk, then draped the coat over Doyle. Getting the detective's arms into the coat was more annoying than Owen would have thought, but there wasn't a whole lot of choice in the matter.

By the time Owen popped the deerstalker hat above the mask, Doyle was starting to stand.

“You,”
he said, his whole body shaking as he made it to his feet.

“Yup!” Owen shouted, his grin about as wide as his face. “Sorry about these last few weeks. Really. You didn't do much wrong, other than let me down completely. But like I said, you won't have to remember any of it, so it won't be
so
bad.”

“You moronic
pustule
of an excuse for a human being,” Doyle said, leaning heavily on his desk. “I will see you locked in the same cell you put me in for the rest of your days. I will
personally 
—”

Then he paused abruptly and collapsed face-first onto the desk.

Owen put down the wand, having cast the memory spell. His eyes wide, he shook his head. “I can't believe I'm giving you guys up,” he told the wand and spell book. “Seriously. I want to keep you forever.”

Preparing himself, he tossed the wand into the air, caught it, and whirled around, expecting Bethany and Kiel to burst their way in, now that the school was open again.

Nothing happened.

He frowned. How bad exactly was their timing? Hadn't they been waiting at the gates? It couldn't have taken them
that
long to figure out they weren't in Doyle's office, like they thought they'd be when they jumped out of whatever book Owen had carried a page from. Why did they have to mess everything up?

A noise from outside made him stand up straight, and just as he thought the doors would open, Owen tossed Kiel's wand into the air again, then caught it.

No one came in.

What was the problem here? Why weren't they bursting in already? Were even
they
tired of rescuing Nowen, so taking their sweet time?

Suddenly Owen felt a chill go down his spine. What if they
hadn't
been able to jump out of the unburned pages of that book? What if by setting that page on fire, Owen had actually
trapped
Bethany and Kiel in the book forever?

No, no, no,
no
. That couldn't have happened. He'd been so sure, and it'd been such a cool thing to do in front of Nowen! Sure, it wasn't the safest move, but honestly Nowen had surprised him a bit with the whole Trojan Horse plan. He'd assumed that all three would show up together, and he'd just use Kiel's magic to knock Bethany and Kiel out first, then when they woke up, he'd be the only Owen around, with a newly beaten Doyle. But no, Nowen had improvised and messed everything up.

“Nooooo,” Owen whined, tapping his foot in annoyance. “Why does life have to be so hard?”

The doors burst open, and Bethany and Kiel stepped inside, followed by that annoying girl, Moira. Despite getting caught whining, Owen had to admit that their entrance was pretty cool. It was practically in slow motion, it was so awesome. If there'd just been an explosion behind them—

“Owen?” Bethany said, giving him a strange look as Moira closed the door, locking it. “
You
beat Doyle?”

Now
this
, Owen had planned for! He awesomely raised one eyebrow, tossed Kiel's wand up, then caught it. “
Someone
needed to do it. And it might as well have been me.”

“Gasp!” Moira said, grinning widely. “Look at how cool my Sad Panda's gotten!”

Bethany flashed her a look, and Moira looked embarrassed, then shut her mouth. Bethany then turned back to Owen. “What did you do to him?”

“I just used Kiel's magic against him,” Owen said, shrugging. “No big deal. He took our memories, I took his. It's called quid pro go.”

“Not really!” Moira shouted, and got another look from Bethany. What was happening here?

“So he's forgotten everything?” Bethany asked as Kiel slowly stepped closer to Owen. “He doesn't remember me, or what I can do?”

“Not a thing,” Owen said. Kiel reached out a hand, and Owen sadly handed over his wands and the spell book, which tried to bite both of them. Kiel shushed it, then began leafing through the book. Bethany watched him until he nodded, then sighed.

“Now,” she said.

“Now?” Owen said, raising his other eyebrow.

“Now,”
said a familiar voice from right in front of him.

And then something punched Owen right in the face, so hard in the face that he spun around to land on the desk, staring right at the question-mark mask. He quickly looked over his shoulder. “Who did that?” he shouted.

“Just me,” said the same voice, and from out of thin air, a zipper appeared, then pulled down, revealing a very,
very
angry Nowen.

“I can't believe you didn't figure it out,
Fowen
,” his nonfictional self said. “Guess who's here to take his
life
back?”

Thirty minutes earlier . . .

T
hese kinds of stories always need a double twist,” Owen said. “The plan has to look like it's failing, while actually going exactly how you intended it to go.”

Owen walked up to the gate of the Baker Street School, holding an envelope with a book page in it.

At his side Bethany, Kiel, and Moira stood waiting in silence, all wearing heat-masking invisibility suits from
Alpha Predator.

Owen reached out and pushed the intercom button.

“Doyle thinks he knows everything,” Owen said. “So let's let him think that. Let's give him a trick to see right through. Something just a step below obvious, so he can think we really thought we were getting away with something. He thinks we're that stupid anyway, so let's just confirm it.”

Doyle threw the envelope into the fire, and Owen, acting like he was truly horrified, leaped after it. Doyle tripped him, and through the suit's special goggles Bethany saw Kiel start forward, but she grabbed his arm and held him back. It wasn't time yet. Doyle hadn't opened his safe, and they still needed Kiel's wands and spell book. She watched as Doyle cruelly pulled Owen's arms behind his back.

Just one more thing he was going to pay for.

“All we have to do is let him beat us,” Owen said. “Here's the idea. I take a page from some random book and hide it in an envelope. I'll tell Doyle that the envelope has, I don't know, terms of surrender or something, from Bethany. But it's going to look like I'm smuggling you in, like a Trojan horse. And that at the right moment, you're going to jump out.”

“So let me see if I have the plan correct,” Doyle said. “You come in, ostensibly surrendering, but carrying a page from a book that Bethany and friends are hiding within. At a designated time, right now, it sounds like, Bethany jumps out of that page to take me by surprise, bypassing all of my security in one swoop. Do I have it correct?”

“But instead, you're wearing the invisibility suits the whole time,” Owen continued. “But it's not about just getting you guys inside. It's about making Doyle think he's won, so he starts doing stupid things, like revealing his entire plan, and hopefully opening his safe.”

“Don't be so melodramatic,” Doyle said, using a poker to stir up the ashes from the book page. “It's not like they're trapped in that story. If they jump out now, they'll just end up back with the rest of the book.”

Bethany narrowed her eyes. Was he right? Would they have been able to just jump back out of the other pages? Possibly, she guessed, but there was no way Doyle knew that for sure. Basically he'd just risked trapping them forever in that book, and that was something
else
he'd pay for.

Doyle bragged some more, and Bethany wanted to punch him. Open the safe, already! Show them how smart you were, and how little you had to worry about!

“Thought we'd get Kiel's wands and spell book off of you and then make you forget any of this ever happened,” Owen told him, and Bethany grinned. That was genius of him, bringing that up. But would Doyle take the bait?

Doyle snorted beneath the mask. “You never had a chance, Mr. Conners. None of you did. I was two steps ahead of you this entire time. Three or four, for most of it.”

And then he did exactly what they all hoped he'd do. He revealed the safe, and began opening it.

“This is the part I'm most worried about,” Owen said. “He's going to really have to think he's beaten us here, or there's no way he's just going to open his safe. It's like his most guarded secret. I'm going to have to be as convincing as possible that he just utterly destroyed us here.”

“And before you move, you might want to consider that countdown band on your wrist,” Doyle said, his eyes on the combination locks. “Every student at the Baker Street School wears one. Most of the time it's just a watch, but within the school grounds it also works as a deterrent. Try to leave the school or act up in any way, and you'll be twitching on the ground in seconds.”

Uh-oh.
That
wasn't part of the plan. She and Kiel looked down at the bands still on their wrists. But what if they just pulled them off?

Before Bethany could move, Owen touched his band, then began twitching and jerking, collapsing to the floor. She gasped, but the sound was covered by Owen's painful flailing, and this time Kiel held
her
back.

Doyle. Would.
Pay.

As Owen writhed in pain, Doyle pulled Kiel's wands and spell book out of the safe. “Beautiful, aren't they?” he said. “I know they shouldn't exist, and that as a man of science I should reject them outright, but I simply can't put them down.” The spell book tried to bite his head, but Doyle smacked it hard against the desk, and the book started whimpering.

“If he does reveal the spell book and wands, then we have him,” Owen said. “You guys just jump him invisibly, Kiel gets his magic back, and we wipe Doyle's memory for good. Done and done!”

This was all getting to be too much. Bethany moved around behind Doyle, ready to grab him as Kiel silently got into place at her side, waiting for her signal. She nodded at him, then held up three fingers. Three . . . two . . .

“Come, let me show you something,” Doyle said, and walked out of the office.

Owen got up and glanced at the safe, where Moira was standing, just as it closed, all fourteen locks whirring. Kiel and Bethany quickly followed Fowen and Owen, while Moira jogged to catch up. “Got you a present from the safe,” she whispered to Bethany. “You're
welcome
!”

Great
. What had she stolen now?

Doyle led them all into an elevator, where Kiel seemed ready to jump the detective, but Bethany shook her head. It was way too close a space. If they attacked now, they'd probably end up hitting each other and Owen as much as Doyle. Instead, the three of them flattened against the side walls in order to avoid touching Doyle or even Owen by accident, not wanting to startle him.

For a moment Owen looked right through Bethany at some articles on the wall behind her, which was eerie. But then Doyle started going on about how Bethany had ruined his family's reputation, and Owen played for time, trying to get details out of Doyle as much as possible.

In spite of the danger, Bethany couldn't help feeling proud of Owen. This was his plan, and he was doing everything right.

“If things go wrong, then we can improvise,” Owen said. “But don't worry about me. Doyle's going to think of me as bait, so he won't do anything too bad to me. Just stay with us, and I'll try to get whatever I can out of him, no matter what.”

Owen kept Doyle talking, though the detective seemed to think that revealing his plan painfully slowly was the only way to go. Finally, they came to a cell at the end of a long hallway, too shadowy to see into. Moira gleefully bounded forward and stared through the bars as Doyle beckoned Owen forward.

“I need you to see this,” Doyle said. “I need you to understand what I've done.”

Moira turned around, and even through her goggles Bethany could see her eyes were huge. What had she seen? She looked from Doyle to the cell and back, then quickly pulled Bethany and Kiel away.

“Something's wrong,” she whispered. “There's a boy in that cell, and something's very wrong.”

“This can't be,” Owen said as he looked into the cell himself as Doyle backed away.

“Meet Doyle Holmes, Mr. Conners,” said the boy in the mask. “I'm sure he'd like to introduce himself, but he's far too smart for me to take off that gag while I'm not wearing earplugs. I hate when he deduces strange things about me. It's creepy.”

What?
Doyle was in the cell? Then who was . . .

Doyle took off his mask, and Bethany wanted to scream.

Owen? The fictional Owen?!

Fowen proceeded to electrocute both the real Doyle and Owen, insulting Owen the entire time. Bethany's hands curled into fists, and she desperately wanted to attack, but this time Moira barred both Bethany's and Kiel's way. “This isn't what we thought,” she whispered. “We need to know what he's doing.”

“Magistering her?” Fowen said. “Yup. I was stealing her power, little by little. Took me a few minutes to locate the spell the Magister used in
Story Thieves
, but I found it and stole some of her power just like he did. I haven't tried it just yet, but I can't wait to!” Fowen looked straight up and sighed. “Can you imagine where I'm going to go? Fantasy lands, space, the past, the future, shrink down to the size of nothing . . . so many options.”