The Stolen Chapters (27 page)

Bethany surged forward, but again Moira held her back. “Not yet,” she hissed at Bethany.

“That's right!” Fowen shouted. “I'm taking over, Owen. I'm stealing your story. I'm going to be you, and you're staying here. Haven't you always wanted to live in a fictional world?”

And there it was. The reason for all of this. Fictional Owen just wanted to have an adventure, so he'd written his own story for them to act out, for them to play the parts of victims, so he could be the hero.

Fowen dragged Doyle's unconscious body down the hallway, saying something about how the author of
Story Thieves
was some nobody. Kiel looked at Bethany, ready to attack, but Bethany held up a hand to wait.

So Fowen wanted to play the hero, huh? Well, they were going to let him.

“Moira, open that cell,” Bethany said. “Kiel, give Owen the extra suit. We're going to go let Fowen have his win and be the hero. And then we're going to
tear his story apart
.”

T
his can't be happening!” Fowen shouted. “You're messing up the whole story!”

“Apparently, that's what I do,” Owen said, standing over his other self, trying to stay calm. After everything Fowen had done, all Owen felt like doing was hitting. Hitting and hitting and
more
hitting. “Now you're going to give up, and Kiel's going to wipe
your
memory.”

Fowen glared at him, then snorted. “Not likely.” He reached into a pocket and pulled out a small button, then pushed it over and over.

Immediately Owen, Kiel, Bethany, and Moira all collapsed to the ground, writhing in pain as electricity shot through the bands on their wrists.

Fowen wiped the back of his arm over his mouth, then stood up to his full height. “You really are the worst Owen, you know,” he said to Owen, then kicked him. “This wasn't personal before. You could have just let me have your life. I rearranged
my
entire life for you, making it exciting and awesome. I built an entire mystery out of boringness, out of my regular everyday world. And you reject it?” He kicked him again. “No! You don't get to mess up
this
story, Nowen.”

Owen tried to move, to think, to do anything, but the shock jolting his system wouldn't stop, and he kept jerking around on the floor as Fowen stepped over him.

“I'll be taking these back, then,” Fowen said, grabbing Kiel's spell book and wands from the floor. “You all think you won. But I'm the one telling this story. And I say that if it doesn't end how I want it to, then we
start all over
.”

He opened the spell book to the forget spell page and held up a wand. “Don't worry,” Fowen told them. “You won't remember any of this happening. We'll start from scratch, and this time, I'll know how Nowen's going to try to mess this up. We'll just keep going until it ends the right way.
My
way.”

“No,” Kiel groaned, but through the pain, Owen saw the spell fill Fowen with an unearthly light as he aimed a wand at Bethany.

And then, out of nowhere, the electricity stopped. And though Owen's muscles still jerked out of his control, suddenly he could think again.

“What?” Fowen said, and jammed a hand into his pocket, then pulled it out empty. “Where did the button go?!”

“Someone didn't pay attention to the clues,” said a voice behind him. Fowen whirled around to find Moira tossing the button into the air and catching it. “First, you should have remembered that I never had one of those wristbands. That was clue number
one.
” She grinned, then threw the button as hard as she could into the wall, where it split into pieces.

All of their wristbands immediately unlocked and fell to the floor. Fowen gasped, turning his wand on Moira.

“Clue number two is that I'm smart enough to know when to act,” Moira said, pulling out her Taser and zapping it a few times, sending electricity shooting out the top. “And clue number three? I'm a criminal genius. I could have picked your pocket before I knew how to walk.”

Fowen began chanting, and Moira leaped for him, her Taser sparking.

But she was just a bit too far away.

The forget spell slammed into Moira face-first, and Owen could see the awareness of where she was disappearing from her eyes as she fell to the floor unconscious, just inches away from Fowen.

“You never belonged here anyway,” Fowen spat at her, frantically trying to find the forget spell again in the spell book, since each spell could only be cast once before you had to relearn it.

Owen heard Kiel muttering words, but he couldn't make them out. Abruptly, though, the spell book began to grow in Fowen's hands. He dropped the book in surprise, but the spell book stayed exactly where it was in midair, getting bigger and bigger until it was almost the size of Fowen. It roared at the fictional boy, and Fowen screamed, running behind the desk to hide.

The enormous spell book turned toward Kiel and roared again, then picked up Kiel's wands in its pages and disappeared completely.

“What was
that
?” Fowen shouted. “What did you do?!”

“Set . . . it . . . free,” Kiel said, slowly pushing himself off the floor. “Won't . . . let you . . .
have it  
!”

Fowen gasped, his eyes wide in surprise. “Set it free? It's a book! You can't set a book free! Get it back here!”

“The magic's . . . gone, Fowen,” Kiel said, just about at his feet. “Your story ends . . . now.”

“You're going to get that book
back
for me,” Fowen said, grabbing Moira's Taser and advancing on Kiel. “I don't care what it takes. I'm going to have that magic, and I'm going to redo this story until I'm the one living Owen's life. Me! I deserve this. I've waited my entire life to be the hero, and I made it happen. All it took was becoming the villain for a bit, but that's a small price to pay. Give me the life I deserve!”

Owen slowly pushed himself to his feet, his muscles beginning to actually listen to him again. Across the room Bethany was doing the same as Fowen advanced on Kiel.

“It's not coming back,” Kiel told him, circling around Fowen just out of reach of the Taser. “And that was the only one I had. You're now just as magicless as the day you were born.”

“Stop acting like you've won!” Fowen shouted, sparks shooting out of the Taser. “You don't get to win. This was
my
plan. I deserve Nowen's life, not him! He's wasting it. He's not good enough at it. I'd be the best Owen ever!”

Bethany kicked him in the back of the knees, and Fowen dropped to the floor, the Taser flying from his hands.

“That's what you don't get,” Bethany said, standing over him. “Owen
is
Owen. No one gets to tell him how to live his life. Not you, not me, and not some author nobody. Owen gets to choose how his life story goes, and no one, let alone his idiot fictional self, gets to take that away from him.”

“I think he's doing okay,” Kiel said. “He won here, didn't he?”

“Because he had help!” Fowen shouted, quickly crawling away back toward the desk. “He couldn't have done any of this without his friends.”

Owen took a slightly shaky step forward. “You're totally right,” he said, trying to ignore the ache in his muscles. “I'm only here because of my friends. Just think what you might have done if you'd tried to be friends with them too, instead of manipulating them.”

Bethany turned to Kiel. “We need to make him forget. Can you still do that?”

Kiel looked at her sadly. “No, I meant what I told Fowen. The spell book is gone.” He paused, looking away. “I . . . I won't be doing magic anymore.”

Owen tried to think of something to say to Kiel to help, but he realized now was probably not the time. “Then what do we do with Fowen?” he asked. “We can't just leave him here like this. He knows everything. And he's still got some of your power, Bethany.”

“Oh, you're not going to do anything with me,” Fowen said, then ran between them, knocking Bethany and Kiel off their still-shaky feet. He barreled into Owen, pushing him hard into the wall, then stopped behind the desk and grabbed a book. “I
do
still have your power, Bethany,” he said, practically spitting. “And there's always another way to take what should be mine.”

And with that, he opened the book on the table to a specific page, then jumped in headfirst.

“No!” Owen shouted, and moved over to the desk as quickly as he could on his aching legs. He grabbed the book before the page could be lost, then gasped.

“This is bad,” he said quietly. “Very,
very
bad.”

“What book is it?” Bethany asked.

Owen held it up, not saying a word, and showed her the cover of a redheaded girl and a boy in a black cape jumping into a book. “It's
our
book,” he said quietly. “It's
Story Thieves
.”

Bethany stared at him for a moment, then nodded. “Hold it open,” she said.

“What?” Owen said, just as she ran straight at him. He opened the book wide in front of him, and Bethany dove right in.

The Amazing (But True!) Adventures of Owen Conners, the Unknown Chosen One

As her fingers touched the page, they melted and re-formed, becoming various words like “knuckles” and “fingernail” and “thumb,” all describing whatever part they'd been. Those words then spread over the page like brownie batter, absorbing right into the book. Finally, she just shoved her arm in up to her shoulder.

“I'm wriggling my fingers at you right now in Wonderland,” she told him.

Owen laughed oddly, then made a weird face and fell backward to the floor, unconscious.

Bethany sighed, shaking her head. “Alien invasions and rocking-horse-flies are fine, but
this
you faint at?”

Owen watched Bethany nervously look around, wishing he could electrocute her some more. But instead, she just gave his nonfictional, unconscious self an apologetic look, then ran off into the library.

“Owen?” his mom said from the front. “Are you almost done?”

Owen stepped out from behind some shelves, staring at Nowen on the ground. “Oh, not going to answer your mom?” he whispered. “Guess I'll help you out, just this once.” Then louder, “Give me, like, two minutes, Mom!”

“Don't think I forgot about your homework!” his mom shouted back. “I'll be done soon, so get to it!”

Owen nodded, then looked around for an appropriate book. His eyes settled on one, and he grinned. “Don't like mysteries, huh?” he said, opening the book. “Guess you won't enjoy your time in this one, then.”

And with that, he took the book and ran it over Nowen's unconscious body, using Bethany's power to send Nowen into the pages. Then, with his other self gone, he cleaned up the children's section a bit, and went back to the front of the library.

He had homework to do, after all.

Later that night, lying in a bedroom that looked creepily familiar, Owen ran through the next day. He couldn't remember everything his other self had said in the next chapter, but that was okay. He'd get close enough. And as soon as
he
met Bethany, he'd be the only Owen she ever knew about.

Story officially stolen.

He turned over in bed, a contented look on his face. Sure, he might end up jeopardizing all of existence with some sort of time travel paradox, but that was the risk you took. And if reality
did
fall apart, then wasn't it really Bethany and Nowen's fault? He'd tried to take over Nowen's life in the present, but
noooooo
. They had to insist he take the riskier approach.

The only truly horrible part was that he could never tell them how badly he'd beaten them. He closed his eyes, drifting off to sleep, imagining how it'd go.

“You did what?” Bethany would say.

“I'm actually the Owen from the fictional world,” he'd tell her, bragging. “I completely stole nonfictional Owen's story out from under him. You had no idea!”

“Ha-ha,” she'd laugh. “You're so smart!”

“I sure am,” he'd say.

The daydream was so nice that it was all the more jarring when his eyes flew open. What was
that
?

Had something just . . . skittered across the floor?

Owen slowly sat up in bed, trying to see something in the dark bedroom. The curtains shut out even the moonlight, though, and all he could make out were dark shapes. There was his desk, and his bookshelves overflowing with broken books missing their covers, and—

Wait,
something just moved  
!

“Hello?” he said quietly, flailing a hand for his light, not taking his eyes off the spot where he'd seen . . . whatever. “Is someone there?”

Nothing answered, but on his other side, he heard the skittering again.

“Hello?” he said again, his voice barely above a squeak.

“Little boy,” said a high-pitched voice. “You've been baaaaaaaaad.”

Owen's eyes widened, and he frantically pawed at the lamp, trying to turn it on, only to knock it to the ground. He almost screamed in frustration and fright, but instead dove after it, desperate to turn it on, his body hanging over the side of his bed.

His fingers closed around the lamp's knob, and he switched it on, light flooding the room.

Upside down, Owen looked beneath his bed to the other side.

There he saw two red shoes about the size of doll's feet. And then slowly, ever so slowly, something on the other side of the bed bent down.

It was a doll. A clown doll.

A clown doll with teeth that smiled at him.