by James Riley
Dedicated to authors, the true villains of every book. Change is coming.
CHAPTER 1
The evil King of All Stories held his enormous eraser to Bethany’s head as she tried to escape.
“It’s too late, heroes!” the king told Owen, Kiel, and Charm. “There’s nothing you can do! Now I’ll erase the parts of Bethany’s life story that make her a good person, thereby turning her into my evil minion. Then, together, we’ll invade the nonfictional world and rule everything!”
“Let her go!” Owen shouted. “Or you won’t like what comes next.”
The evil King of All Stories sneered. “You? The nonfictional hero who’s saved the fictional world more times than I can count? You have no power here, boy.”
“Don’t I?” Owen took out paper and a pencil and began writing.
The King of All Stories drops his eraser.
The king’s eraser immediately dropped out of his hand. “What?” the king shouted in amazement. “But how?”
“Through the power of words!” Owen shouted. “Books are magical, and so is writing!” He wrote something else on the paper.
The King of All Stories lets Bethany go, then trips on his own feet.
The king let go of Bethany, then spectacularly wiped out on his next step, doing a front flip before landing hard on his back. The Crown of Stories fell off his head and rolled a few feet away.
The Crown of Stories appears on Owen’s head, Owen wrote.
Immediately, the crown disappeared from the ground, then reappeared on Owen’s head. It was exactly the right size, as if it were made for him all along.
“No!” the former king shouted from the ground. “You can’t do this to me. This is all I had!”
“Not true,” Owen said, turning to his former archenemy. “This isn’t you, Your Majesty. You’re not meant to be evil. Someone’s rewritten your story, just as you tried to do for Bethany.”
“I’m not?” the former king said. “Then what was I meant to be?”
“A father,” Owen said quietly, then wrote something on his paper.
The former King of All Stories turns back into his real self.
Instantly a bright light filled the room, then spread out over the entire Kingdom of Stories, blinding anyone who happened to be looking at the castle at that moment. The light enveloped the former king, raising him into the air in a completely awesome way.
The light became too bright to look at, and they all covered their eyes except Owen, who wrote himself sunglasses that made him look even cooler. Then abruptly, the light disappeared and everything went dark.
“Looks like this story,” Owen said, pulling off his sunglasses, “just started a new chapter.”
Bethany slowly stepped past Owen, her eyes on the figure on the ground. The former king was no longer dressed in royal robes. Now he wore normal clothes, and his hair had turned the same shade as Bethany’s, a bronzish red.
The man shook his head, then slowly pushed to his feet, his mouth hanging open.
“. . . Bethany?” he said, his eyes widening.
“Dad?” she said, not believing it.
“It’s me, Beth,” her dad said, holding out his arms. “You’ve saved me! I never thought I’d be able to turn back to my true self, but you’ve done it!”
Bethany ran forward and jumped into her dad’s arms, knocking them both to the ground. “Dad!” she shouted. “I can’t believe it’s you! Owen, you did it!”
“I’ve never seen anything so sweet,” Kiel said from Owen’s side, rubbing his eyes.
“I have,” Charm said, looking at Owen as her hand slipped into his.
• • •
The white paw of a black cat touched Owen’s hand, and he stopped writing. Spike, Owen’s fictional self’s former cat, glanced up at Owen from his desk with a look that said, Really?
“Too much?” Owen asked his fictional cat.
Spike just blinked his eyes slowly, leaving his paw on Owen’s hand.
“I have,” Charm said, looking at Owen with affection.
Spike dug his claws into Owen’s hand, and Owen sighed. “Fine.”
“Really?” Charm said, stepping away from the other two. “No one else thinks this is a trap? I’m the only one?”
Spike took his paw off of Owen’s hand and began to purr contentedly as he closed his eyes to nap again.
“You know, I’m the one who’s writing this,” Owen said. “And it’s not exactly easy. Maybe at least hold your judgment until it’s done?”
Spike briefly opened his eyes, then closed them again, completely unmoved.
Owen absently scratched his cat’s stomach, reading over what he had written. Ugh. Why was it all so bad? Did every writer have this problem? Everything just seemed so . . . obvious. Make the villain Bethany’s dad? It’d been done a thousand times.
He began to idly tap the keys without pressing them while he stared off into space. When he glanced back at the computer, though, there were new words. Apparently he’d been typing without realizing it?
“Owen,” said a man who appeared out of nowhere, with no features or details anywhere on his body. The mannequin-looking man had his back to the Owen in the story as he spoke to the real Owen. “Stop this at once. You’re manipulating fictional characters’ lives. Do you have any idea what you’re doing here?”
Owen’s eyes widened as he read the lines, while at his side, Spike began to growl, low and menacing. Owen hadn’t just written those words . . . had he?
And then more text appeared on the screen, without Owen even moving his hands.
“Do not write again,” Nobody said. “I don’t want to have to tell you this twice.” And with that, he disappeared.
A chill went through Owen, and he quickly reread the last few lines. What had just happened? Was that really Nobody? And if so, was Owen actually messing with real fictional people’s lives? Had he just created another fictional Owen?
He quickly highlighted the entire story, ready to hit the delete button, then froze. What if he had created new people, and was now going to delete them? Would that take them out of existence somehow? His finger hovered over the button as he looked to Spike for an answer. But now that Nobody was gone, the cat seemed to have returned to his nap, not paying any attention.
Should he delete the story, or was that worse? If only there was someone he could ask—
“OWEN!” shouted someone from mere inches away.
Owen screamed and tumbled out of his chair, while Spike tore away across the room, hiding under the bed. His heart racing, Owen turned to find Bethany’s head sticking out of a piece of paper on his desk, and he gave her the dirtiest look he could.
“Don’t do that! You scared me half to death!” She’d given him a page from a book she kept hidden under her bed. In case of emergencies (fictional characters escaping their books, libraries burning down, that kind of thing) she could jump in one page, move to the next part of the story, then pop out of his. But it was not meant for terrifying him!
“Good, you should be scared!” she said, breathing heavily. “Because that guy is back on the street again, the one who keeps watching my house!”
Owen groaned loudly. “Seriously? This again?”
“Oh, is my being stalked by a crazy person boring to you?” Bethany asked, giving him a sarcastic look. “Get over here and help me spy on him!” She moved her head to the side, and one hand popped out of the page.
Owen shook his head. “No way. Remember what happened last time I came over to check on this guy?”
Bethany rolled her eyes. “He wasn’t there, but only because he must have seen us coming!”
“And the time before that?”
“That one, I got the car wrong.”
“And we ter
rified that poor old lady!”
“Then she shouldn’t be acting so suspiciously!” Bethany yelled, her hand flying around wildly. “Who sits in their car for ten minutes at eleven at night?”
“She couldn’t get it started!”
“That’s what she wanted us to think,” Bethany said, glancing around suspiciously. “Hurry up, or he might leave again!”
“Which would mean he’s not actually spying on you,” Owen said, sighing. “Bethany, it’s been a while since we jumped into a book—”
“Two months, three weeks, and four days, actually. Now come on—”
“And I know it’s been hard on you. But you’re kind of acting . . . different now.”
Bethany’s face froze, and she pulled her hand back into the page. “What? What are you talking about? Don’t you get it? This could be Doyle, or Fowen again. Maybe Fowen got out of the book where I left him and is back for revenge. Or maybe Doyle remembered everything that happened and wants to figure out how I jump into books. If Kiel were here instead of running off to find out who he is without magic, he could just cast a spell or something to find out who this guy is. But without him, we’re going to need a good plan.”
Owen groaned again. “No more mysteries. Please? Fowen and Doyle are both still in the fictional world where we left them. And whoever’s parked outside your house is probably one of your neighbors, which would explain why he’s on your street.”
“You think I’m making this up, don’t you?” Bethany said, looking suspicious.
“Not . . . entirely. I just think you used to jump into books every night, and now, well, your imagination doesn’t have as much to play with, so it’s messing with you.”
She gave him an evil look and started to say something, then stopped, shaking her head. “Maybe you’re right. I might have a little bit of cabin fever or something. I’ll just go to bed and forget all this. See you tomorrow?”
“Yeah, of course,” Owen said, breathing a sigh of relief. He’d been worried about saying something for weeks now, but she’d been getting more and more frantic to find something exciting in their fairly boring lives, and it was out of control. “And Bethany? Only use that page for emergencies. I might not have clothes on or something!”
Bethany rolled her eyes, then waved good-bye and disappeared.
Owen slowly got back into his chair, and Spike came trotting out from under the bed, then jumped into his lap. He petted his cat for a moment, then sighed.
“Bethany’s going after the guy in the car, isn’t she.”
Spike just purred in response.
“Fine,” Owen said, and set Spike on his bed. “I’ll go, but this guy better be a murderer or something, or I’m going to be really annoyed!”
CHAPTER 2
Outside in the bushes Bethany put on the infrared goggles she’d pulled out of a military catalog and slowly raised her head.
There in the car was a bright-orange blob, vaguely human-shaped, but evil for sure. Almost every night for the last two months, she’d seen the same car parked across the street from her house, and the same creepy man waiting in it. Could have been even longer than that too. After all, she’d been in books basically every night since she was six until she’d decided to give up . . . to stop looking for her father, after everything that had gone down with Fowen.
Unfortunately, being back in the real world didn’t mean things felt normal. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d fallen asleep on time. Most nights she just tossed and turned, her mind racing with all the places she could be instead of in her bedroom. So many books, so many worlds, and she had promised to stay put in this one? She must be insane.
One of her sleepless nights had led her to staring out the window, and that’s when she’d first spotted the guy. She noticed a car on the street she’d never seen during the day, and could tell that someone was in it. She only saw him get out once, wearing a hat and long coat, so she couldn’t make out his face, but she knew he had to be spying on her. Did he know her secret? Was he planning on waiting for her to jump into a book, then stealing it to trap her? The person who visited her in Fowen’s water trap had told her there were people looking for her, and she suspected they’d finally found her.
Owen hadn’t believed her, of course. She shook her head at the idea. Why would she make up something like this? Just because she was bored out of her mind and desperately wanted to be jumping into a story didn’t mean that she was just going to make up her own plot, right?
Well, when she put it that way, it did almost sound like Owen had a point. But clearly this guy was a spy or a murderer and needed to be investigated. And just because Owen hated mysteries didn’t mean he should have let her do this alone.
“Is that him?” whispered a voice to her right, and after almost shouting in surprise, she couldn’t help but grin widely at the sight of Owen. He’d even worn dark clothes to better hide in the bushes.
Emotions flooded through her, but this wasn’t the time for all of that. “That’s him,” she said, pulling the goggles off of her eyes. “Now we just need to put this tracker on his car, so we can follow him wherever he goes.”
Owen looked like he’d swallowed something rotten. “You’re going to bug his car? Do you know how illegal that is?”
“Nope,” Bethany said, still smiling at him.
“Okay, I don’t either, but it’s probably very illegal.”
Bethany shrugged. “Sometimes you need to take some risks, Owen. Be more fictional, like Kiel used to say.”
“That was in a book,” Owen hissed. “We’re in the real world. Here you should be more nonfictional so we don’t both get thrown in jail.”
Bethany shushed him as the car’s engine turned on. The red lights on the back of the car lit up their bush, and immediately they both dropped to the ground. “There’s no time to argue,” Bethany told him. “I need to get this tracker on the car before he leaves. You need to go distract him!”
Owen’s eyes widened. “ME?!”
“He’s spying on me, so I can’t do it. Hurry up, he’s about to leave!”
Owen gritted his teeth like he was trying not to yell at her, but slowly stood up anyway. He started to say something, so Bethany just shoved him out from behind the bushes.
“Go!” she hissed.
He gave her the dirtiest look she’d ever seen, but slowly walked toward the car in front of them just as it began to pull away. “Excuse me?” he shouted, waving his hands, and the car immediately stopped, the driver’s window rolling down.
From the bushes Bethany couldn’t hear the driver’s voice, but Owen must have, as he responded to a question. “Yeah, I’m fine. I just, um, wondered if you lived around here, because I’m a little lost.”
Huh, not bad! She silently gave Owen credit for his interrogating methods, then crawled out from behind the bushes. Be more fictional, eh, Kiel? She’d show him. She’d be the most fictional half-fictional person ever.
“The library,” Owen was saying. “I know it’s closed, but I have some books to return.”
Bethany shook her head as she crawled forward on her hands and knees. He didn’t have any books, or even a backpack. Why hadn’t he come up with something more believable?
She reached the back of the car just as the driver seemed to be making the same point to him. Owen looked down at his hands, then shrugged. “Oh wow, I guess I forgot my books! Thanks for pointing that out. I should really go back home now!” With that, he waved wildly, then started walking quickly away from the car.
Bethany powered the tracker on, then slammed her hand up underneath the back bumper just as the car pulled away. She flattened herself on the road as it left, hoping the man didn’t look back . . . but Owen came through again, waving over and over at the car as he abruptly changed direction and ran to the other side of the street.
Bethany rolled her way to the relative safety of the other parked cars, then grinned. That had gone even better than she’d hoped. Not only had they go
tten the tracker on the car, but Owen had found out information vital to the cause!
“I got nothing,” he told her a moment later, up in her bedroom. They’d snuck in but hadn’t needed to, as Bethany’s mom seemed to be talking to someone on the phone in her bedroom. Probably her aunt in California, which explained why she’d be talking so late.
Bethany frowned. “But you asked if he was from around here. What’d he say?”
“He asked me what I was doing out so late!” Owen said, his voice getting dangerously loud. Her mom would hear if he started yelling. “And then I blanked on what to say, so I told him I was looking for the library. The library! It’s almost midnight!”
She nodded. “It wasn’t great, but we can work on that for next time.”
“Next time?” Owen’s eyes widened. “There’s not going to be a next time. I only came over to keep you from getting in huge trouble. Mission accomplished, so let’s just count ourselves lucky and forget any of this ever happened.”
“Sure,” Bethany said, nodding. “As soon as we track him down and see who he is, we’ll let it all go.”
Owen made a painful sobbing noise, falling backward onto her bed. He put his hands over his face and didn’t speak for a minute. “Just promise me you have a normal, nonfictional way of finding him?” he said finally.
“Of course,” Bethany said indignantly. “I’ve got just the thing.” And with that, she held up a book and showed it to him.
He peeked out from behind his hands, then groaned loudly. “My Best Friend, the Assassin?!”
“Do you have a better option than a dog who can track down anything and has assassin training?” Bethany grinned. “Exactly. That’s what I thought.”
CHAPTER 3
Have I mentioned how much I hate mysteries?” Owen said as he walked next to Bethany and their fluffy, apparently deadly, fictional tracking dog, Kelly, who trotted along with her tongue hanging out, happily wagging her tail. They’d followed Kelly through several neighborhoods already and were heading down Ditko Drive now.
“This isn’t a mystery,” Bethany said, her eyes on the dog. “Good girl, Kelly. Find the bad man’s house.” Kelly continued trotting along, her long tail blowing in the breeze.