Story Thieves Part 22

"I know," Bethany said quietly. "You need to get back in there and take his place."

Kiel glanced over the page. "He's getting his heart taken out? That doesn't sound healthy." He sighed. "I knew it had to end. That's what the historical doc.u.ments from the future told us, back when we found the Second Key. I knew I wouldn't live through this. Though having my heart removed does explain a few things."

"We need to get him out of there!" She started to reach into the book, but Kiel grabbed her hand.

"Find a place where he's not being watched, or you're just going to turn up in the book," he said quietly, all the arrogance of a moment before gone. "I'll switch with him then, and no one will know."

Bethany nodded, and flipped forward a few pages. "Here. He's been knocked out by the Science Robots to have his heart taken out."

Kiel nodded and prepared himself. "I'm ready."

Bethany started to take his hand, then stopped as something occurred to her. "You don't know any magic."

"Doesn't seem so, no."

"But you're going to just switch places with him? You'll be trapped without any spells!"

"I knew it was coming," he told her. "It's been nice having this little break from things, out here with you. But now it's time to get back to the real world." He shrugged. "Or my version of it."

Bethany closed the book. "I'm not going to just let you die."

"It's how things are meant to go, Bethany. You can't change a life story."

She glared at him, hearing her own voice telling Owen the same thing. And then she heard herself snort. "Don't be stupid. We just need Jonathan Porterhouse. He wrote it, he'll change it."

"The book is written." Kiel grabbed the copy from her hand and showed her the words. "See? It's all there! Look. Look at the end-"

She knocked the book out of his hand. "Don't look at the end! I'm going to find Mr. Porterhouse, and he's going to fix this. I don't care how."

"You don't even know where he is!" Kiel said. "Just bring me back, Bethany. Owen doesn't belong there. I do."

Bethany glanced around the library. "You're right, I don't know where he is. But I can find him."

And she could. She had the magic, after all.

"How? Didn't you say the Magister hid him in one of these books? It'd take years to check them all."

"Not if I use a spell," she said, letting out a deep breath. The location spell she'd learned would find him, of course. After all this time, she knew that magic did what it was supposed to do. The only problem was, this was it. Spells were only good once. Which meant she'd be no closer to finding her father, and nothing good would have come of any of this. For a moment she couldn't do it, any more than she could cast the spell the day before in the library.

Bethany glanced up at Kiel, ready to admit she just couldn't. Kiel stared at her with concern, looking like he was ready to catch her if she fell.

Well, okay, maybe one good thing had come out of this.

She raised her hands the same way she'd seen Kiel do, then felt the location spell she'd learned to find her father run through her mind. She took a deep breath, then recited the words, and her whole body began to glow with the same warm feeling like hot chocolate on a cold day. And then she released the glow, saying Jonathan Porterhouse's name.

A tiny ball of light appeared in front of her face, then slowly floated off into the shelves of books.

"Follow it!" she yelled, then took off after the light.

The glow pa.s.sed over and through books, zigging and zagging until finally settling on one in particular. Bethany picked it up quickly, then dropped it in horror.

"It's a Stephen King book," she whispered.

"What's that?" Kiel asked.

"Nowhere you want to go. Ever."

"Eh, I'm not worried," he told her, grabbing her hand. "I have a half-fictional girl to protect me. Now let's go find my creator so we can pull your friend out of my story and get me back to losing my heart, shall we?"

She couldn't help it. She grinned at Kiel, then jumped them both in.

CHAPTER 42.

Owen's eyes opened to find Dr. Verity bending over him. "AAH!" he screamed in surprise, and tried to push himself backward but found he was strapped down.

"Finally," Dr. Verity said. "I didn't think you'd ever wake up. Looks like I set the stun setting up just a bit too high. Didn't want you using any magic, though."

"AAH!" Owen screamed again.

"Let's move past that, shall we?" Dr. Verity said, beginning to pace. Owen quickly looked around and realized that he wasn't in the audience chamber anymore. Instead, this looked like some sort of dark hallway, lit by the smallest of nuclear explosions on either side. And in front of him was . . .

"The vault," Dr. Verity said. "Notice anything unusual about it?"

Owen frantically looked over the door, but didn't know what to say, so just shook his head.

"It's not OPEN!" Dr. Verity shouted. "Do you not see the problem here, boy? I count one-two-three-four-five-six keys here! What kind of hero are you, showing up without all the keys you'd need to find the only weapon that can defeat me?!"

Owen stayed quiet, thinking as quickly as he could. There was no way he could give the mad scientist the last key he needed. No matter what it cost him, he couldn't let Dr. Verity use a bomb to wipe out everyone who'd ever used magic! Not only would that be the entire population of Magisteria, but also Kiel, the Magister, Owen himself, maybe even Bethany!

But how could he keep the Seventh Key from the doctor? If all it took was a selfless heart- Wait a second.

Dr. Verity peered down at him impatiently. "Well?"

"Well what?" Owen asked, stalling as he walked his way through the plan.

"WHERE IS THE LAST KEY?"

Owen took a deep breath, crossing his fingers, toes, and everything else. "I know where it is. And I'll give it to you, under one condition."

Dr. Verity grinned. "Look who wants to deal!" He took two steps closer until he hung over Owen like a gargoyle. Slowly, he raised a ray gun right at Owen's face. "You don't really seem to be in the greatest position to be negotiating, though, all things considered."

Owen swallowed hard. "Go ahead. Shoot me-"

"As you command!" The ray gun began to power up, and the doctor grinned wider.

"But if I die, you'll never get the key!" Owen finished quickly.

"If you die, you won't have any say in what happens to the key," Dr. Verity said. "That's starting to look like my preferred option at this point, honestly. At least I never have to look at you again."

"THE KEY IS IN MY HEART," Owen shouted, turning his head away from the ray gun. "If you shoot me and my heart stops, the key will never work!"

Dr. Verity stood back and gave Owen a careful look. "You aren't lying," he said, tapping the still-powered-up ray gun against his gla.s.ses. "I can tell, no increase in heart rate. And if you're not lying, that presents a very annoying problem. You can't live, you see. You've caused me far too many problems. But I want the Source, Kiel. I don't like loose ends, and this wipes up pretty much every single one. Including you, by the way. So what do I do?"

"Let me live!" Owen said. "There's got to be a way to make sure the bomb doesn't kill me too. Then you'll have your weapon, and I'll go away. You'll never see me again!"

"Pardon me for suggesting this, but if I take a key out of your heart, wouldn't that stop your heart from working? And wouldn't that therefore negate my end of this bargain?"

Owen nodded and took another deep breath. "But you can save me," he said, going all in. "Charm gave me a robot heart, just like hers. Put it in, do whatever you need to do to keep me alive, and the Seventh Key is yours."

Dr. Verity's eyes went wide, and he held up the robotic heart Charm had given Owen back in the Magister's tower. "Well, that explains why you had this on you." He began to laugh, harder and harder until Owen wondered if he was going to have a heart attack himself. "You . . . want me to save you . . . with science?" the doctor finally gasped. "YOU, Kiel Gnomenfoot, will become a creature of technology? I don't even need a reason. I'd happily do that, just to make everything you've fought for completely worthless!"

"You have to promise I'll be okay," Owen said. "Otherwise there's no deal."

"Or I could just take the key out of your heart myself while it still beats," the doctor said, raising an eyebrow.

"That won't work. According to the zombie of the First Magician, the only way to form the Seventh Key is if I give my heart up freely." And selflessly.

Dr. Verity started to swear. "I really, really hate magic." He sighed. "I really did want to kill you too. This is turning out to be a very disappointing day, all things considered."

"Trust me, things aren't going the way I hoped either."

Dr. Verity snorted at that, then shrugged. "Okay, one robotic heart for one heart key. Deal. Shake." He held out a hand, and Owen went to shake it, only to remember he was still tied down. The doctor grinned. "Gotcha!"

Owen sighed. "Just . . . just do it already."

"Soldiers!" Dr. Verity snapped his fingers, and two Science Soldiers stepped up next to Owen. "We're going to need a little surgery. Take the boy's robot heart, and switch it with the one in his chest, will you?"

One of the Science Soldiers held Owen down while the other's fingers folded in to be replaced by knives. "Wait, they're going to do it?" Owen shouted. "I want a real doctor!"

"They contain all the knowledge in our medical libraries," Dr. Verity said absently, then gave him an evil look. "Or, if you prefer, I could do it."

Owen shivered and shook his head.

"Your loss. Let's move, soldiers! Give our boy a new heart!"

The Science Soldier holding the robotic heart touched his arm, p.r.i.c.king it with some kind of needle, and suddenly the room began to get all wavy and foggy. Owen fought to stay awake, but whatever it was that the robot had injected him with was way too powerful.

"Don't forget, you promised to keep me alive," he said as clearly as he could.

"We'll see!" Dr. Verity said.

"Bethany," Owen said as everything turned to black. "I'm . . . I'm sorry. . . ."

And as Owen fell unconscious, Dr. Verity turned to the Science Soldiers. "Who's Bethany?" he asked.

CHAPTER 43.

Owen sat at the front desk at the library, checking in books. Lots of Kiel Gnomenfoot books, for some reason. He flipped through one, and the fact that all the pages were empty seemed odd, but not odd enough to worry about.

Someone laid a book down on the desk to check out, and he looked up. It was Bethany, made out of chocolate.

"I can't believe you did all this," she told him, for once not sounding like she was yelling at him. Actually, she sounded almost impressed. "You played out Kiel's story through the entire book, Owen. All the way to the end."

It was a bit hard to talk for some reason, like his head was foggy in a non-truth-spell kind of way. "I'm so sorry, Bethany," Owen told her. "I never should have done any of this. It's all my fault. I don't blame you for leaving me here to die. I deserve it."

Bethany, who was now made of words instead of chocolate, almost laughed. "Leave you here to die? What are you talking about?"

"Kiel Gnomenfoot dies at the end of the book," Owen told her sadly. "And right now, I'm Kiel Gnomenfoot. If I didn't go through with it, all kinds of other people in the book would have suffered for it. I couldn't do that to them. Because it was my fault Kiel wasn't there. All my fault. Fiction is too dangerous. I'm going to leave it to you from now on." He frowned. "Except I can't, because I'm going to die. Aww."

"Owen, where do you think you are?" Bethany started to say, then was interrupted by a boy wearing a sign that said KIEL GNOMENFOOT.

And he was wearing that sign because he was Kiel Gnomenfoot! Sometimes dreams were the best.

"I'm really proud of you," dream Kiel said to Owen. "I don't know you that well, Bowmen-"

"Owen," Bethany said.

"But look at you. You're a bigger hero than I am!"

"Keep it modest," Bethany whispered to him.

"Never," he whispered back with a wink.

She sighed, and turned from words into an almost normal-looking Bethany again. "Owen, it's all over. Kiel and I beat the Magister. Everything's okay out here."

Owen looked at her blankly. "Why would you beat the Magister? At what, a game?"

Bethany looked at Kiel, who nodded. "That's right, Owen," the boy magician said. "We beat him at a game. That's all it was. Maybe you should just go back to sleep."

"Sleep?" Owen asked, looking around him at the library, which was now his bedroom. "Oooh, sleep would be nice. But when I wake up, I'm going to have a robot heart and then Dr. Verity is going to kill me, because my heart won't work as a key." He leaned forward conspiratorially. "I tricked him, Kiel. I had to give up my heart selflessly if it was going to open the vault. But I didn't. I made him promise to save me with a new heart and then let me go. That was a selfish deal, since it saved me, so the heart key won't work!" He frowned. "Which means he's going to kill me when it doesn't work. But at least I saved everyone from blowing up."

Kiel grinned. "Sounds complicated, but I like it. Almost as good as one of my plans."