Read Online Story Thieves by James Riley - Free Book Online Page B

low and commanding, “tell me again how there is no magic in your world.”
    â€œThere 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.”
    Wait. What?

CHAPTER 11
    W hat had the fog just made him say? Owen tried desperately to lie, to take back everything he’d just spouted out, but the fog filled all of his thoughts, arranging them like soldiers in a line, ready to march out the door of his mouth and into battle. And no matter how much he ordered them to stop, they just kept marching.
    Or something like that. It was honestly a little hard to think of analogies with his brain so magicked.
    The Magister’s eyes bore in on Owen. “I’m sorry, my boy. You didn’t just suggest that we don’t actually exist , did you?”
    Kiel tapped his own arm. “I feel fairly solid to me. Could we get back to more important things now?”
    The Magister closed his eyes for a moment, then reopened them. “The spell is working. Somehow he actually believes that we aren’t real.”
    â€œYou’re not real,” Owen’s mouth said. “You’re just characters in a book.” He frantically tried to bite his lips closed to keep from saying anything else, but his lips just pushed out into a fish-face expression to escape his teeth. Ugh, those clever lips of his!
    â€œHe’s probably been science brain-cleaned, washed, whatever they do,” Kiel said. “Charm told me about it. They use their electric lights to flash your eyes until you believe whatever they say.” He shrugged. “Science people do weird things for fun. Magi, I need to find the Seventh Key—”
    â€œWhy would you think us not real?” the Magister asked Owen, giving him a quizzical look. “You can see us standing in front of you, and you are responding to my magic. Could an unreal person have cast such a spell?”
    â€œApparently!” Owen said. “I know you’re not real because I’ve read about you in books, especially Kiel. I’m a huge fan. Everyone is! We know all about your quest to find the Seven Keys to the Vault of Containment, then use the Source of Magic’s power to defeat Dr. Verity once and for all. But there are things you don’t know yet. Like the Magister was actually born on Quanterium, and Dr. Verity was born on Magisteria, and they were switched as some kind of peace offering, to leteach side experience the other’s culture. See? I couldn’t have known that except that it’s in the books.”
    The Magister took a step back, his eyes wide. Kiel turned to him, one eyebrow raised. “That isn’t true, is it, Magi?” he asked quietly.
    â€œ No one knows that,” the Magister said quietly. “It happened thousands of years ago! No one alive still knows apart from Dr. Verity. How could you—”
    â€œIt’s all in the books,” Owen’s mouth continued. “Just like how Kiel found out he’s a clone of Dr. Verity in the fourth book, and that the parents he’d always been searching for never actually existed. Which made him wonder that if he was actually from Quanterium, like Dr. Verity, how could he do magic, since no one