The Stolen Chapters

by James Riley

  “You’re still up, Beth?” her mom said from the living room at the front of the house.

  “Yeah, just going to get a snack and look at the stars for a bit,” Bethany said loudly.

  “Okay, but only for a minute. You’ve got school,” her mom said.

  Bethany started to leave but realized Gwen was staring in the direction of the living room in amazement. Right. Bethany quietly led her to the door, where they could both see Bethany’s mother sitting on their old couch, watching some late-night news show. Gwen’s eyes began to water, and Bethany quickly pulled her back into the kitchen, then out the back door into her fenced-in yard and the cool night air.

  “This is . . . this is Earth?” Gwen said, one tear slowly sliding down her cheek. “But how?”

  “I’m a time traveler, remember?” she said. “I sometimes visit here. That’s my . . . my adopted mom. I just thought you’d want to see what your home planet looked like.”

  Gwen swallowed hard, tears flowing quicker now. “Would . . . would my parents—”

  “No,” Bethany said, probably a little too quickly. “No,” she repeated, more gently this time. “This is still a hundred years before your time.”

  “But . . . but we can save them, then!” Gwen said, gesturing to the houses all around them. “We can save everyone!”

  Bethany sighed. Of course EarthGirl would want to save her planet. Who wouldn’t? “It’s already happened in your future. If we changed it, then you wouldn’t exist to help me save it, you know? It’d be a paradox, and that’d explode the entire universe.”

  Gwen shook her head. “I don’t accept that. There’s always a way, Bethany. We just have to find it! You traveled through time, and we both have superpowers—”

  “Not here,” Bethany pointed out. “Try flying.”

  Gwen gave her an odd look, then leaped into the air, only to immediately drop back down to the ground. “No green sun?” she said.

  “It’s yellow, actually,” Bethany told her. “I need to take you back now, but I just wanted you to see what Earth was like. It’s not much, but I hope it helps.”

  Gwen reluctantly nodded, then faster than Bethany could react, Gwen threw her arms around her and hugged her tightly. “I can’t begin to thank you for this,” she said. “Not even a little bit.”

  Bethany nodded, getting choked up herself, then led Gwen back into the house.

  “Get some sleep now,” Bethany’s mom said, and Gwen froze in place.

  Bethany looked at her, then gestured for her to go ahead.

  “Okay, I will,” Gwen said, just loud enough for Bethany’s mom to hear.

  “Okay, good night then, sweetie,” Bethany’s mom said, and Gwen almost giggled, even as tears fell down her face.

  Bethany quietly walked them both back upstairs, then took Gwen’s hand. “Close your eyes,” she told EarthGirl, and when she had, Bethany touched the open page of the book and jumped them back to Argon VI.

  As the heat of the green sun beat down on them again, Gwen opened her eyes, and floated into the air, twirling slowly in circles. Finally, she hugged herself tightly, then turned to Bethany. “I can never repay you,” EarthGirl told her. “Never ever, Bethany. But let me at least show you my home here.”

  “I . . . I need to get back to my own time,” Bethany lied. “Got to get to bed. You heard my mom.” She smiled.

  Gwen nodded. “If you ever want help looking for your father . . . or with anything at all, you don’t even need to ask. I’m there. Always. We’re partners now, like detectives. And partners support each other.”

  “I think I’m good, actually,” Bethany said, looking up at the bright-green sun in the sky. “I don’t know why, but all of a sudden . . . I think things will be okay.”

  UNCHAPTERED

  Nobody wrote “The End” in Story Thieves: The Stolen Chapters, and placed it on his shelf. While that was taken care of, things were progressing much faster than he’d like, and he needed to be prepared.

  And that meant taking another quick trip.

  He turned the page, pulling fictional reality apart, then stepped through to what he knew was just another story, but looked like an entirely new world, this one foggy, with cobblestone streets and gas lamps smelling of kerosene. The clip-clop of horses alerted him to someone coming, so he quickly created clothes and a face, making himself resemble an average citizen of Victorian England, then stepped out of the street.

  It didn’t take long for him to find who he was looking for.

  A man in a deerstalker hat and brown coat was speaking to a group of children, mostly young ones, but a few a bit older. Right in the middle was a boy covered in dirt, whispering something into the man’s ear. The man dropped some coins in the boy’s hand, and the boy quickly burst out of the group as the other children gathered around the man, hoping for more of the same.

  Nobody stepped into the way of the boy with the coins and grabbed him by the back of his shirt, pulling him to a stop.

  “You would be one of Sherlock Holmes’s irregulars, would you not?” he asked quietly.

  The boy stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and gave him a suspicious look. “No one here knows that name.”

  “Neither of us are from around here, are we, Owen Conners,” Nobody said, and for just an instant flashed his normal, featureless face at Owen before returning to his Victorian disguise.

  “Nobody,” the fictional Owen Conners said, his eyes lighting up. “I was wondering when you’d show up!”

  “You knew I’d come?” Nobody asked, a hint of a smile playing over his reforming face.

  “Of course,” Owen said. “I saw you walking away with the Magister’s textbook at the end of Story Thieves, so of course you’d come for me, too. I mean, it didn’t say for sure that it was the Magister’s textbook, but it had to be. And that meant I was next!”

  “And why would you think I’d do that?” Nobody asked.

  Owen just smiled. “We’re not in the book right now, are we?”

  Nobody looked up, directly at you, the reader, then turned back to Owen and shook his head. “No one can see you.”

  “Then I think you’re not Bethany’s father, because you’re secretly her enemy,” Owen said, whispering in spite of Nobody’s assurances. “I think you’re putting together a group of her worst enemies to take her down. Like the Avengers or the Justice League or something, only evil.”

  “And you would want to fight against her, then?” Nobody asked, raising an eyebrow.

  “As long as I get to take down my nonfictional self, too,” Owen said, his eyes narrowing. “I owe Nowen big time. Him and that idiot, Kiel.”

  “So you’ve learned nothing,” Nobody said, and reached out to the boy. Owen just watched in confusion as Nobody’s hand touched his arm, at which point he screamed. The scream cut off instantly as Owen’s mouth closed on itself, while his flailing arms and legs began to retract into his body.

  Moments later Nobody held just a small ball in his hand, which he put into his pocket. “Of the two Owens, I thought I’d be doing this to your nonfictional self a lot sooner than to you,” he said, almost sadly. “You disappointed me, fictional Owen.”

  With that, he stepped into an alley, then pulled the pages of Victorian England apart, and stepped back into his own library. He deposited the fictional Owen Conners into a jar on a shelf, next to a copy of a math textbook, before sighing.

  “Things are happening much too fast, Bethany,” he said, staring at the copy of Story Thieves: The Stolen Chapters. “You’re causing more trouble than I can keep hidden.” He sighed, then opened a new, empty book titled Story Thieves: Secret Origins, and put his pen onto the first page.

  “I suppose there’s nothing for it. It’s time that you meet your father.”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Liesa Abrams Mignogna stared at the pages, wondering what James Riley could be thinking. Was he actually saying that he was a character in the Story Thieves books? Was he crazy? Was this some
sort of ego thing, putting himself in a book?

  Did he really believe it?

  And the acknowledgments page was even stranger than the rest of the book. “He’s writing about me?” she said, straightening her Batman cape across her shoulders. “Is this . . . a joke?”

  Apparently, Acknowledgments-Liesa was thinking the same thing, as “ ‘Is this . . . a joke?’ asked Liesa” was right there at the top.

  Sometimes being an editor was a lot harder than anyone knew. Especially with this author.

  “Did you see this?” Liesa said to Emma Sector, her coeditor on the books. “This is what I’ve been dealing with since Half Upon a Time.”

  Emma shook her head. “He’s got you going over a list of everyone he’s thanking. Look.”

  Liesa glanced down and saw that Acknowledgments-Liesa was running over a list of who James had thanked: Michael Bourret, his agent; Mara Anastas and Mary Marotta, his publishers; Carolyn Swerdloff, Teresa Ronquillo, Matt Pantoliano, and Lucille Rettino in marketing; Faye Bi, his publicist; Katherine Devendorf in managing editorial; Adam Smith, the copy editor; Sara Berko in production; Laura Lyn DiSiena, who designed the book; Chris Eliopoulos, his interior illustrator, and Vivienne To, his cover artist; Michelle Leo and the education/library team; Christina Pecorale and the rest of the sales team; and Stephanie Voros and the subrights group. All the people who worked really hard, basically to give James the chance to narcissistically insert himself into his own book.

  Those poor, poor people, Acknowledgments-Liesa thought.

  Real Liesa shook her head, wondering again why she put up with this. Why did everything have to be so meta with James? “Can’t he do it the easy way, just once?” she murmured. And how was he going to thank his friends and family, his loved ones, if this was all written from her perspective? She shook her head.

  Her e-mail beeped, as it did every 1.2 seconds, and she thankfully turned away from the acknowledgments to look over at her computer.

  Except, of course, it was him. It was always him.

  Subject: Whoops!

  LIESA!!!!!

  I totally forgot to add in all my friends and family and loved ones! Obviously, I need Corinne in there, like, right at the top of everything. And my parents, who probably still wonder what they did wrong. My family. Everyone who’s supported me. The Laird family, Katie, Heather, Mark, and Kim. My readers, ESPECIALLY my readers, who are the greatest, most kindest, wonderfulest people ever.

  Also can we put a thank-you in to J. K. Rowling as if she and I are friends? Something like “and most importantly, thanks to J. K. Rowling (or Jo, as I call her) for all those long talks we had over coffee, where we just laughed together over nothing.” That’s legal, right?

  James

  Liesa banged her head against her desk twice, took a deep breath, then hit reply.

  Subject: Re: Whoops!

  Hey,

  No, that would be sort of odd, since you don’t know her. Speaking of odd, why don’t you just maybe write your acknowledgments in a more normal way? Then you don’t have to confuse everyone even more, especially right when they’re finishing the book.

  Speaking of confusing, are you actually trying to say you’re Nobody in this book?

  The reply came just seconds later.

  Subject: Re: Whoops!

  ;)

  “And NOPE!” Liesa shouted, shutting her computer down. “It’s OVER! It’s just OVER!” She grabbed the acknowledgments, planning on ripping them up, then glanced down at the pages and saw that Acknowledgments-Liesa was doing exactly that too.

  “ARRRGH!” she shouted, both in real life and on the page, then collapsed into a heap on her desk, shuddering every few seconds. Why? Why do I do this?!

  “Writers,” Emma said quietly from the doorway as she clicked off the light, then closed Liesa’s door. “They really are just pure evil.”

  Strangely enough, JAMES RILEY, bestselling author of the Half Upon a Time series, doesn’t actually exist. There’s no record of “James Riley” before his fairy tale series came out, and sources say that the man in his author photos is just an actor. It’s almost as if someone made up this fictional “James Riley” identity solely to hide his true identity. But why? And who would go to such lengths? Certainly Nobody comes to mind.

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  ALSO BY JAMES RILEY

  Half  Upon a Time

  Twice Upon a Time

  Once Upon the End

  Story Thieves

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  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  ALADDIN

  An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division

  1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, New York 10020

  www.SimonandSchuster.com

  First Aladdin hardcover edition January 2016

  Text copyright © 2016 by James Riley

  Interior illustrations by Chris Eliopoulos copyright © 2016 by Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  Jacket illustration copyright © 2016 by Vivienne To

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

  ALADDIN is a trademark of Simon & Schuster, Inc., and related logo is a registered trademark of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

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  Book design by Laura Lyn DiSiena

  Author photograph by Maarten de Boer

  The text of this book was set in Adobe Garamond.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Riley, James, 1977–

  The stolen chapters / by James Riley. — Aladdin hardcover edition.

  p. cm. — (Story thieves ; 2)

  Summary: Mysteries abound as memory-erased Owen Conners, boy magician Kiel Gnomenfoot, and their half-fictional friend Bethany confront secrets, stolen memories, hidden clues, surprising twists and endings, and some very familiar faces.

  [1. Books and reading—Fiction. 2. Characters in literature—Fiction. 3. Adventure and adventurers—Fiction. 4. Magic—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.1.R55Sp 2016

  [Fic]—dc23

  2015012733

  ISBN 978-1-4814-0922-3 (hc)

  ISBN 978-1-4814-0924-7 (eBook)