Chapter 12

The blood lingered on Muggs’ lips like a guilty pleasure as we strode down the stone corridor. He swiped at it with his sleeve, licking the last drops from the corner of his mouth.

“Better?” I asked.

“Much,” he rasped, a glint returning to his blind eyes. “I’ll have the strength to rip us a portal, no problem.”

We found Jinx in the armory, loading up on blades and bullets like we were gearing up for war. I almost laughed.

“You really think we’ll need all that firepower in the void?”

Jinx shrugged, sliding a magazine into her Glock. “Doesn’t hurt to be prepared.”

I leaned against the wall, arms folded. “It’s an empty dimension, Juliet. We’re more likely to encounter a whole lot of nothing than anything worth shooting.”

“Rather have it and not need it,” she said, strapping a silver dagger to her thigh, “than need it and not have it.”

Classic Jinx. She’d walk barefoot over hot coals for me, and I knew if trouble found us, she’d throw herself in its path without hesitation. But I hoped this would be a quick, uneventful trip. We had bigger problems back home if we didn’t find Ladinas soon.

Jinx loaded the last shotgun shell and racked the pump. “I’m ready when you are.”

I sighed. “Let’s get this over with.”

Muggs gathered us together in the center of the armory, gripping his oaken staff with both hands. He spun it overhead, chanting words in a language no one else knew. A whirling portal tore open the fabric of reality at the center of the vortex, a gaping maw of darkness.

I braced myself, expecting we’d plunge into a vast, empty oblivion. We were venturing into the unknown, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little nervous he’d vomit up all that blood he’d just choked down. Trans-dimensional travel was sort of like swimming. Best not attempt it until at least thirty minutes after a meal.

The portal yanked us through in a blur of motion and swirling chaos. My barely beating heart lodged in my throat as we were spat out the other side. I squeezed my eyes shut against the dizzying assault on my senses.

When I opened them again, I found myself standing in the middle of a cornfield, the stalks rising well over my head. A warm sun shone down from a clear blue sky. I blinked in confusion—the sun’s rays didn’t burn my skin. Somehow, impossibly, I walked under the sun again.

I turned to Muggs. “Are you sure you got the right place? This looks like fucking Nebraska.”

Muggs frowned, equally bewildered. “I don’t understand. This is the exact dimensional coordinate where the djinn’s lamp was sent. But...”

“Something’s changed,” Jinx finished for him. She surveyed our surroundings, cornstalks whispering in the breeze. “I don’t think we’re just in another dimension. I think we’re inside the lamp itself.”

My brows shot up. That… actually made a crazy sort of sense. But it raised a whole new crop of questions.

“How is that possible?” I asked. “The lamp was shattered.”

Muggs nodded slowly, piecing it together. “Yes, and the pocket dimension wasn’t much. When the lamp was destroyed, the small reality that Adam forged here became a void. But a djinn’s lamp always reconstitutes itself after it’s destroyed.”

I caught on. “So when the lamp reformed...”

“The lamp-world is the other dimension, one and the same now,” Muggs concluded. “It’s certainly going to complicate matters in a hundred years when we have to bring the lamp hope so the djinn can take Ladinas’ place.”

I shook my head. “One problem at a time. I’m not worried about what we’ll have to do in a century. How are we going to bring Ladinas home so we can bring him to Alice?”

Juliet shook her head. “You said it. One problem at a time. We need to find Ladinas. Why would he make a world of cornfields? He didn’t strike me as the farming type. Why not forge a world that reminded him of old-world Romania, or a white sand beach, or something... less corny.”

I snorted. “Did you really just tell a corny joke... about corn?”

Juliet grimaced. “Yeah. Sorry about that. I don’t know what came over me.”

I laughed, the bad joke breaking some of the tension I felt. This strange facsimile of a Midwestern farm was unnerving in its normalcy.

“Ladinas always fancied himself a romantic,” I mused. “He read those cheesy paperback romances—all secret trysts in moonlit gardens and longing glances across candlelit dinners.”

Juliet raised an eyebrow. “Somehow I can’t picture our resident ancient badass getting all misty-eyed over a melodramatic love story.”

“Oh, you’d be surprised,” I said with a grin. “I once caught him reading Twilight, of all things. He was utterly engrossed. Said he related to the ‘tortured immortal finding meaning in the love of a mortal girl’ or some nonsense.”

Juliet burst out laughing. “No way! Please tell me you’re joking.”

I shook my head, chuckling. “Nope, straight truth. He ate those books up. But...” I trailed off, piecing it together.

“What is it?” Juliet asked.

“After Ladinas disappeared, I helped Alice tidy up his room. On his daystand was a copy of Little House on the Prairie.”

“Huh,” Juliet said. “He went from secret vampire-human trysts to life on the wholesome prairie.”

Muggs furrowed his brow. “Daystand? What’s a daystand?”

I rolled my eyes. “Vampires are nocturnal, Muggs. We sleep during the day, if at all, not at night. So we call them daystands instead of nightstands.”

“Ah, right. Vampire semantics,” Muggs said.

I nodded. “The point is, we’d been through so much shit that he was dreaming of a simpler, more innocent world. Can’t say I blame him.”

Juliet scanned our surroundings. “Well, it looks like that’s what he got. Doesn’t get much simpler than this.”

Juliet nodded, then aimed her shotgun at the sky. “Ladinas! Get your undead ass out here! We’ve come to harsh your mellow!”

She fired. The shotgun blast echoed back at us from a distance.

I chuckled. “Subtle as always, Jinx.”

After Juliet’s shotgun blast, there was a moment of silence before we heard the rustling of corn stalks nearby. We aimed our weapons at the source, but instead of Ladinas, a young girl emerged from the fields.

She couldn’t have been over ten years old, with long black hair and bright blue eyes. Her clothes were tattered and dirty, but she held herself with an air of confidence that seemed out of place in this eerie corn kingdom.

“Who are you?” Juliet asked, her gun still trained on the girl.

The girl didn’t seem afraid of our weapons. Instead, she smiled and curtsied. “My name is Beatrice,” she said. “I am one of Ladinas’s loyal subjects.”

Juliet lowered her gun slightly, still wary. “How old are you, Beatrice?”

Beatrice tilted her head. “I don’t remember anything before... I think a month ago. Maybe more, maybe less. I’m pretty new.”

I sighed. Ladinas hadn’t only created a pretend world. He’d populated it, too. But this little girl seemed real and self-aware. What in the world was he thinking? Was he really making a world that he knew would cease to exist when his time in the lamp was over?

I kneeled down and took Beatrice’s hands. “Do you know where Ladinas is?”

“Of course!” Beatrice beamed. “Did he make you just now? He’s always bringing me new friends. He’s so nice, isn’t he?”

“Nice.” I pressed my lips together. I mean, he wasn’t mean. ‘Nice’ just isn’t an adjective I’d ever thought to apply to the Vampire Prince. Dark, alluring, seductive. All those descriptors applied. But nice? “He didn’t make us. But you’re right about one thing. We are friends.”

“Goodie!” Beatrice jumped up and down, her farm dress billowing around her dainty legs. “How about a game of hide and seek?”

Juliet stepped forward. “Take us to your leader.”

“Okie doke!” Beatrice giggled. “Follow me!”

As the young girl weaved between the stalks, Muggs held his hand on my shoulder and followed as Juliet and I stayed just a few paces behind Beatrice.

I leaned over toward Juliet. “Take us to your leader? Alien invasion cliché much?”

Juliet snickered. “We are aliens if you think about it. Of a sort. What can I say? I’ve always wanted to say that. The opportunity was there, so I took it.”